Category Archives: suicide

a hard thing

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18

The day before yesterday I learned that Sara, a WordPress blogger, took her own life. I’ve been bereft since then, mainly because I feel I have no right to feel this way. For a period of time, Sara and I corresponded after she posted about her experience at Sheppard Pratt. In that particular posting she ranted in that brilliant and funny way of hers about Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). I resonated with her rant because I also find it exhausting that too many of these places that treat PTSD and DID put all their eggs in the DBT basket. DBT is not a bad concept, it certainly has its’ good points … but please it is not the be all and end all cure for PTSD. I had completed a stay at Mclean Hosptial’s residential program for traumatic and dissociative disorders, and it was interesting for both of us to hear about each other’s experiences in what many consider the top two psychiatric programs for PTSD in the country. From our correspondence you could see that we both found our programs acceptable, but way too ballyhooed for their own britches.

Sara was much more articulate than I was in ranting about it. I wish I could recall the specifics of what she wrote.

I am most disappointed in myself because I fell out of contact with her. It’s one of those things that happens when life gets in the way.

I will further admit that I became aware that Sara lived less than a 3 hour drive from me. In the back of my mind I planned to tell Sara that I lived close enough to drive to her, and I would ask if she would like to meet. But, it never came to pass. My own life struggles take center stage far too often, and that plan never got off the back burner. Now it will never be.

I sit here stuck now in front of my laptop computer, immobilized from disappointment and undeserved grief.

Make the right choice

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12

Every year since 2008, this, right here, is the week that I dearly wish would pass by without notice. How lovely it would be to glance at the calendar in early September, and think, “Oh, hey, that typically dreaded horrible anniversary week in late August went right on by without notice. Look at that!”

Alas, but no, that is not the case. All the progress I’ve made to date feels like it’s slipping through my fingers, like thin beach sand that easily flows through our fingers as we let it fall. My body feels as dissociative and floaty as ever, as if I’ve not seen Doc for the last two years. The will to continue is dreadfully hard to yank out of me, and yank is exactly what I have to do in order to put one foot in front of the other, in order to not give in to the incessant thoughts of an end. An end that would be just that, an end with pain for others, and that is, sadly, what keeps me going this very moment -others. I am hardly continuing on for myself. No, right now there is too much regret over the life choices that led to that terrible week in late August of 2008. There is too much awareness of the fact that I threw my life into a deep and wide ditch that week from which I may never fully extract myself. Right now, I continue for others, like my two nephews whom I love, and though I know they think I’m goofy, they do look up to me. And what a terrible life lesson I would be dropping in their lap if I were to leave this earth by my own volition.

I know that if I were to make this choice that I would be presenting it to them as a viable choice, and I don’t want to be that person for them.

In order to try to shake the depressed feeling, I try to focus on the good fortune I have in my life.

The fact is this, there is not a whole hell of a lot that separates me from someone that is called a “consumer” in our statewide mental health system. Similar to someone that has a “serious and persistent mental illness,” or rather (SPMI) as it’s called, in my worst moments of DID and PTSD, things like laundry, grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning become fantasies and dreams. But, because I have been blessed with resources I am able to send my laundry out to the wash-and-fold service, hire a cleaning service, and eat outside the home. Even with these services in play, I can still struggle with getting out of bed, getting into the shower, and getting dressed because I am floaty and dissociative. But at least in those instances I’ve narrowed down the things I must accomplish, which is the best way for me to have some semblance of success when I am in that state.

Even so, I am acutely aware of the fact that I have a job that pays me enough so that I can pay for the services I’ve mentioned above. This salary, and the fact that I have a friend that lets me stay with him when I am too afraid to be by myself, these are the only things that keep me from becoming part of the system of care.

And just when one would think I would sit here and feel blessed about my resources, I sit here and get scared instead. I get scared because I know it’s the job that provides the resources, which means I need to continue to do the job, and do the job well. Lately, when every morning is a fight with myself, I ask, “How much longer can I fight? How much longer can I juggle this?”

Then I loop back to my brain telling me that it’s a fruitless fight, and that’s when I remember why I threw myself at the mercy of my friend today, and asked if I could stay with him for a while. He said “sure” and asked me what was up, and between tears I said, “I get too scared by myself right now, and bad choices are floating in my brain.” He then took my hand, and said, “But you’re making a good choice now.”

The dark

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12

You’re fumbling around in the dark, and you can’t find your way out of this place. This place that feels like it’s pulling you back, and keeping you from the rest of the world. No matter how hard you try you can’t shake the dark. You can’t wish it away, and you can’t work it away. It is there, like the air around you. There is no escape.

Your stomach asks for a real meal, but you are seemingly glued to the couch. You even made the effort and bought provisions for sweet potato soup: sweet potatoes, coconut milk, ginger, lime, and coriander. You grabbed fresh bread at the bakery, and, in a moment of planning for any scenario, you grabbed a container of ready-to-heat poblano corn chowder soup just in case you can’t make the sweet potato soup.

But, no, you walk in, and have no energy. You succumb to the couch, against your desire, but there you are. You want that soup and that bread. Alas, you bought some sweet and salty popcorn, and you manage to pull that out in order to eat something. Pathetically, it wasn’t hard since the shopping bag is right by the couch, the place it landed when you fell into the couch upon arrival home.

The phone rings and it’s Doc. He asks if you can make it to Monday. You just cry. He gives up his Sunday morning to see you tomorrow at 10 am in his office. He suggests a session of neurofeedback, and you agree. You don’t tell him that you were looking up some of the better psychiatric hospitals on the east coast, but, somehow, you know he knows that it’s not good.