This is the Story of Ollie Soto

Trigger Warning: S*xual Assault, Depr*ssion, Su*cide

Story and photo by Ollie Soto

Edited by Isabella Gao

Interviewed by Emilie Cooper

note: Ollie uses they/them pronouns

A few months ago, I was celebrating my one-year-anniversary of being attempt-free with my therapist, and she had me go all the way back to when it had first started, back to seven-year-old Ollie. Back to crying in the shower.

Some of the few memories I have in my dad's tiny two bedroom apartment are of me crying in the shower. Let me set the scene. It’s five in the morning, your parents are midway through divorce, and you don't understand a thing. The longest you’ve been away from your mom is only a night.

I always thought I was “Daddy’s strong little girl” who didn't need to cry. But in reality I was a wuss. I would sob in the shower at my Dad's apartment and cry out, “I want my Mommy.” Nobody had told me what was happening. Little me didn’t understand this feeling, it was more than a need for my mother’s loving embrace. It was a want to disappear. Now, thinking about it, this probably only strengthened my anxiety. I was tired of meeting new people and being forced to call this woman I had only met yesterday ‘Mom.’ I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to live. I wanted to fall asleep and stay asleep. All at age eight.

After talking with my current therapist about it, she helped me understand that it was the only way my depression knew how to help me at the time. I didn't have anyone to talk to. I didn’t know how to talk to them. How does an eight-year-old tell their parents that they don't want to be around anymore? It only knew how to isolate me.

This led to an addiction of being online. I had especially found comfort in the horror stories called ‘creepypastas.’ This didn’t help me as it exposed me to all kinds of new vocabulary. It romanticized depression for me and sent me into denial on if I was depressed or not. All because my depression wasn’t as bad as others. And then I wrote my first note. Age nine. It wasn’t written with a plan but rather, an intent. The idea of taking my own life didn’t seem harmful at the time. I had almost welcomed it. But my stepmom had soon found it and told my Mom and my at-the-time therapist.

The thing about my stepmom is that she'd never handled any kind of mental health problem. Up until it was about her kid, she was the (type of) person who would say a kid was faking it. When I was little, I didn't like her or her kids. It felt like I was being left behind whenever I was at Dad’s house. She had a set of new rules for me and my brothers and didn’t even notice she was playing favorites. Favoritism played a big role in my life.

I remember watching the 3 am infomercials like it was yesterday. I had stayed up all day and night from being sick and I was consistently picking up the bowl placed by my bed for (throwing up). I had barely gotten an hour of sleep that entire night. When I was woken up for school, I was still sick and was forced to go to school. I didn’t have a choice, but my siblings could fake a sickness any time or skip class and get away with it. Overall, I was unheard in the house. I didn't feel comfortable, and the only way for my depression to be okay, was to comfort me with thoughts and attempts. My insurance had also stopped covering my therapy, so my parents deemed me “better.”

And then, I started middle school. This is where that second trigger warning comes in. I was ten and he was thirteen at the time. He had actually gone out of his way to “do this for me.” And I don’t know what was going on in his brain, but I know that when I was thirteen, I had never thought about teaching a ten-year-old how to masturbate. As my dad puts it, “I am blowing this out of proportion.” I know he didn’t touch me then, but he sure as hell tried. I tried telling others, but they just didn’t listen.

Also at this time, I had figured out that I wasn’t cisgender/heterosexual. The one mistake I made back then was that I was a little too open about it. This led to many arguments and yelling fits between me and my parents. (Remembering) the things they said to me still affects me to this day. I know it really hit me hard then too, sending me to this darker spot in my life. I always tie these two things together because my parents couldn’t see past the fact that I wasn’t cisgender, and see what he had tried to make me do.

This reaction had only led to me being quieter about the situation. I didn’t tell my biological mother until I was fifteen or so. This had led into my seventh-grade year. The year I really tried. I think my concept of life at this time was warped. I didn’t care if I lived or died. Like that one Vine said, “I wanna lay down and stay down”. Unlike my attempts before, I had calmed down. I didn't wonder about these brutal or gruesome ways people could find me dead. But rather, never waking up again. This led to two different “disappointing” mornings of actually waking up. I'm pretty sure I had a death day set in mind at this time. February 24th? I can't remember. But it was bad enough that I thought it would be appropriate to tell someone, I was just so damn tired at this point.

For context, my depression and I had been friends for a while now. What, almost five years now? I think we had worn each other out. They just wanted to get away but I knew I felt like there was the smallest reason to stay. I think that's why I told her.

