Night and Day (Part One)

The conversation with my 89 year old Aunt Delores always goes the same;

AUNT:  "Hi Dave, how are you feeling?"

ME:  'I'm ok... my arthritis is tough'
AUNT:  "Yea, mine is acting up too"
ME:  'My back is aching'
AUNT:  "Yea, mine aches too"
ME:  'My wiener hurts'
AUNT:  "Yea, my wiener hurts too"

Disclaimer:  My Aunt doesn't have a wiener, but won't be outdone when it comes to health issues.  It never fails that no matter what's going on with me, she has it worse or takes much more medication than I.  Old people seem to embody their whole medical situation as their identity and it becomes a contest of who has it worse.  It's the first thing they bring up and everything revolves around it.  Thing is, it's hard not to let this become your identity, and I learned became this over the last couple of years through my ordeal.

International Survivors of Suicide Loss Day is November 18th.  I suppose the purpose is to lend support to those left behind by a loved one who took their own life, but it can also be for the person who was conflicted and either attempted to commit suicide and failed or decided not to go through with it.  "Loss" is in the eye of the beholder, because no one involved is not without losing something.  As harsh as it sounds, the only winner in the scenario is the person who is successful at taking their life because it ends all the turmoil and pain they are enduring.  That's hard for most people to understand or handle.  In fact, mental health, being such a prevalent thing in the world isn't such a prevalent thing in our society.  It's a taboo subject that most people deal with but don't want to talk about nor want to hear.

It was April of 2015 when I started my downward spiral towards suicide.  A combination, I think, of not having love for so long and career dissatisfaction, my situational depression gave way to the chemical depression that I have dealt with my whole life.  I went through a cycle of general unhappiness to losing all hope for a future in a matter of months.  I didn't care about anything, became sullen and withdrawn and introverted and basically barricaded myself in my house.  I made excuses to my friends and tried avoiding everyone which put severe strains on those friendships.  The question 'how are you?' became the most painful thing, not because it was a segue to talking about my pain, but because of the energy that I'd expend trying to hide it, or lie about it and try to smile through it to make everyone else happy.  The pain was overwhelming and managing it becomes your whole existence and job.  Everything falls by the wayside and your whole life collapses around you.  You see it all happen, but don't care.  It's a hole that is extremely difficult to dig yourself out of and it's a motion that can't be stopped, no matter how many hugs you get or how much your friends and family are supportive and helpful.  In fact, that only makes it worse for you, making it more aware that you are a failure, that you can't fix the problem and probably no one can.

A simplistic but hard concept to grasp, all hope was removed from my brain.  Without serotonin, your body's natural mood elevator, it affects the part of your brain that controls your sense of hope.  Without hope, there's no purpose or reason to endure the day-to-day pain and the only logical progression is to end your life and it all makes sense to you.  Another hard concept to grasp is that it's as if you're not in control of your own mind... and the 'voices' in your head are driving you.  It's a constant struggle with yourself.  Once you relent, a suicidal person experiences a period of relief right before they carry it out which, to outsiders, seems like they 'snapped out of it'.  Unfortunately, it's just a release of all the struggle and pain and, without it, it all becomes clear what needs to be done.  You don't think about what you are doing to those around you and, in fact, you think you are doing them a favor.  Honestly, you really don't care because you just want the pain to stop at all or any cost.

And so, after three months of analyzing it every which way and dealing with it, I got all my affairs in order.  After researching different ways to end my life, I decided on carbon monoxide poisoning and purchased a long hose to hook up to the back of my truck exhaust.  I had made notes around my house and had everything laid out on the kitchen island.  Because I was managing my Dad's finances, I had to separate some things out and I was waiting for the paperwork to come in the mail.  It was only a matter of a day or two and it would all end... and then just like that... I woke up the next morning and, assuming my chemical make-up changed overnight, I had completely 'snapped out of it'.  I went from a three month, 24/7 no-hope struggle to not even being able to even force myself to think about suicide for even a few seconds.  I'm guessing that either my synapses found new pathways or my serotonin levels replenished, but it was the difference between night (lights out) and day (new hope).  I am still here.

This blog has always provided a chronology for me, having written about almost everything throughout my life on these pages.  I regret not keeping it up, especially throughout this dark period in my life, which is why I'm trying to go back through and include it.  It would have been amazing to have captured my every thought through this whole process, as it's become (or always has been) who I am.  I'm not ashamed of it and sometimes I even miss the cocoon-like feeling I had in the middle of it all.  Some of my most creative poems stemmed from my darkness and I believe many people have related to my opening up.  There's no way I couldn't include it in my blog and, being only part one of things that happened in the last couple of years (subsequent post entries in the story's progression to follow), it is definitely a part of me and has affected how I move forward in life... in daylight.