This is the paper I later wrote for my non-fiction class- an edited version of Hospital Record, with things taken out and things added.
The Ledge: Memoir of an Unsuccessful Suicide
Pain has an element
of blank;
It cannot recollect
When it began, or if there were
A day when it was
not.
It has no future but itself,
Its infinite realms contain
Its past, enlightened to perceive
New periods of pain.
-Emily Dickinson
Teetering on the ledge
of life, I suddenly decide to make the jump to death. For most of the jump, it
was just like I always imagined. It didn’t hurt, I didn’t throw up my deadly
cocktail and I drifted off to sleep with only the sound of the increasing thud
of my beating heart in my ears. I was confidant and patient waiting for death. I
went over a ledge and could not return. A few days later I woke up. My life
would never be the same. What follows is my memoir of suicide. The events
preceding the attempt, the attempt itself and of picking up the pieces when I
realized I was still alive.
Most of the literature on suicide is only about preventing such an act or being
a survivor of a loved ones suicide. Yet there are thousands of individuals who
survive their own suicide attempt. The decision we all made to jump off the
ledge has forever changed our lives, from the way others now think of us to our
own perceptions of life and living. All I can say is my life was forever changed
the moment my eyes opened and I was alive.
An interesting anecdote of memory when you’ve come so close to killing yourself
is that it goes backwards, forward and then back again. Then only to jump back
to the present. My memory is fractured and I wonder if I’ll ever have a clear
picture of the nights and days I decided to end my life. My memory then sinks
back to the beginning of this story.
On that Thursday at
4:00pm I took a final for my graduate class on behavioral analysis. In six hours
I would try to commit suicide. Nothing in that day would ever point to that
conclusion. I took the test and felt like I did very well. My friend drove with
me to my parent’s house. We had a great meal. I goofed around with my brothers.
I didn’t know then, that my hugs with them might have been the last together. My
parents didn’t know that they were feeding me my last meal. They didn’t know it
might have been the last hug and kiss. I left their house not knowing I would
try to take my life in two hours. In the hour drive home, I listened to heavy
metal and sad songs. They made me think of pain. Pain of loneliness, of a
broken childhood, of being different and unconventional. By the time I got home
an hour later, I felt the pain of fighting so long to be normal. I wanted to
continue to feel the manic side of my bipolar disorder, but as everyone pointed
out, eventually I would crash. I decided to end it before the crash.
So when exactly does one make the decision to end ones life? For me, between the
hours of 8:00 and 10:00pm. . I joke with my friend about how much Lithium it
would take to kill me. She laughs, but I see her fear. In my room she won’t
leave. In my mind I make my decision, I’m going to swallow the pills. I suddenly
become interested in my Latin homework I have no intention of doing. She takes
the bait and says she’ll check on me in two hours. That’s all I need. I felt my
mind cloud over. It was time. I took one look at the many pill bottles on my
bookcase. It was then I began pill counting, well over 200. I then began hand
written suicide notes. Some I pulled up on my computer from past suicidal
ideation. Tears fell when I came to the letter to my brothers. For one second I
wondered if those tears would keep me from my goal, end of life. I hit print. I
began the process. First the Vicodin, followed by Xanax, Seroquel, Advil,
Concerta and Ritalin. I looked at my Lithium bottle and knocked it over. Never
taken. This would be important later. I suddenly became less steady on my feet.
I grab the printed stack, started for my door. Then, I fell to my knees, set the
stack to my left and fell down, head on my backpack.
Seconds, minutes, and
hours do not matter at this point. My eyes closed. I hear my friend banging on
my door. It’s locked. She gives up and tries our shared bathroom door.
Consciousness is gone. I feel someone taking my pulse, “it’s too fast,” she
yells. Out again. I feel men around. They ask me to put my arms around them and
walk. Barely conscious I feel myself in an ambulance. An oxygen mask goes over
my face. I lose consciousness all together.
In those dark hours, I experienced the end of life. In the hours after I was
discovered, I experienced the beginning of life again. My memory flashes back to
the days and nights I began to wake up. Immediately I knew my attempt failed. My
exact thoughts upon waking up will never be known. I had slipped into a coma and
I have no memory of my thoughts, only of sensations, particularly my sense of
sight.
When I woke up two days
later, I had several tubes down my throat and restraints on my arms. My memory
only exists in flashes. I opened my eyes once to see my mother and friend
looking over to me. Eyes closed. Open again: A good friend giving me a quick
hug. Eyes closed. Eyes open: I'm choking on the tubes, so I throw a teddy bear
to get their attention. Eyes closed. Eyes open. I hear a long beep. That's the
30 sec. mark of me not breathing. I hear someone in my ear, "Damn it Erin,
breathe." Eyes closed. More sounds of people yelling at me to breathe. Breathe
in, breathe out.
