Last summer I very seriously planned to kill myself. I spent nearly all of 2013 and the early months of 2014 struggling with depression, but last summer was the worst of it. It feels like I’ve been holding my breath, and when I hit “publish” I will finally start breathing normally again.
Over the last 14 or so months I have trashed countless dozens of drafts on this. For most of that time, I trashed those drafts because I wasn’t ready to talk about it while I was living it. I didn’t want anyone to stop what they were doing to pay attention to it.
I can now comfortably say that I am not still living it, but the fact that I still haven’t found a way to give it voice makes it impossible for me to give proper voice to anything else I want to say. This has its feet firmly planted in front of anything else, mercilessly knocking over any other thoughts and ideas.
I can’t seem to write this thing without spinning it into some out-of-control 5,000 word beast of a post. It hit me last night that I’ve been missing the point. I have been trying to tell a story, when that’s not what this is. I keep concentrating on a narrative, a sequence of events that has key moments that I can single out as turning points, but they all obscure the larger point that I spent a little over a year struggling to connect my thoughts and feelings with reality.
So this isn’t about a sequence of events. There is no plot. Only a string of crippling emotions I could not entirely understand.
I spent a staggering portion of last summer on the floor in the fetal position trying to will myself out of existence. It wasn’t so much that I wanted to die as that I wanted to not exist. This distinction somehow mattered for a little while. And then it didn’t, resigned as I was to the impossibility of my wish.
I resolved to kill myself, choosing a date based primarily on when I felt it might go least noticed and be least disruptive to the people in my life, as if such a date could exist.
On top of everything, it was frustrating to be acutely aware that my thinking was broken. In better moments I spent a lot of time telling myself, “Just go do a thing! That’s all you have to do. Get up. Do it. One foot in front of the other,” but nothing I could say to myself made it any more possible for me. I felt helpless and it only made things worse.
When I tried to write out a sequence of events, I kept coming back to shame. I think shame was the cart I rolled into this pit on. I think it was also the thing that kept me down there, because I didn’t know how to ask for help even when I knew I needed it. Knowing that I couldn’t put any of it into words that made sense made it impossible for me to speak up. I couldn’t stand the thought of hearing those same frustrated voices echoed by people that I loved.
For a time, the moments where I was able to pull myself together and feign functionality were largely propelled by the vaguely comforting knowledge of having given myself an expiration date. When it became clear, around the end of the summer, that I would not do it — partially because of my sister but also because I simply could not — some things got worse before they got better. When I was walking around waiting to die, I felt a little lighter for it — a little anesthetized to life. When I knew that I was going to have to find a way to live, things hurt in a fresh new way. For a short time, there was a new sense of hopelessness.
But slowly, things got better. There are a lot of people to whom I owe a great deal for that. Friends, who were patient with me when I was truly the worst as friends go. Family, who had been down a similar road with me before and held my hand even though I refused to admit to needing it. Even my thesis adviser, whose job turned into babysitting via email and Skype, micromanaging me far more than his job called for. I needed a whole lot of help that I didn’t know how to seek out. Even without me finding the words to ask, people in my life offered it. I will be forever grateful for that.
My epic story versions of this post have mostly served as personal attempts to make it make more sense. To say, “This is where it started,” and, far more importantly, “This is how it ended.” I want to be able to put it into words so that I can know, “This is the solution,” because some part of me is in perpetual fear of going back to that place. I want to be able to tuck a note in my pocket with the answer. (Bread crumbs, I said last year, when I thought I might have one possible answer to the problem I refused to name.)
There was no singular catalyst for falling and neither was there any single thing that got me out. The closest thing I can come up with, though, is all that freely offered help. It’s not much in the way of a magic incantation to leave myself with, but if I can identify one primary answer, it was the collection of truly lovely people I have been fortunate enough to know.
And so maybe the magic word is still just, “Please.” “Please, help me. I am not OK and I need you to help me.”
That, like the story-versions, feels a little too tidy, though. It was never that simple. Part of my problem was that I was frustrated with my own inability to help myself. Another part of my problem was my fear of burdening others with problems they could not fix. I was afraid that my inability to just be better would, if expressed to someone else, mean I was letting them down.
After months of struggling I did attempt to get professional help and that was an absolute fucking disaster. I spent an hour talking to a man who, in the end, told me to find Jesus and throw myself into my most co-dependent tendencies. It was an early morning appointment, too. Not exactly the best way to start my day.
In retrospect, I wish I would have tried therapy sooner and I wish I would have tried again after that first effort was such a failure, but I didn’t. Mostly, I wish that I would have found people to talk to during the worst of it. When I did finally start clawing my way out last fall, it was partially by dropping the occasional verbal bomb on people I could trust to not pick it up or touch it until I was ready. “How have you been I love that dress your new job sounds great I’ve been contemplating suicide for months what do you think of House of Cards?” Each time I said the words, I felt a little stronger and freer for it.
And that I suppose is the reason I need to do this, so that if I do find myself down there again, maybe it’ll be easier to talk about it. And, furthermore, if you are in that place: (a) Know that you are not alone and that no matter how happy and functional everyone around you seems, some of them are faking it and they probably think they are every bit as bad at faking it as you feel. -and- (b) I am always here to listen. I don’t think I’m a particularly good dispenser of advice, but I can be counted on to listen
Speaking purely for myself — because that’s what this is about — it is both terrifying and an enormous relief to feel like I have now said it to everyone. The way with the blog, of course, is that I’m saying it to everyone and no one, but the second I hit publish on something, regardless of who reads, it’s no longer a secret. Secrets, I have found, are suffocating, and I’m done. (With this one, at least.)
I have said it and hopefully set myself free in the process. I can stop holding my breath, finally.