Don’t tell me

Don’t tell me you care for me.  Clearly, you don’t.  Don’t tell me you feel my pain.  Cearly, you can’t.  Don’t say you will always be there for me.  Clearly, you won’t.

Words have power only when they convey truth — truth as it is, not as you wish it to be. So don’t say anything to me if your actions betray your words. If you must say these things to help you sleep at night, then say it to yourself, but spare me your idle words of support.  It hurts more to uncover a well-intentioned lie than to endure an unwelcome truth.

And, I am hurt. And, my wounds drip the will to live. And, I watch the gathering puddle as it slowly disappears into the ground below me.  And, as I sink into the mud, I think about how deep the bog has become, the innumerous drops needed to create such an inescapable pit, the countless bleeding wounds from which they spilled.

So, don’t tell me anything; simply show me what you feel.

The Will to Recover

This is probably one of those topics that patients have considered quite deeply and one that victims may have thought about but never voiced.  I want to talk about the curious phenomenon of not really wanting to get better.  Yes, you heard (or read) me correctly: sometimes, even after a failed suicide attempt, patients find it very difficult to begin the process of recovery.

We want to be better of course, but the third phase of life is quite a bit different than the life we have been living for so long.  I know this won’t be true of everyone, but I think it is for quite a lot of us: life before now has been one of constant emotional turbulence with thoughts of suicide always near at hand, life now is consumed by thoughts of suicide–the ultimate “Get out of jail free card,” life in the future will be completely unrecognizable … maybe.

I cannot even imagine what a life free of depression, insecurity, anxiety, and suicidality would be like.  I have been sick for so long, it feels like a part of who I am–an integral piece of my personna.  In college, I had that dark, contemplative thing going.  Not exactly popular with the sorority crowd, buy something of “charm” in the tree-hugger liberal crowds with whom I ran.  It was cool in that respect.  It’s not so cool now that I have children, a mortgage and retirement looming ahead.  Shaking it though is not as easy as recognizing the need for a change.

I am also guilty of using my illness as a crutch.  How can I not, given that the crutch has become part of my body?  If I lay around in bed all Sunday, is it because I am depressed or because I didn’t want to work on those cabinets in the basement?  Difficult to say.  Probably a little bit of depression and a little bit of habit.  Perhaps laziness in the morning leading to depression in the afternoon due to being such a loser for staying in bed all morning.  (The chicken and egg conundrum is appropriate here.)

Lisa had a very good paragraph or two expounding this issue.  I couldn’t find the e-mail in which she related this idea to me, so I hope she will post them as a comment to this blog entry.

I know I haven’t done such a good job of this blog entry.  I hope to do better next time, but right now, I just can’t seem to get out of bed long enough to write for more than ten minutes at a time.

With Full Intent

In Cherished79’s excellent account of one of her suicide attempts (http://cherished79.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/suicide-the-taboo-word/), she told us her thoughts after an aborted suicide attempt: “I am berating myself. You are such a loser, can’t even get this right, why did you have to call [9-1-1], back to square one again, you had the chance, you blew it, another disappointment, a huge loser.” I thought very nearly the same thing after each of my failed or aborted suicide attempts. Not so much failure on the intervened attempts, but definitely a certain sense of loss; someone stole what was mine and now I’m trapped in hell.

“Why did I call 9-1-1?” Waking up in the hospital with charcoal stains all over my clothes, tubes sticking into me and wires of various kinds stuck to my skin, the only thing I could do was shake my head and curse myself for being such a coward. Not a coward for attempting to OD, but a coward for calling for help. TDHP will invariably say, “See, that proves the `suicide attempt’ was just a cry for help.” No, it doesn’t! It only proves that in a moment of weakness during a long night of empowerment, I failed myself. Alternatively, it was a last moment of clarity in a long night of despair. Poe-tay-toe, poe-tah-toe.

The lesson hear is that people who try to kill themselves, really do want to kill themselves. It is incredibly embarassing when they don’t succeed. So please don’t pour salt on the wound by being angry with us or, even worse, belittling us. Afterwards,we may honestly say we are relieved to still be alive, but we are just as honest when we say we wanted to die. Don’t belittle the patient in your life by saying they didn’t really try to kill themselves, that it was just a cry for help.

“F&*% you! I’ll show you it wasn’t just a cry for help just as soon as I get out of here! And next time, I’m going to do it right.”

Seductive Suicide

In Cherished79’s excellent account of one of her suicide attempts (http://cherished79.wordpress.com/2007/07/05/suicide-the-taboo-word/), she mentioned how seductive suicidal ideation is. I cannot agree more with her on this point.

I don’t think TDHP (those damn healthy people) fully appreciate the degree to which suicide is not only a real solution, but indeed a very seductive solution to those of us who have been in pain for so long, to those for whom “tomorrow” is a four-letter word. “Yeah, and then I have to go through it all again tomorrow….”

I have often thought of my suicidality as something of an addiction. I use it as a coping mechanism for hopelessness and impotence–-a bad one, of course (right?), but one that is there no matter the circumstance. “I may not have a bright future and I may not have the power to feel better or to change this or that asshole, but I do have power over whether or not I will continue to suffer through it all.”

Recovering alcoholics often say, “One drink is too many, 100 is not enough.” It is the same with my addiction to merciful death. If I entertain the thought for even one moment, it grabs me and holds my attention until I’m walking through the door, keys in hand, intending to drive … well, let’s just say “not into the sunset.” I don’t have the luxury of thinking to myself something so meaningless as, “If I have to listen to him complain one more time, I’m going to kill myself!” As harmless as this one thought is to TDHP, it is one thought too many for me.