When Suicide Makes Sense

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.