Text by Maria Zennström

So I’m lying in bed, just like in those days. And I’m so scared I can’t even breathe. I must not betray that you’re there, not with one single hair. I think that’s what it’s like to be a child: “If I keep quiet, maybe they won’t see me.” That’s just what it was like on Ireland. I had nowhere to go and no money. I decided I was going to die there. I gave up; I lost all power of resistance. Imagine space, this black, silent void. I was suspended there, not attached to anything, completely … on my own, like. I lived through my whole childhood like that … It was a kind of echoey; there was not one single human being around who could  … And I wasn’t connected to anything, floating in space and then there was this deafening silence.

I had no strength left. The only question was how I would do it, and when … I had no regret, I had no anger, nothing, just thinking: “Alright. This is it. No more than this. I mean, shit. This is it. This is how poor it is.”

I’ve lived with suicide all my life. The thought. It is my last check. I can decide if I want to go on or not. It has always been like faithful friend. I used to cut myself to see what it would feel like, thinking: “This is possible; this I can do.“

Everything was just as it always had been; this feeling of impotence. Of not being in control. Dependent. Without money, without a place to stay. No job. No friends. Unable to handle authorities, without any abilities whatsoever; entirely at the mercy of a man who … drank, of course. And who got psychotic when he was drunk. Which made him … I don’t know if he was hallucinating, but he talked in different voices, trashed the apartment.

 
I always loved words … language. That’s what was so difficult in Ireland, when I couldn’t speak English, couldn’t express … Because it’s still my … my weapon, somehow.

My therapist, who called me, could tell me how I looked; she had never seen anybody who looked like I did. She said that I had … gold metal, gold … all over my skin.

– Maria Zennström