My school counselor. I told her. I told her that I didn’t want to stick around. Because maybe the light at the end of the tunnel had something to say. Maybe it wasn’t a light but rather, a person. I wanted to meet them. We wanted to meet them. I was pulled out of class by fifth-hour. I sat in the back of my parents’ red minivan and was asked if there was anything I wanted to talk about. I laughed and said no. I mean, why would they suddenly want to comfort me? Maybe the crazy thought that something bad they did would end up in my final words. I mean, it would have.

I saw a psychiatrist and I told her everything, including the day of reckoning. She did little to nothing, just said I needed to see a therapist. She was cold. I had just given her the non-tl;dr of my life and how I wanted to end it. I was twelve by then. So I saw Shawnna. She had told me everything was going to be okay. She engaged, took notes, and listened to me. She cared more about my feelings and how I saw things, rather than how my parents saw or felt things. She started me on my recovery journey. But that didn’t last too long. I think I saw her for a little over a year before I yet again, “was all better”. And we stopped. But in that (short) time, he did it again. This time, he did touch me. What was a “joke” to him, had rearranged my entire way of living.

I’d been in my room and he had trapped me. The same room as before. Yet again, going out of his way to pause what we were doing to reach and look at my chest. I’d worn just a tank top and pajama pants, because it happened at night. He was fifteen and I was twelve. After this, I agreed with myself to never leave my room braless. I would wear one as soon as I got out of my morning shower and wouldn’t take it off until I was in my bed and the lights were out. I still live by these rules. I saw myself starting to slip, and then it all came crashing down.

Spring break of 8th grade year, or 2018 spring break, happened.

He had planned on shooting up Hanford High and then coming home and murdering his family. He didn’t, but still he thought about it, and reported himself for thinking and planning it. All the attention had been switched to him. And suddenly we were supportive and didn’t think that people just faked mental illness. That made me furious. They’d known about my attempts and nothing happened, but the second the adults and favorites were in trouble, it suddenly mattered.

At this point, I hadn’t seen my therapist in months and I was just starting my freshman year. And this is when I figured out what seasonal depression is.

I have this thing, where I somehow become very actively suicidal every Marching Band season. I didn't know why, I just knew that every year I had a plan for that last competition to go home and take my life. It actually got so bad that one day I had almost done it without noticing. All I remember is being in way too much pain, then downing an entire small pill-bottle of pain meds. This was freshman year, I thought nobody liked me and everyone thought that I was rude. I felt like I was bad at the one thing I had looked forward to. I just gave up at that moment. But something in me regretted it. Some small part of my brain said, “wait no, there's still more” I coughed it all up, and I tried hard. I mean, I had never tried to make myself throw up before. I continued my freshman year, I didn't look back. Once I got my two seconds of hope at the end of the season, that was all I needed. I think I just had to leave it behind.

Sophomore year was the hardest. Before the first competition, I had a plan. But I knew I wanted to be a story, not a statistic. So I told a close friend. I told her my plan. She was my therapist when I didn't have one. She was literally like my mom. I loved her to death and I could have never asked for a better friend. I think the thing that pulled me to tell her is because she was the first person to include me. She wanted me to be there during freshman year. She truly cared if I took my life unlike all the other people I had told.

October 26th 2019, was the day I was actually going to take my life. I had prepared for this moment since that first day I cried in the shower at my dad’s tiny apartment. And I lived my last day like any other. I spent it with one of my oldest friends. I made my last great memories with her and I was ready to play my last notes. I said my goodbyes to my mom. And there she was. My dearest friend.

I think that the saddest part of my story is how normal suicide had become for me. I didn't fear death, I accepted it. In the worst way possible too. It was like reciting a boring day to my parents or sitting in math class. It bored me. It wasn’t special, I wasn’t special. But she made me feel special. And I think that's why I changed and stayed that night. That night, I lied to my friend. I saw her, and accepted her hug, and told her, “I'm not going to do it, I like winning too much and these moments too much to give it all up.” Then she responded with, “good.” Her smile had been soft and she had grasped my cold hands, “I like it when you stay here.”

That was the moment I decided to stay. Because before then, I was never told to. I was never told that someone, just one (person), liked me being around. I had isolated myself eight or so years before this. But then, I chose to open up. To accept that death isn’t bad, but it's not good. Finally, all these years of numbness and being scared were at rest. My depression stopped being angry.