Suicide Survivor

What Takes Courage?

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Today riding home in Uber I was doing what I always do and yapping away about my day, group therapy and mental health treatment in general.

He asks something along the lines of

“Do you think focusing on your problems helps?”

I explain about getting at the underlying emotions and figuring out what’s hiding in there.  About coping skills and how to distract yourself and that sometimes the focus is on living in the moment and not just in the future with upcoming worries or the past with the problems from then.

I mention that mental illness is just an illness like heart disease and that it takes medication and also symptom management and eating right, exercising, lots of different things to try and manage the illness.

And eventually the topic moves to suicide.

“That’s the cowards way out, if someone believes in a higher power, with enough faith . . . ”  etc, etc.

Well, my late wife was a Christian woman, she loved God, she also managed her illness to the best of her ability, and she still died by suicide.

“Your what . . Oh, I’m so so sorry, I wasn’t saying . . . ”

And the conversation continues.

“You know, it dawned on me, it takes a type of courage to complete that act.  Someone must be in a lot of pain to follow through with that.”

Eventually he asks how long she battled that illness.  I told him, I didn’t know exactly, I knew she had been a teen when it all started for her, but that I’ve been fighting them for at least 22 years, spending the greater part of most of those years fighting against my own brain to stay alive.

And he says . .

“Now, THAT takes courage, battling your own brain for years and years just to stay alive.”

When we got to my house he said.

“You know, you educated me today.  You’re just talking but you changed my mind about this, you educated me.”

When Parker died two years ago I remember sobbing as I typed out “her suicide will never be in vain” and it’s not.  She’s changing lives and changing minds as I speak up and speak out.  It’s hard for people to hear, I see the cringes when I drop the suicide widow bomb, but I also see the people I educate.

Speak your truth.  Let it educate people.

courage

Reach

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This week has been rough.  In between the smiles and the grieving through joy, there have been two celebrities that have died by suicide.  This means my Facebook feed has been filled with the public outcry of “please reach out for help” and “check on them they can’t reach out” as well as the quick, re-shared blogs and blurbs of suicide helplines and text lines.

Compassion porn filling my screen like some sort of virus.

These conversations need to be had.  Those numbers need to be prominent and saved in everyone’s phones but the question is, how many people who shared those numbers actually saved them in their phones so they have them quickly available if they, or someone close to them needs them.

Not many of us who struggle even save the numbers until we are in trouble.  We always think, not us, never us.

And when it comes to reaching out, or reaching in, it’s a two way street.

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I am responsible for my own shit.  And Parker was responsible for her own shit.

Six months before she died we had a fight.  She came out of the room and I happened to see her grab the box of medications, I checked on her and she told me she was getting the homeopathic anxiety medication.  The next day she checked herself in to the inpatient crisis unit and admitted that she had been planning on overdosing.  I found a hoard of medications while she was inpatient and I trashed them.

There were more fights between that day and the day she died.  None of those triggered that response.  The day she died, the medication was in the room and I heard her take them, but I had no reason to suspect it was anything more than her regular night time meds.

It was her responsibility to reach out while it was also the loving thing to do to reach in.  It was not my responsibility to save her, that was only something she could do.

And now, here we are 2 years later.  I’m fighting these thoughts most days.  I’m living with an amazing woman who is in the exact position I was in.  It’s my job to reach out and it’s the loving thing for her to do to reach in when she’s in a position to do so.  If in the end I lose my battle with this damn list of labels, that’s on my shoulders, not because she didn’t see the signs, or do enough, or check on me.

My shit is my responsibility.  It’s wonderful when the people around me support me as they are able, but they have their own shit, and that is their responsibility and unless I speak up, they don’t know what I need.

Unless I dig my way out of my black hole long enough to hold a hand up, they can’t reach down and grab it.

Now, go save the crisis numbers in your phone, you don’t know when you or someone close to you will need them.

