"One For Each Day Since I Fell Apart"
People like to say that suicide is cowardly. People like to pretend our survival instinct just steps aside when you've reached a extreme level of desire for self-harm, that the selfish sadness engulfs all sense of reason, and the depressed think of nothing but themselves as they pray for their last moments to end. It takes so much to get to that point, so much to step over a cliff's edge, so much to pull that trigger, to swallow those pills, to actually pull life aside and split up. It's not you, existence, it's me. No, I don't think we can still be friends.
I know it's easier to hate someone for leaving than it is to be sad, easier to be selfishly angry for your loss than to be sympathetic to their pain. Easier to blame someone than understand them. And there are people in our lives we aren't meant to see as individuals with their own battered souls, their own horrific war stories. We aren't supposed to be made to feel second to our parents, our grandparents, our teachers- especially during our childhoods. These people have a responsibility to instill a sense confidence and safety, to teach us how to be strong. When someone like that walks out on you, you have a right to be mad.
I was about 15 years old when I started to realize that my mother did not want to be alive. Her sickness was apparent my whole life, but my sister Nessa leaving after a particularly nasty argument had dramatic results. Nessa moved in at a friend's house and refused to have any contact with our mother. Everyday when I came home from school I prepared to find her dead, and I do not know how I functioned in class, made jokes with my friends, contained the fear. It came to the point where I just wanted it to be over; I visualized a noose, as though by thinking it hard enough it would materialize for her. All I wanted for her- for us both- was for the pain to stop, for her to not have to hate herself for pushing her child away, for me to not hate her as well. I wanted her to have peace. I witnessed her struggles: weighing the guilt of leaving me against the pressure to raise me; juggling the will to live, the longing for an end, and the cautious hope for a future. This went on for months.
I knew if she could just shut off, if it was easy, that she would.
It wasn't until I was 17 that my mother would make a real effort to end her life- by swallowing a pile of pills that had she taken daily as prescribed might have kept her from wanting to down them with a bottle of cheap vodka- and spend months in a mental hospital. And that wouldn't be the last time; it wasn't the first either. My parents actually met in a mental hospital, and my sister and I spent a brief time in foster care after they split and my mom became violent and she went back in. Although I wasn't surprised when it happened, it still sent me reeling. I moved in with a friend's family and had to start really thinking about myself and my own life. It also solidified the idea that loving someone means wanting what's best for them- even if that thing is death.
I haul around my own depression; I know its weight. I have considered a final solution, and I have alleviated the pressure with blades and burns. Each of my forearms bear scars from the cutting of my youth. A cigarette burn is flanked by pox marks. What I haven't experienced is the immense courage of conviction to go to the end. I realize now that wanting to simply blink out of existence is not uncommon, that many people struggle with their pain and the pain of hurting their family and friends. Not everyone shares my morbid empathy.
The first time I felt compelled to hurt myself, I used a safety pin to poke my palm hundreds of times, pulling little strips of skin up from my fingertips to my wrist. I carved a 'K' for Kurt Cobain by my inner elbow. When I worked my way up to cutting, I could never go deeply into my skin. I pressed an edge of broken glass against my flesh, daring myself to push, terrified of seeing blood ooze up, titillated by the fear. The pain gave me a release but the consequences of going too far, and of failure, kept me in check. There were weeks in warm weather that I wore long sleeves to school. I showed my sister once and she said my cuts, many shallows scrapes covering my arms, were the most upsetting things she'd ever seen. I don't think I was aware this was something people did; it just comforted me to see my pain. It's strange how people are drawn to things.
When I was in college, I put a cigarette out on my arm. Months later I would do it for fun, as a dare, as a way to not have to hide hurting myself. Years later, on the morning that I met with my doctor to discuss going on anti-depressants, I took the edge of the clothes iron and pressed it against my inner thigh. And years after that, as I sat lonely in my apartment following my divorce, I would press the heated top of a cigarette lighter to my leg. It scared me that I wanted to do it; it scared me that I felt so much anguish; it scared me that I tried to call a doctor and no one called me back. My only choice seemed to be to taking extreme measures, being admitted- becoming my mother.
What I needed most was support, from people who shared my despair. It's only been in recent years that I stopped looking down on other people who claimed they were depressed but whose lives were 'easy' and realized that it is so common to be fucked up, that being fucked up is normal. I don't measure other people against my scale or my mother's anymore. Now I see the insidious nature of depression, that's it is a terminal disease capable of affecting anyone, anywhere, with no reason. Most of us want to keep fighting, keep breathing, but we also should not demonize those who do not. I am not against suicide, but I am not advocating it; I am advocating not judging, not piling on guilt to people with this pain. I am advocating discussing it, accepting it, building communities. I am advocating choices. I liken my experience with my mother to the slow death of a cancer patient, whose agony outweighs their quality of life and whose loved ones secretly wish for their end. I think we should see suicide as tragic, but not wrong. Maybe that just says something about my own depression.
