Where is that light at the end of the tunnel that everyone talks
about?
I don’t believe it exists.
Every day I wake up wondering why I’m even here.
I know people love me. I know people care.
But the fact is
that I don’t care.
I don’t see a hope in the years or even months to come- what
is there? I mean people ask what they
can do to help. But what does helping do, really? It just prolongs the torture
of living another day, just filling it with distractions- but they don’t turn
off the thoughts in my head. I can’t sleep unless I stare at a screen until I
can’t keep my eyes open anymore.
So I ask- why is it at all worth it?
….
I wrote that on November 28th, in an attempt to write a blog post
all about when suicide makes sense to someone with a mental illness. However, I
found that writing these words were too scary for me to share with the world. I
didn’t want to be a burden. I didn’t want to try because I felt overwhelmed,
isolated, and I couldn’t see any light or any hope of a future where there wasn’t
anything but unbearable pain.
I told Richard this. I cried when I told him I had started
looking up ways to end my life. I told him about how tempting it was to jump
off the nearest bridge or step in front of a speeding bus. Anything that would
be quick and fast, and, hopefully, painless because I was already drowning in
indescribable mental pain.
I was sleeping during the day. I would go to bed at 4 am and
woke up around 4 pm only to sit and play the same four phone games over and
over again, distracting myself from feeling anything. If I did something like
made dinner, or bake, it was a rare and mostly out of obligation because I said
I would. I hardly interacted with my son and for a while I didn’t want him to
feel the pain I did and felt that taking him out of this miserable existence that’s
called life would be far kinder than letting him live with a broken mother.
This, my friends, is all emotional logic. When someone is in
this state, they really are a danger to themselves, and in my case, a danger to
others. I was too tired of trying and yet I was spending all of what little
energy I had to find a way end my life. No, suicide isn’t rationally logical. It
appears selfish, cruel, throwing all the love and support that our friends and
family give us back in their face.
Because we are so stuck in our own heads and
hurt so much that all we can see is the shadows of pain.
I did talk to my psychiatrist and I did agree that the best
thing for me was to go to the emergency room.
So the next morning I went. I didn’t actually make it to the
behavioral health unit until late afternoon, but I was there. The first group
therapy meeting was all about optimism. And oh my gosh was that hard.
Everything he was saying about staying optimistic, just letting things slide
off you, find the happy. And it all just sounded so stupid. I didn’t want to
listen, and yet a part of me really wanted to believe that what he was saying
was true. I knew I was sitting on the emotional fence of do I give into the
depression, or do I fight it. I admit it, I cried. Full on sobs, trying not to
look at anyone in the eyes as I balled my eyes out. Of course I made the
therapist in charge of the group think that he offended me in some way. He didn’t
of course, it was just the conversation in my head of admitting whether or not
I wanted to be stuck in a place where my hair matched the teal hospital scrubs
they gave me.
I was anxious and scared and it was hard to fall asleep. I
did sleep, for a little bit, maybe an hour or so, before I was wide awake all
over again.
As I sat there, I realized I had no phone to distract me
from the pain and the feelings I usually shove away and hide until they
overwhelm me. I didn’t have a computer or a television or ipad to offer me an
alternate universe where I could just hide. So I stared wide awake at my dim
lights on my hospital ceiling and thought about why I was even there.
And then I felt it. Just a small tiny flicker of hope. Hope
that I could get better. Hope that I wasn’t completely forgotten by my Heavenly
Father, or what others may call the force of the universe. And I felt
overwhelmed, but this time it was overwhelming gratitude. Gratitude that there
was a safe place for me to go. Gratitude that I live in a time where mental
illness is treated with understanding and respect by doctors, and not like an
act of demonic possession. I was grateful for my husband and his understanding,
support, and strength as he held my hand and brought me books to read while I
worked on the icky that has been plaguing me for so long.
I now dub it my 3 AM epiphany. It was that moment in time
where it felt like the weight of the world finally slipped off my shoulders and
I could breathe light again. I could see that even though I was a mom who
struggled with blaming my son for my mental condition (logically untrue, but
still felt totally emotionally true), even though I tried to spend as little
time as possible with him, he still smiled. He still made eye contact and
crawled and pulls himself up and explores. He is a healthy and happy child
despite my lack of being a “good” mother.
