Why this...why now
Suicide sucks. Failed suicide might suck even more.
I am the survivor of a loved one's multiple failed suicide attempts. There have been 4 attempts in the last year ... 3 hospitalizations in 18 months ... countless hours of therapy, for both of us, individually and as a couple ... half a dozen different medications in varying doses that makes psychiatry seem more like a crap shoot than a science ... numerous heart-to-heart talks, and probably just as many fights, sometimes about important things, sometimes about unimportant things, and even sometimes about why we seem to fight so much lately.
There's a line in Stephen Donaldson's "The Wounded Land" that says something to the effect of: "if you want to hurt a manu who's lost everything, give him back something broken".
The failed suicide of a loved one is like that. Like getting something back that's been broken. Sometimes you wish you had just never gotten it back at all, because it's just too painful.
It's difficult not to feel sympathy for someone whose been so down, so full of loss, so empty of everything else, that they see death as the best answer. And if they're "successful" (hard to use that word in the context, but it fits), then the grief they bring to the loved ones they left behind is almost imeasurable. The fact that they failed to take their own life, that they (and we) have another chance to make things right should be cause for joy. Right? Well, I'm here to tell you, it ain't all hearts and flowers.
Please don't get me wrong: I do not, under any circumstances, wish she had killed herself. It may sound like I'm saying it, but I'm not. Let me be plain: I DO NOT WISH MY WIFE HAD DIED. As much agony as we've been through, I can't imagine how devastated I'd be if she had gone (actually I can imagine it, but only in the conext of "however bad I think it would have been, it would have been worse"). But there are times when I just feel like giving up...when I find myself thinking we can't possible keep going this way...I'm just not strong enough to wait until she gets better, until she wrestles her demons and gets back to normal.
We've spent more than half of our lives together, meeting in 1979 when we were just shy of 20. We knew each other better that anyone else. We were birds of a feather, both growing up feeling like the outcasts, being shy/reserved, not opening up easily to others. We found in each other a kindred spirit, someone we knew actually understood what we were feeling, because they felt it too.
Her suicide attempts, the result of decades of struggling with undiagnosed depression and several emotionally traumatic episides, have torn almost 25 years of history to shreds, leaving me wondering who we are now, and what we mean to each other, and if we can ever recapture what we once had. The physical scars from her first attempt are almost invisible if you don't know they're there, but the emotional and psychological scars on both of us seem so deeply ingrained now that I don't know if we'll ever be back to the way we were.
Each day is a new challenge: for her, the challenge is to find a reason to stay alive, to find some joy in this life, to find the confidence and beauty in herself to know that she is loved, and lovable, and important; for me, its to find a way to keep hoping when I feel that all is lost, and that we'll never heal, to learn to trust her again, to find a way not to second guess everything she does or says, certain that I'll find some clue that she's gearing up for number 5, to know that no matter how much I want to, I can't crawl inside her head and fix her, and to know that if the unthinkable should happen, its not my fault.
I feel guilty even writing those last 4 words. Of course its my fault, isn't it? If I can't help her find a reason to stay alive, then what the hell am I here for? This is the demon I've stuggled with for the last year-plus. I've had 3 different people, from different support systems, all tell me the same thing at one time or another: it's not my job to keep her from killing herself. God, how hard that's been for me to wrap my head around!! I was doing good with it for a while, but then she had a backslide, I went along for the ride, and now it seems we're both back to square one in many ways. She tells me that suicide is no longer an option for her, that her last attempt drove home for her how serious this is, and how hard she has to work to heal herself. I want - God how I want - to belive her, but there's always doubt. She blind-sided me 4 times now. She's so good at pretending she's just down, just out of sorts, a little blue, and as soon as I get comfortable that I'm reading her correctly WHAMMO, we got a call into 911 and ambulances in the driveway. ..its no wonder I'm paranoid!!!
Anyway, one thing I've learned is that bottling things up really doesn't help. I've learned that no matter how painful my thoughts and emotions, just saying them out loud helps to defuse their toxicity. So I write this, and future posts, in the hopes that it will help me deal with some of the issues I, and we, are facing. And maybe someone will read this and find some solace, knowing there are others going through the same thing. And maybe they'll get some help from something I've written, but really I'm a greedy person at heart, and hope to get help and support from others as much as give it. (Damn, am I a needy S.O.B or what?!?!)