By the way, my mother is alive. She claims that she wants to live, and that being back in a mental hospital is the worst fate she can imagine. Despite that, I still- every day- expect a phone call telling me she took her own life.
I know it's easier to hate someone for leaving than it is to be sad, easier to be selfishly angry for your loss than to be sympathetic to their pain. Easier to blame someone than understand them. And there are people in our lives we aren't meant to see as individuals with their own battered souls, their own horrific war stories. We aren't supposed to be made to feel second to our parents, our grandparents, our teachers- especially during our childhoods. These people have a responsibility to instill a sense confidence and safety, to teach us how to be strong. When someone like that walks out on you, you have a right to be mad.
I was about 15 years old when I started to realize that my mother did not want to be alive. Her sickness was apparent my whole life, but my sister Nessa leaving after a particularly nasty argument had dramatic results. Nessa moved in at a friend's house and refused to have any contact with our mother. Everyday when I came home from school I prepared to find her dead, and I do not know how I functioned in class, made jokes with my friends, contained the fear. It came to the point where I just wanted it to be over; I visualized a noose, as though by thinking it hard enough it would materialize for her. All I wanted for her- for us both- was for the pain to stop, for her to not have to hate herself for pushing her child away, for me to not hate her as well. I wanted her to have peace. I witnessed her struggles: weighing the guilt of leaving me against the pressure to raise me; juggling the will to live, the longing for an end, and the cautious hope for a future. This went on for months.
I knew if she could just shut off, if it was easy, that she would.
It wasn't until I was 17 that my mother would make a real effort to end her life- by swallowing a pile of pills that had she taken daily as prescribed might have kept her from wanting to down them with a bottle of cheap vodka- and spend months in a mental hospital. And that wouldn't be the last time; it wasn't the first either. My parents actually met in a mental hospital, and my sister and I spent a brief time in foster care after they split and my mom became violent and she went back in. Although I wasn't surprised when it happened, it still sent me reeling. I moved in with a friend's family and had to start really thinking about myself and my own life. It also solidified the idea that loving someone means wanting what's best for them- even if that thing is death.
I haul around my own depression; I know its weight. I have considered a final solution, and I have alleviated the pressure with blades and burns. Each of my forearms bear scars from the cutting of my youth. A cigarette burn is flanked by pox marks. What I haven't experienced is the immense courage of conviction to go to the end. I realize now that wanting to simply blink out of existence is not uncommon, that many people struggle with their pain and the pain of hurting their family and friends. Not everyone shares my morbid empathy.
The first time I felt compelled to hurt myself, I used a safety pin to poke my palm hundreds of times, pulling little strips of skin up from my fingertips to my wrist. I carved a 'K' for Kurt Cobain by my inner elbow. When I worked my way up to cutting, I could never go deeply into my skin. I pressed an edge of broken glass against my flesh, daring myself to push, terrified of seeing blood ooze up, titillated by the fear. The pain gave me a release but the consequences of going too far, and of failure, kept me in check. There were weeks in warm weather that I wore long sleeves to school. I showed my sister once and she said my cuts, many shallows scrapes covering my arms, were the most upsetting things she'd ever seen. I don't think I was aware this was something people did; it just comforted me to see my pain. It's strange how people are drawn to things.
When I was in college, I put a cigarette out on my arm. Months later I would do it for fun, as a dare, as a way to not have to hide hurting myself. Years later, on the morning that I met with my doctor to discuss going on anti-depressants, I took the edge of the clothes iron and pressed it against my inner thigh. And years after that, as I sat lonely in my apartment following my divorce, I would press the heated top of a cigarette lighter to my leg. It scared me that I wanted to do it; it scared me that I felt so much anguish; it scared me that I tried to call a doctor and no one called me back. My only choice seemed to be to taking extreme measures, being admitted- becoming my mother.
What I needed most was support, from people who shared my despair. It's only been in recent years that I stopped looking down on other people who claimed they were depressed but whose lives were 'easy' and realized that it is so common to be fucked up, that being fucked up is normal. I don't measure other people against my scale or my mother's anymore. Now I see the insidious nature of depression, that's it is a terminal disease capable of affecting anyone, anywhere, with no reason. Most of us want to keep fighting, keep breathing, but we also should not demonize those who do not. I am not against suicide, but I am not advocating it; I am advocating not judging, not piling on guilt to people with this pain. I am advocating discussing it, accepting it, building communities. I am advocating choices. I liken my experience with my mother to the slow death of a cancer patient, whose agony outweighs their quality of life and whose loved ones secretly wish for their end. I think we should see suicide as tragic, but not wrong. Maybe that just says something about my own depression.
By the way, my mother is alive. She claims that she wants to live, and that being back in a mental hospital is the worst fate she can imagine. Despite that, I still- every day- expect a phone call telling me she took her own life.