The phrase, “make your own definition of success” came to my
mind and I thought about how the definition of perfect is always changing. But
as a linguist and history major in training I remembered that in Hebrew the
word perfect means complete. A complete person doesn’t have to look or talk,
walk, dress, think, or act like another person. A complete person does the best
they can, the best way they know how, and when they make mistakes they learn
from them. That night I took the teeny tiny pencils they allowed us to have and
wrote in big capital letters- FAIL and made this small sign that was proudly
displayed in my room for the rest of my stay.
Fresh
Attempt
In
Learning
It was then I could finally go back to sleep. For the rest
of the days I was in there we talked about the hard things, I made friends with
everyone in the unit- nurses, techs, therapists, psychiatrists, and most of all
my fellow patients. I just wanted to hug them all and tell them that they were
loved and important- but it was hard to tell that and accept that myself.
To be honest, I filled most of my time with coloring, reading,
therapy, and making paper cranes. I gave them to everyone reminding them that
the crane was a symbol of good luck and made the analogy that sometimes we feel
like a beat up piece of paper. We get folded and bent into awkward shapes, and
sometimes pressed really hard, but then we find out that all those folds and
presses were what made us into a beautiful crane.
I pray for those lovely people every day. I wish that I
could heal the scars on their arms, still their anxious bodies so they can
sleep, help them see the strength and power that they have to pull themselves
out of their horrible living conditions. But I don’t have the mental health
wand, sadly. So instead I told jokes, complimented them, and asked them to tell
me stories- especially when I knew it brought out their brightest smiles.
Like one of the therapists said, “It’s kind of ironic for a
person like me to be in there.” But it’s
not. Sometimes the people who are really good at making others feel good, don’t
feel like they have a person like themselves that will help carry their
burdens, help make them laugh, help them when they don’t believe that there is
even a light in this stupid dark tunnel. So I got to read “The Gift of
Imperfection” by Brene Brown.
So I happily did all my paperwork, ate my meals, socialized,
went to all the group therapy sessions, and took my meds and four days later I
came home.
But that’s not where the story ends.
See, day one of being back, I was good. I got a lot done. I
made lunch and dinner. I took care of Corbin. I went and talked about my
experience at the BHU and told him all about my 3 AM epiphany. I told him all
of the things I was going to do to help keep me out of the rut I got stuck in.
But it’s now been a week since I’ve got home. Things have
not gone according to plan. I still try
every day, I find a whole lot more joy
in things than I did two weeks ago, but oh man it is hard admitting that I’m
still human.
I wanted to be fixed. I wanted to go back to my pre marriage
life where I was in perfect condition for finishing school and going on to
doing important things like teaching students, as well as being a good mom and
wife. Yet as the week went on I found that though I have hope, I don’t know
what I have hope in.
I didn’t answer these questions: “How will I feel like a
successful person (not just a mom)?” “What am I supposed to do when I’m home
alone with my son while Richard finds a job and finishes school?” “What is it
exactly that I look forward to when I wake up every morning?”
In the BHU it’s easy to answer those questions because I saw
it as a personal vacation to really reflect and recharge. So how will I feel
like a success? My psychiatrist will tell me when it’s time to go home. What am
I going to do when I get home? Love my son and husband. What do I look forward
to every morning? Seeing my husband during visiting hours.
See? Easy.
But now that I am home and dealing with the reality that I
felt way too overconfident in my capabilities of calling someone every day,
doing chores around the house, taking care of my son, or address the icky yucky
feelings and anxiety that weren’t really resolved.
So I sit. And I write. And I try to think through how I’m
feeling and working on allowing myself to feel the icky without it needing to
stick to me forever because other icky things might come by and be even ickier.
I would apologize that I didn’t have a happier note to end
on. I wish that I could say that because of my 3 AM epiphany I finally was able
to feel healed and move on. But that’s not how things work, at least not for
me. It’s still taking life one day at a time, and some
moments one hour at a time.
