I had two alternate plans. I knew the route I would drive my car up the Henry Hudson parkway as if commuting to work, the concrete wall I wanted to drive my car into which was the pillar of a bridge selected to ensure I avoided harm to others, and the approximate speed, 50 mph, I thought I should be driving for maximum impact. I can still visualize the scene in full color as I imagined it at least 2 thousand times four years ago. For the other plan, I purchased industrial blades and hid them in my room with a bottle of Percocet and a bottle of Vicodin, to ensure I would be sufficiently numbed out for the deeper cuts I would make on my arms and veins than when I self-harm. I fantasized about watching the blood drain out of me, to get the time to witness my own suicide, the time you can’t get if you shoot a gun to your head. Neither plan was designed for total effectiveness. I was convinced I needed to come face to face with death to find my will to live, because well, that was long gone. The pain spread like poison pumping through my blood, I was already dead inside. I wanted to get as close as possible to death so it would shake me awake. But it was a Russian roulette, and I could never get as close as I wanted to without approaching the risk I would die. I was at complete peace with this. When I looked at my life, I had this bizarre moment of appreciation. I had experienced great moments. But I was not sentimental, I didn’t need to hold on to it, they did not provide hope that new great experiences could be ahead. And I didn’t need to say goodbye.
I spent a whole month, where every waking moment, every moment I wasn’t occupied with doing the normal productive functional things that I kept doing, like meeting clients at work, watching TV and attending weddings, — I thought about my suicide plans. And I planned and planned and planned. I planned transition memos for my legal cases I was handling – knowing that I would either end up hospitalized or dead.
Having a plan is usually a signifier to mental health providers that your suicidal ideations, aka thoughts, have gone from “passive,” since obsessing over dying is common for many depressed individuals, to “active” and I was a threat to myself. I know the questions they ask to find out when you cross that line, but sometimes I (still) do not know what the true risk of my follow-through is. This time, in May 2015, I saw a change in my friends and mental health care providers. They seemed genuinely concerned and nervous. My otherwise stoic therapist cried in attempt to tell me how important it was to her for me to stay alive. I felt nothing in response. I was dead inside. My friends went to great efforts to make sure I was not alone. But one night, I convinced one of my friends it was late and she should go home. I can be convincing, I know what to say. This night would be my trial run. I had set up my true date for the next day. I was anxious, almost excited.
I took the blades to my wrist and looked up where to cut through a google search, and I made the cuts vertically down my arm. I went to sit in the bathtub filled with warm water. But the blood did not gush out. I hadn’t gone deep enough. I hadn’t hit a vein. I was yet again a failure.
I took 5 ativan and went to sleep, full of shame. The cuts on my arms didn’t hurt in the slightest. But my body was limp and my heart and internal organs were heavy. I would try again tomorrow. But tomorrow my friend/roommate finally intervened and I confronted my options and I accepted that it was time to go to hospital. But would others?
Do others believe me when I’m suicidal? Do I believe myself? Has my illness almost killed me? Or is this all hyperbole? People say suicide attempts are usually a “cry for help” but I was already in treatment and receiving help. So, what was I crying for? It is hard to call being jailed in a psychiatric ward actual help – the providers can be clueless residents, there is practically no programming and if you have outpatient providers, they are ready to discharge you as quickly as possible and open the bed. And here’s the thing, I didn’t even get to the real attempt.
The fellow patients at the hospital validated my pain, no matter the trauma they had faced in their own lives, they were always aghast and apologetic for all the hard circumstances in my life. One of the resident doctors made me feel like shit, essentially said “she had seen worse.” I talked to the attending doctor (supervisor), and he said to me, listen, no one comes to a psychiatric hospital unless they absolutely have to. Don’t question yourself.
I cycle through a firm belief that my suicide is an inevitability. That even if this moment passes and I push, life is bound to deal me a hand of cards that I won’t withstand, that will break me, and I will do what’s best for me in that moment and kill myself. I don’t have any faith that things get easier, or that I’ll “learn” to manage my mental illness — the old trope of it’s learning experience, every fall you get stronger and more capable, I think it’s utter bullshit. Each fall has felt harder, sharper, the recovery longer.
In my head it makes sense that if I think that my suicide as an inevitability, that all the people in my life will too and coming to terms with my death will not be difficult for them as it is when the suicide is a surprise. But I once wrote, “Darkness follows a suicide. It strikes people with a trauma that just delivers your freedom from depression and shackles them with it.”
I know on the media and TV, non-depressed people have a “fear of death” and that as people age it is difficult for them to “confront.” I can’t really imagine that. I still feel like I welcome death, I invite death and I long for a death, a terminal illness, a plane crash, being murdered, anything that would come release me and obviate the need for “committing” suicide.
My history of self-harm makes me confident that I could escalate it and cause greater harm. But could I get to death? I also doubt it. I have researched and investigated other routes and effectiveness, the classic jumping from a bridge, the noose to the neck, the gunshot to the head. But would I be able to do it? I have that same impostor syndrome, that feeling like a fraud that new professionals have. A TED talk I listened to told me statistics of attempted suicides where people survive severely physically disabled as a way to frighten someone like me from trying. And it is legitimately scary. The thought of surviving is scarier than succeeding.
If I am suicidal, will you take me more seriously? Will I take myself more seriously? Do we both need greater proof of my suicidality? Is 4 hospitalizations not enough?
If I am not suicidal, is my pain easier to ignore? Easier to dismiss? Easier to relate to?
Inside My Madness 