Thanks to three stupid miscalculations, I’m still alive.

In case you didn’t catch that: I became suicidal after The Incident, ever since I lost everything—ever since a noose tied itself around my stomach, tightening its grip every single day. No, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me. At the time, I didn’t want to talk about my feelings, and no, I definitely wasn’t okay. The truth is that I might never be okay.

After the first attempt, I woke up in a hospital bed with a ton of stitches and bandages wrapped around my head. The peach-colored wallpaper was peeling. The air smelled like moldy cheese. And the plastic cover on the mattress farted every time I moved.

I could hear Surgeon Dick’s muffled voice as he fought with Harpy Patricia on the phone in the bathroom. He had the door closed, but his hushed words still echoed through the vents.

“Patricia,” he pleaded, “don’t be so cold. Please, show some empathy.” Surgeon Dick paused as Harpy Patricia belittled him on the other side of the phone. “Do you want to lose him? Do you?”

She did—I promise you—she wanted me dead.

Friends and family of people who commit suicide consider it their own personal loss because humans quantify their existence by the number of friends they have, how big their family is, and how many material items they’ve accumulated. Humans calculate how successful or important they are based on those questions. An attempted suicide is a bruise to a family’s permanent record. And a successful suicide—well, that’s something that people will always whisper about around a family but never actually question the family about directly.

Surgeon Dick didn’t really care about me. He cared about how it would look to the rest of the world if he lost me after The Incident. I was his failure, and the world would know it.

I felt totally worthless—I couldn’t even commit suicide without causing a fight. My skin went so cold, I thought I would never know what it felt like to be warm again.

Surgeon Dick exited the bathroom with his head hanging toward his fat gut. He noticed that my eyes were open. “You’re awake?”

Yeah. Unfortunately.

Surgeon Dick fidgeted. “You couldn’t hear all that with your mother, could you?”

I’m not deaf.

Surgeon Dick’s cell phone lit up like a game show buzzer to save me from having to listen to another explanation of why my parents hated me so much.

“Sorry, I really have to take this. It’s important.”

As if I cared.

But I did care. I wasn’t a priority in my parents’ lives. And that caused me to feel the worst pain of all. My brain throbbed as if it were pressing against my skull. I forced myself not to show that I was bothered. I was tired of constantly fighting a battle that couldn’t be won—my parents weren’t ever going to love me again.

But things still got worse.

That was only the first time I tried to kill myself. I’ll spare you the gruesome details of my next two attempts, but let’s just say that they involved short-circuiting the entire electrical system in the house by dropping ten appliances into a bathtub full of water at once—sounds foolproof, but clearly it wasn’t—and digging a razor blade through the tendons in my wrists.

One thing I will say for Surgeon Dick is that he kept me company at the hospital every time. Even if he was on the phone, or asleep, he still showed up, and that’s way more than Harpy Patricia or my therapist ever did. They never came to visit me in the hospital once. Not a single time.

Not all mothers are motherly, and not all therapists actually care.

Being on suicide watch doesn’t help you feel better. It just makes you feel pathetic. A nurse comes in every hour to check on you. They strap you to the bed so you can’t hurt yourself again, and someone has to come in to help you go to the bathroom—as if trying to kill yourself suddenly turns you into an invalid.

At the end of your watch, the doctor always comes in, holding the same file with your name on it. My file was bright red, and it was filled with at least thirty pieces of paper explaining my psycho diagnosis.

I guess you’ll probably add your own report to that file when we’re done.

The doctors always ask the same yes-or-no questions. “Do you feel safe in your home? Do you often feel sad? Are you taking your medication? Are you attending all of your sessions?”

Yes, I took my happy pill, but it couldn’t turn back time. Of course I felt and still feel sad; that’s why I kept trying to kill myself. And there is a difference between feeling safe in your home and feeling loved or even welcomed. And yes, I was going to therapy, but I hadn’t said a word to my therapist since The Incident—honestly, I think she preferred it that way. I don’t think she had a clue what to do with me after everything that had happened.

The last time the doctor asked those questions, I didn’t even bother to answer. At that point in my life, it felt like my thoughts were drowning in a flood of emotions under a rain of neglect that I’d been feeling ever since the day I was born. I remember Surgeon Dick sleeping in a nearby chair as the doctor scolded me for trying to end my life.