Yes, you.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Phone Number
1-800-273-8255

Crisis Text Line
741-741

 

 

Two Years

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I made it.

I survived.

Two years without her and I’ve made it.

Not only that but I’ve thrived and done well, and I’m amazed at how far I’ve come.  Yesterday I sat at the skating rink, beside someone who spent time telling me how amazing it was that I had sat with my emotions and grief and worked through them.  And here I am spending time in PHP and kicking myself because I haven’t done enough.

A year ago I listed off this huge, way too long list of things I had done in the year before that since she died.  This year I’ve done far less, and I’m sitting in a hospital for most of each day learning how to be a functioning adult again.

But, I got myself this far.

Not alone though.  I’ve had a huge huge support network since day one.  Ever changing and rotating with people coming in and out of the picture as their own lives rotated around with different stuff.

And I also got myself this far because I reached out when I needed it and I kicked myself into gear when I needed it and I rested when I needed it.

And I survived for another year without her.

One of my songs at the beginning was “Fight Song” by Rachel Platten, and there’s a line in it.  “It’s been two years, I miss my home,”  and I remember at some point in the first year I heard that line and wondered how I would ever make it to two years and if I would ever make it that far.

I made it.  So did Kidlet.

But Damn it, Parker . . . you were supposed to make it, too.

I miss you my firefly.

Crying on the sidelines

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The next 48 hours are officially cancelled.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve cried today and it’s not even the beginning of the trigger day.

I’m sitting off to the side at derby because the idea of focusing long enough to participate seems foreign.  I know I just need to get through 48 hours and then I’ll be okay, for at least a little while.

Today at PHP I felt like my parenting was called into question.  In hindsight it may have been in my head, it may have been nowhere near as bad as it seemed.  I may have overreacted and blown it out of proportion, or, years of being told that was what I was doing could mean that now I’m minimizing what happened today.  But either way, things today were hard and bad and as it ended I walked away from the building in angry, defeated tears.  And I don’t want to go back, but self care means going back because self care isn’t always bubble baths and pretty things.  It’s the hard fucking work that means healing and making it till tomorrow.  

I miss Parker so much right now.  Normally, I want her back in this world, while also realizing I’ve grown to a place where we would probably not be a good match, knowing we would not work the way we were.  I love her as part of my past which doesn’t conflict with where I am now.  But right now, it’s this feeling of wanting her so badly to be here with me now as part of all of this.  I don’t want to go back but I want to bring her here without losing what I have now including my current wonderful woman, my Wonder Woman.   How do I reconcile that in my own mind.  Not that I have a choice to make any of that happen.     

And then Kidlet and I talked, I feel my thoughts spinning, tattoo ideas, memorial ideas, how can I properly mark the fact that it’s been two years.  I know that it’s going to spin past and I will be fine but first I have to survive the next 48 hours.  I started crying on the phone with him for the first time since he left and my kid was telling me how he wished he was here so he could console me.  

I just want to live in the moment but that’s impossible when I’m worried about everything I did wrong yesterday and everything that could go wrong tomorrow.

Today, they had us do some worksheet and list 3 challenges we overcame.  I just wrote out, hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.  But when we were sharing, she asked me if I could list somethings that I’d overcome,  I asked where she wanted me to start.  I wonder when people start thinking I’m full of shit.  Too much trauma, None of it has really been overcome though, it all still haunts me.  I just survived the actual moment of it.  It could still kill me.

Then we did three things I’m good at, One of them is getting back up over and over and over again, because I’ve seen the alternative and it leaves so many tears behind.  

Parker didn’t end her pain.  She passed it on.  Today at PHP I stood up for Kate Spade when someone was upset about her leaving her daughter when she died by suicide.  She had no idea what she was doing to her daughter, her daughter either wasn’t on her mind or she thought she was doing the best she could for her.  Depression is a hell of a liar and creates a black hole that you can’t see out of.  Parker didn’t do this to our kid or me, it had nothing to do with us in that moment, she just wanted to end that blackness.

