Trigger warning: suicide.
Our internet has been in and out the last few days which led me to my phone for media which led me down a Facebook rabbit hole of true crime podcast clips. And now I have some thoughts.
I almost died today – twice. First at a ridiculously dangerous train crossing which no one in charge of public safety will address. Then hours later at my own hand. Somehow I still, fucking, survive. What got us through the first was two seconds of chance. What got me through the second was the whispering of the true crime podcasts about how the signs are suicide but from the outside the person was planning for the future so someone must be punished. I couldn’t bare someone suffering for my inability to push on. There’s always something.
So a timeline might make my thoughts more clear. This summer has been dark. I pushed myself when I knew I shouldn’t which led to a rapid cycling episode followed by some realizations that carried with them some big emotions. A lot! I know! After about two months I feel like I’ve processed things and am on the way to acceptance of it all when today arrives.
I finally shower and get out of the house to go replace my ID. I’m hungry and in pain. When signing documents at the DMV I realize I don’t really comprehend what I’m doing but just trust that I’m signing what I’ve signed several times before for a license. Of course watching yourself loose your faculties is terrifying and as I’m comprehending the ramifications it’s our turn to cross the dangerous intersection and from behind as we turned came a freight train directly at our lives. Two seconds later and we’d be dead. So now I’m also shocked into considering my mortality.
Let’s ramp it up. I know every report made on a dangerous situation has countless identical encounters not reported, so for public safety I called the police department about yet another near hit at that dangerous intersection. I was dismissed. BNSF washed their hands. City office said it can’t be changed because it’s “multi-agency” and “not their wheelhouse” and anyway “they are low impact hits rather than full speed” as though being hit by a traveling freight train at any speed is acceptable? The mayor wouldn’t give me answers because by this point I’m pressing him hard and he says my tone “is ugly.” I’m now in business mode and decide to take action on something that’s been bothering me for years; it was time to get ahold of my family divorce papers for some answers.
Eventually it’s past five and there’s nothing more we can do to try to solve the day. Trying to make plans with family all the while. I feel helpless. I feel angry. I feel overwhelmed by the day – by the summer – by the lifetime of too much to handle. Then it clicks. In the back of my head is always the desire for death, but in this moment everything was clear: suicide.
I understand what people mean when they say that they “just snapped” or “something clicked.” In that split second I felt a shift in my head, like my every day brain was suddenly replaced with a brain determined to die. In that moment suicide was the only word my mind could register.
“Suicide.” I scanned my surroundings and there was nothing I could use to finish things. I was in crisis. I began screaming. Screaming and screaming and hitting myself and screaming. My husband came and sat beside me until my explosion had settled and then he gave me a cold rag for my face. When he got me calming down for the night there was so much I wanted to explain but my thoughts were moving faster than my mouth could and I was stuck in my mind again. This exasperated my dread.
Those racing thoughts were focused on a single fear planted by true crime podcasts. My public actions of the day were fighting officials to keep citizens alive and of making plans with family for the next day. I could just hear someone say, “she clearly wanted to live” and then look for a scapegoat. And the only soul who could testify to my true state is my spouse. It would be his word against public statements and in my bipolar world BOTH are true.
I just laid there in bed, terrified to go to sleep without telling someone (you, reader) my truth. After all, what if I don’t make it through the night and leave a mess for the only person at my side to be blamed for making?
(Eventually I was able to write down a little and that relief combined with prescription medications put me to sleep.)
So there are my paranoid thoughts of the day. And my perspective on suicide.
Le sigh.
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