“This is a serious situation, Hunter. You could really hurt yourself.”

That was the point.

The doctor continued to speak, while Surgeon Dick continued to sleep. “We’re recommending that your father…. ” The doctor really put emphasis on the word father so that Surgeon Dick would wake up.

It didn’t work.

The doctor sighed and looked to one of the nurses to rouse Surgeon Dick. She awkwardly moved forward and gently nudged him.

That didn’t work either.

I shouted, “Dick! Get up!”

Surgeon Dick lurched to life. “I’m here. What’s—” He stopped midsentence when he noticed us staring at him. He looked at his phone and asked Siri, “How long was I out?”

My whole life.

The doctor cleared his throat. “As I was saying, Dr. Thompson, I’m not sure we are getting through to your son with our usual approach. Therapy doesn’t seem to be working for him. Although he’s taking his medicine, that doesn’t seem to help, either…”

I really was taking my happy pill at the time of all of my suicide attempts.

“…which is why I’m going to advocate something unusual. Dr. Thompson, I’m recommending that you put your son under the care of specialists for the summer.”

Specialists?

“Here’s a brochure,” offered the doctor, handing me a glossy foldout titled: Camp Sunshine—The Happiest Place On Earth!

There were testimonials inside:

Camp Sunshine changed my life. I’ve made friendships that will last a lifetime.

Thank you, Camp Sunshine, for helping me see tomorrow.

I no longer want to die. Thanks, Camp Sunshine!

And in case those testimonials didn’t convince you, the brochure also had “fun facts” about Camp Sunshine.

Fun fact #1: Camp Sunshine is the sunniest place on earth. That’s because sunshine comes from the inside!

That was, like, two facts, but whatever.

Fun fact #2: It has been clinically shown that sunshine helps cure depression.

I imagined a bunch of depressed lab rats under tanning lamps.

Fun fact #3: Our sunshine experts know how to make your child happy.

Here’s a fun fact for you: the edges on the Camp Sunshine brochure might have been just sharp enough to kill myself!

Fast-forward to a few weeks later: I found myself standing in Camp Sunshine’s dirt parking lot—covered in sweat from the massive amounts of humidity—with a duffel bag at my feet.

As you already know, Camp Sunshine is a camp for depressed teens. I like to call it Camp Suicide. It’s in the middle of Podunk, nowhere. Seriously, if you pull out a map of the United States, and point to a place where you would never want to go, that’s where I was. The camp was in the center of a dense forest with barbed-wire fencing surrounding the perimeter. An archway over the gate to the entrance of the camp was painted like a rainbow.

Yes, a rainbow.

I waved good-bye. “See ya around, Surgeon Dick.”

He was preoccupied, scrolling through the messages on his cell phone. “What?”

I sighed. He couldn’t even take the time to act like he cared that his son was basically about to be institutionalized. Surgeon Dick cared more about a screen than his offspring.

“I said I’d see you around.”

Surgeon Dick pocketed his phone. “You sure you don’t have anything else you want to say to me?”

He always asked if I had something else I wanted to say to him. By then it should have been evident that I really didn’t have much to say to my parents or my therapist, because they didn’t have anything to say to me. I didn’t respond—he didn’t deserve a response.

Surgeon Dick smiled. I guess he was happy that I was finally going to be someone else’s problem. “I really hope this helps you,” he wished.

I shrugged. “Sure you do.”

On cue, Surgeon Dick’s phone started ringing again. He pulled it out of his pocket to glance at the screen. “It’s the hospital; I have to take this. You’re supposed to go straight to the dorm. You’ll be okay from here, right?”

I was pretty sure the staff at Camp Suicide would probably frown upon him just deserting me in the parking lot.

“You should answer it,” I said. “Someone might need you.”

“Right,” Surgeon Dick said as he opened the driver’s door to his black BMW. I heard him say, “Hello,” before the door slammed shut.

The BMW left a trail of dust as Surgeon Dick drove away. I picked up my bag and walked up the dirt path, through the gate, under the rainbow arch, and toward a bunch of log cabins.

And that’s how my stupid miscalculations landed me in therapeutic prison.