I am the survivor of a loved one's multiple failed suicide attempts. There have been 4 attempts in the last year ... 3 hospitalizations in 18 months ... countless hours of therapy, for both of us, individually and as a couple ... half a dozen different medications in varying doses that makes psychiatry seem more like a crap shoot than a science ... numerous heart-to-heart talks, and probably just as many fights, sometimes about important things, sometimes about unimportant things, and even sometimes about why we seem to fight so much lately.
There's a line in Stephen Donaldson's "The Wounded Land" that says something to the effect of: "if you want to hurt a manu who's lost everything, give him back something broken".
The failed suicide of a loved one is like that. Like getting something back that's been broken. Sometimes you wish you had just never gotten it back at all, because it's just too painful.
It's difficult not to feel sympathy for someone whose been so down, so full of loss, so empty of everything else, that they see death as the best answer. And if they're "successful" (hard to use that word in the context, but it fits), then the grief they bring to the loved ones they left behind is almost imeasurable. The fact that they failed to take their own life, that they (and we) have another chance to make things right should be cause for joy. Right? Well, I'm here to tell you, it ain't all hearts and flowers.
Please don't get me wrong: I do not, under any circumstances, wish she had killed herself. It may sound like I'm saying it, but I'm not. Let me be plain: I DO NOT WISH MY WIFE HAD DIED. As much agony as we've been through, I can't imagine how devastated I'd be if she had gone (actually I can imagine it, but only in the conext of "however bad I think it would have been, it would have been worse"). But there are times when I just feel like giving up...when I find myself thinking we can't possible keep going this way...I'm just not strong enough to wait until she gets better, until she wrestles her demons and gets back to normal.
We've spent more than half of our lives together, meeting in 1979 when we were just shy of 20. We knew each other better that anyone else. We were birds of a feather, both growing up feeling like the outcasts, being shy/reserved, not opening up easily to others. We found in each other a kindred spirit, someone we knew actually understood what we were feeling, because they felt it too.
Her suicide attempts, the result of decades of struggling with undiagnosed depression and several emotionally traumatic episides, have torn almost 25 years of history to shreds, leaving me wondering who we are now, and what we mean to each other, and if we can ever recapture what we once had. The physical scars from her first attempt are almost invisible if you don't know they're there, but the emotional and psychological scars on both of us seem so deeply ingrained now that I don't know if we'll ever be back to the way we were.
Each day is a new challenge: for her, the challenge is to find a reason to stay alive, to find some joy in this life, to find the confidence and beauty in herself to know that she is loved, and lovable, and important; for me, its to find a way to keep hoping when I feel that all is lost, and that we'll never heal, to learn to trust her again, to find a way not to second guess everything she does or says, certain that I'll find some clue that she's gearing up for number 5, to know that no matter how much I want to, I can't crawl inside her head and fix her, and to know that if the unthinkable should happen, its not my fault.
I feel guilty even writing those last 4 words. Of course its my fault, isn't it? If I can't help her find a reason to stay alive, then what the hell am I here for? This is the demon I've stuggled with for the last year-plus. I've had 3 different people, from different support systems, all tell me the same thing at one time or another: it's not my job to keep her from killing herself. God, how hard that's been for me to wrap my head around!! I was doing good with it for a while, but then she had a backslide, I went along for the ride, and now it seems we're both back to square one in many ways. She tells me that suicide is no longer an option for her, that her last attempt drove home for her how serious this is, and how hard she has to work to heal herself. I want - God how I want - to belive her, but there's always doubt. She blind-sided me 4 times now. She's so good at pretending she's just down, just out of sorts, a little blue, and as soon as I get comfortable that I'm reading her correctly WHAMMO, we got a call into 911 and ambulances in the driveway. ..its no wonder I'm paranoid!!!
Anyway, one thing I've learned is that bottling things up really doesn't help. I've learned that no matter how painful my thoughts and emotions, just saying them out loud helps to defuse their toxicity. So I write this, and future posts, in the hopes that it will help me deal with some of the issues I, and we, are facing. And maybe someone will read this and find some solace, knowing there are others going through the same thing. And maybe they'll get some help from something I've written, but really I'm a greedy person at heart, and hope to get help and support from others as much as give it. (Damn, am I a needy S.O.B or what?!?!)
posted by me at 4:04 PM
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