Suicidal thoughts are not about wanting to die. It is all about wishing the crazy the stop; the obsessive looping inner dialogue. The “Oh No!” it’s starting again and I don’t have the strength this time to go through it. To get up. To go out. To believe things will get better even though some part of you knows that it is true. It becomes the smallest part of you while you disappear. It is not sadness but darkness – an absence of light.
I don’t want to put it on others. See that uncomfortable look when they suspect I am not myself. The whispering, innuendo and gentle suggestions to have someone deal with me. Counsel. Doctor. Treatment. No interest. No joy. No appetite. Grief. Failure. Isolation. Protect the innocent! Don’t inflict your affliction. Insomnia combined with an inability to get out of bed. Staring at the wall. Staring out the window. For hours. Too much time. Endless time.
For those that commit to the act, please know it was a momentary decision to quiet the demon screaming in one’s head. Depression is the crushing weight of not knowing when or if you will ever feel like yourself again. The endless nights and barely there daze. I should have said, should have done focus on irrelevant minutia. To have an unimportant thought rolling around inside your head like a marble in a tin can, as you watch your life implode in slow motion.
Why did I get blue instead of green? Why? Or what? Paralyzed with indecision over a menu selection or casual opinion. Tears in a hello. Getting in the car to drive and just to sob and wail in despair. To be ever searching for an escape rout in each conversation or situation. “Where did she go?” To lay in bed waiting for the blessed release of sleep only to be most awake in the middle of the night praying to the moon for guidance, a sign, relief. To feel less and less attached to the outside world.
I was well for a long time. Reiki, naturopathy, shamanism, yoga, meditation and mindfulness. Years without a terrifying panic attack. Days of melancholy that slipped in here and there. And I let it. No problem. Take a course. Take two. Go back to school. New jobs. Meetings. Programs. Run, run, run. I am wonder woman. I am Xena. I am exhausted. Quit everything. I am nothing.
The dark horse comes back. I cry every day for two years. “Help me” I beseech my partner. But he is busy. I beg to move while he becomes obsessed with renovating the house. Then busy with his ailing mother who moves in with her Alzheimer’s, old world ways and iron grip on her two sons. I listen to my husband and mother-in-law talk in Portuguese nonstop. I drift in and out of rooms they inhabit and must make room for caregivers. My own space to hide becomes smaller and smaller. I become more and more quiet. He is no longer listening.
The nurse practitioner I have seen over the years is away on holiday. I tell the stranger, in her place, about my obsessive thoughts. Her concern is real but I see instant relief cross her face when I assure her I would never do such a thing. NEXT! My doctor is preoccupied with being in a brand new building. New computers. New everything. My request for counsel is eventually lost somewhere in the shiny and spacious new building. I try the local health centre. After many visits my confidant suggests I try harder and stay put. Furious, I yell at her “You are an idiot if you think you can sort me into one of your ABC checkboxes”. I tell her and the marriage counselor I am seeing with my husband, to fuck off. They have not heard me. One underpaid and overworked …the other overpaid and blasé with her new age ideas and story book analogies.
My friends are busy like they have always been. Like I was too but I have fallen out of step. Retreat further into my inner world. No more books. No writing. No food. I lose weight. Lots. “You look great!” people say. But I wish I was dead, is my silent reply.
My best friend of 40 years conspires with my husband. They suggest sending me somewhere “really nice” to get better. My sister voices concern for my husband. Her silence for me pushes me out the door. I run away. I run and run for 3 months. When I arrive at my mother’s home, far away from everyone and everything familiar, I do not get out of bed for 2 days. She pleads and coaxes. My sister and niece are visiting and each try. I lay in bed facing the beautifully blank wall. At last I am tempted with lunch at L Lodge. Beautiful memories flood within. My mother (on behalf of everyone) promises not to push me out of my silence. In return I promise to bathe.
My fall has taken two years. The climb upwards begins. Another year and a thousand more tears as I start all over again. Mid 50s and living in my mom’s (who I do not really know) basement. Broken of heart and spirit, emotionally unstable. But there is a glimmer of hope in a faraway northern town. I am like a little baby some days. So dependent on my mother who holds me in her arms and strokes my hair, murmuring as I cry with the racking grief of letting my old life go. Slowly friendships form in this town of starting over; of second and third chances. Of everything moving slower. Of natural rhythm and art and music and emotion and eye contact. The air is clean and life is more simple. Closer to the bone.. The landscape is sacred and beautiful. Mystical. Things I have endlessly craved. When poetry returns to me I know eventually everything will be okay. Here I stand on the other side and find the three year struggle is beginning to wane.
Suddenly everyone is speaking about it because a famous comedian has taken his life. I wonder about all the bad habits of my youth. What if they did not let go of me when I let go of them? What if I had a terrible death sentence handed to me on top of everything else?
Depression & Suicide: the brutality and tender mercy of a broken open heart.