Unfortunately, what happened is that those of us that are still here are picking up the pieces of what she left behind.  That means the pain she left behind as well.

Now I have to figure out how to heal it and live with it or live in spite of it.

And it isn’t easy.  But I’m doing the best I can, and sometimes, that means crying on the sidelines at derby.

Never Enough

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Another one of those really real widow posts.

Trigger warning with this one. Suicide mentioned, Completed suicide talked about pretty extensively, including questioning the thought process behind it and leading up to it.

Each day we end PHP with what ends up being, hopefully, “no, no, yes, yes” time.

Basically, they end that group by going around asking something to the point of:

“Are you having any suicidal thoughts?”
“Are you having any thoughts of hurting anyone else?”
“Can you be safe tonight?”
“Will you be here tomorrow?”

After the first couple of people, we sometimes just start going “No, No, Yes, Yes” when they get to us, unless one of the answers is different.

Today, I left a little early and they still did a short version of the questions.

I feel so much better, now, then I did just over a week ago when I entered the program. The new meds are helping considerably. Knowing I’m getting away for a few days is helping. Having the structure in a therapeutic environment is helping. Stepping back from pushing myself so hard towards working, full time, as soon as possible, is really, really helping.

And then riding home, this picture pops up. It’s part of the last set of pictures that were ever taken of Parker. On the post surgical visit for her leg. She barely looks like herself.

I wonder, would she have been able to answer “No, No, Yes, Yes” if someone had asked her those questions at the time when I took this picture.

Would she have been able to answer “No, No, Yes, Yes” a week later?

At what point did the answer change for her in her head?

It’s one of those many things I’ll never know the answer to, and even if I did, I’d just have more questions about other things. Suicide just leaves so many questions.

I’m glad I have this picture, but it just reminds me that we never know when a picture will be the last. I’m glad that I’m still taking pictures of me, but I’ve stopped taking as many pictures of those around me. Stopped taking as many pictures of Wonder Woman and I, and my animals, and my friends. One day there will be a last picture of each of those and that’s scary because there are never enough pictures.

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2/3rds

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Ericka was one of the women Parker and I met in the shelter. She was young, maybe 20 or 21. Such a sweet kid and adored Parker and I.

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Look at this Facebook post. She’s talking about a Mother’s Day potluck, in a homeless shelter. Waking up to make breakfast for 80 people, in a homeless shelter.

We took buses to the light rail to go to a church in the city and then came back and hung out at a crappy little pond that was pretty damn gross but it killed time and gave us something to do. And bread was cheap. Broken wing (Gregory House) was a mean little cuss but he kept going and the other ducks knew to follow him because the humans felt sorry for him and always threw the food to him. Also, there were more geese than ducks, but it was still the duck pond to everyone in the shelter.

Look how normal it all seems in this post. It all became almost normal to us. Wake up, fold up your mats if you are on the floor in the hallways, put away your bins, do your chores.

Ericka died about a year or so later. My heart broke. She fought so hard to overcome her mental health shit, but she lost. Two out of the three people in this post are gone…..

What Doesn’t Kill

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So, here’s the deal. I’m not going to be one of those people that say God doesn’t give you what you can’t handle. Because, seriously . . look at my life.

However, I was one that said this phrase, a lot. But, each one of these things that kept hitting me, kept making me more of the me I was meant to be. And then, after I recovered from each major thing I would look back and say I wouldn’t change a thing because it put me where I am today, and I’m right where I am meant to be.

Now, before I say this next phrase, please realize.

I Want Parker Back. I want my wife back. There is NO denying that.

However. That situation made me who I am and put me where I am right this second. So no, a year ago, I wasn’t already strong enough, because I wasn’t who I was meant to be yet. If everything would not have happened I would not be where I am this second.

And I’m right where I am meant to be.

And I love me. And that, is an amazing feeling.