Suicide

What a stupid week.

I somehow managed to keep myself from going completely crazy Monday night after my first job interview in months. No, I kept the crazy at bay until Tuesday, when I found out the job that a monkey could do went to someone else with more experience, and I went from feeling nervous excitement at the prospect of starting something new and getting some security back into my life, to feeling like the biggest failure in the history of the world because I couldn't get a full time job taking pictures... of hats. Not even artistic pictures of hats hand-stitched by grandmas who are selling their crafts as a way of raising money for children affected by type one diabetes. I'm talking about pictures to catalog baseball caps of different sports teams for different distributors. And when it came down to me and one other person, it went to the one other person. So I crashed. Hard.

I have never been flippant about suicide, because it is difficult to imagine a more soul-sucking position to be in than wanting to take action to end your own life, and the toll it takes on the living is unbearable. I've spent a staggering amount of time wanting to have never been born, or thinking the atoms that currently make up me would be better used almost anywhere else. But I've also been so low that I've planned how I was going to do it. I've gone through the actions of withdrawing from life, saying my goodbyes, getting some of my affairs in order, and figured out exactly what I was going to use to kill myself. And here's the twisted part: I've thought about it for so long that I realized I don't want certain kinds of death because they might hurt someone else or they might be too painful or take too long or require too much bravery to go through with it, so that leaves me with pills... and I'm a health nut, so I don't have any pills in my house! I actually berate myself for not being able to go through with the suicide I would want, or thinking that if I hurt someone else in the process, I'd lose some cosmic points!

There have been four times in my life that I have been a breath away from making an attempt. I've held the contents of an entire bottle of aspirin in my hand. I've nearly driven my car off a cliff and into a river 50 feet below. I've been checked into an outpatient facility for a 72-hour psych hold. And this week, after hearing that I didn't get the job, I felt like the entire world and any force that is responsible for making it go on had turned its back on me, and I came close to taking my last remaining dollars and buying a bottle of pills.

And right when I wanted nothing more than to stop breathing and be done with it, a little piece of my brain took control of my fingers, grabbed my phone, and called my therapist to check if I could move my appointment from Wednesday to that evening. He had two spots open due to some cancellations, and I had to keep it together for five hours before going to see him, so I put on a guilty pleasure movie (hello, "Big Bird in China") and let myself take a nap until then. I wish I could say it was my survival instinct that will fight no matter what, a part of my identity that is as hardened and badass as Chuck Norris. I wish I could say it was the voice of the Divine, giving me a drop of hope to get me through the worst of it, and giving me belief that things will get better soon. But what it actually was... was me depressing myself out of it. I somehow used my depression to tell myself to keep going. I gave up on being miserable, and figured I might as well talk about it to someone who could help.

After my session, I drove over to the lake and sat on the rocks on one side of the shore. For ten minutes or so, I just sat there and watched the small waves ease in and out, not thinking about anything in the slightest. I managed to close all of the programs usually running in my head, and focus on watching and listening to the water. Then, when I felt sore from sitting, I got up and walked around the shore, looking for a small stone or two to take with me. When I was a kid, I lived close to either a Great Lake or the Atlantic Ocean, and used to collect stones from the beaches. It's soothing to shut down all systems and do one simple task for a little while. I found two about the same size and color, and made the walk back to my car and drove home. I ate some scrambled eggs and had some tea and took a shower and read for a bit and went to sleep, and woke up the next morning after sleeping pretty well. I gave myself a day of staying in pajamas and playing with dogs and watching some cooking shows. I didn't bully myself into feeling better, or force myself to be grateful for anything, or remind myself of how badly things felt the day before and conclude that I should stay as  miserable as possible because getting better wouldn't be worth the trouble. I just existed.

I've done this exercise many times, keeping myself in a place where I simply exist. It has saved my life more times than I can probably recall. I don't know how it has worked for me and can't explain why I feel better when I do this, but I highly recommend it. There are no spiritual overtones to it, even though it resembles mindfulness, which is certainly is a huge part of many Eastern philosophies. The closest thing I can compare it to is walking with no destination. Nothing competitive about it, like walking on a treadmill to hopefully get in some exercise. No music or self-talk to distract from the action. No active searching for anything, either in the mind or in the world. Just putting one foot down at a time at the tempo that feels best.

There is an eclectic fraternity of those that deal firsthand with suicide. It's comprised of people you wouldn't automatically assume would be in the group, and it is not glamorous in the slightest. This is not a club you want to be part of. And there are too many in it, and too many new additions. If you have read this, please remember that you can look at a human being and never know all that happens in their heads, and maybe consider being a bit more gentle with them. You do not know what it's taken for them to still be here.

I have made it through this week, and I already know next week is going to have some pretty extreme highs and lows. What will get me through is reminding myself that all I have to do is exist, and nothing more, and I will be okay.