Saturday night I open my eyes once more. I try to talk, because I want to go
pee. They tell me I have a catheter. I say fine, then I'll hold it. Then they
hold up the tube and show the pee going down. I say shit. I fade into incoherent
thoughts and sounds. Apparently I was worried about the journals I sent my
psychology research to, six months ago. A parade of people comes through
Saturday: mom, step dad, mom's friend, and two of my friends. My memory? Only of
the flashes of faces and I saying, "never mind" when I realize my words make no
sense. Eyes closed. I'm moved out of the ICU and out of danger for now.
Though the memory of
suicide is largely emotional and of visions I stored in my mind, I see the body
has kept a memory of its own.
There are the fading six puncture marks on my left elbow crease from IV's and
blood samples. I see the large bruise on my left wrist from a fight with
restraints. Then, old scars remain from previous self-injurious acts. I look to
my right arm, still sore from days of IV fluid. More puncture wounds from blood
drawn. Again more scars from past acts. My tongue is finally feeling less like
sandpaper and more like what it should and food no longer hurts to the touch.
Though I still feel the sharp pain where a jagged tooth took a slice, probably
during the passing out phase. My throat continues to recover and for days I
could barely swallow. I guess, this is all remnants of plastic tubes down them,
keeping me alive. After days of IV fluid and continuous drinking, my strength
begins to return. Yes, the body bares the pain of what the mind hath wrought.
As far as the experience of almost losing my life goes, there was no guiding
light. To those that speak of this phenomenon, I can only say, it must have been
the doctor’s flashlight checking the pupil dilation. Did I feel peace? I
wouldn't know, I was unconscious in a coma. I have no memory of such events and
wonder if some people made up their experiences in an attempt to comfort
themselves with the lack of memory. Perhaps it is a savior to us all that we
don't remember the worst of it. I think that perhaps the memory of not breathing
and getting closer to death is not a pleasant one. The lack of memory saves us
from deciding if that experience was a pleasant one to be repeated.
Still Here
I’ve been scarred and battered.
My hopes the wind done scattered.
Snow has friz me, sun has baked me.
Looks like between ‘em
They done tried to make me
Stop laughin’, stop lovin’, stop livin’-
But I don’t care!
I’m still here!
Three days after waking
up, I look out of my ward window in the mental hospital. Glass is several inches
thick, locked and barred. A wooden fence to my left blocks the view of the
courtyard. I see the day treatment wing in front of me. The sun shines down on
this building, briefly hurting my eyes. I haven’t seen the sun in a week. To my
right more fences and a few trees. The trees still lay bare and empty. A
haunting memory of how I viewed my life. I listen a moment. I hear the locked
doors being clicked open and shut by the hospital staff. A patient wonders the
hall, speaking rather incoherently. I know other patients sit in the common
area, some asleep almost in a vegetative state, and others so depressed you see
their life slipping from their eyes day by day. A few constantly talk, a sign of
the mania I know so well. Still others are hopelessly locked in their
schizophrenic mind. I’m in intensive care for twenty-four hours. Tomorrow I
change units, where the patients are motivated to get treatment and resume their
lives. Birds fly by and I know soon I can rejoin the living, feel the sun on my
body and the wind whipping my face with a tinge of cold, reminding me spring has
yet to come to the physical world. Yet somehow on this day, I can already feel
the spring within me start, warming my heart and refreshing my troubled mind. I
will live another day.
I walk to a crowded common room. There is a man who thinks he is related to
Michelangelo (and calls himself as such), and says he can send me a magic
carpet. He is singing loudly. Occasionally he breaks out with incoherent talk
about driving to New Jersey. My roommate sits to the right, talking non-stop to
anyone who dares to meet her eye. The woman across from me lays her head again
against the table. I’ve yet to hear her speak a word. Her face is drawn,
wrinkled through the years and eyes so lifeless I feel as if I want to give her
a hug and see if they can spark to life. The man to my left puts me at ease with
his sarcastic wit and positive demeanor. Though, he says, drinking and drugs
quickly changes this.
The TV is on, but remains only background noise. Only one patient seems to be
engaged. Another woman, whose saddened face can elicit empathy from anyone here,
continues to talk to her visitors. Her face becomes more saddened through the
evening and I feel for her, knowing all to well the sadness depression brings.
Another woman hopelessly locked in her diseased brain meets with her husband.
His face is tired and coarse from the years of heartache it seems he has had to
endure. His wife continues to mutter words we can scarcely make out. She brings
him all the pictures she’s colored. He also colors with her. I wonder what this
woman may have been like years earlier. I fear my disease could take that course
and feel a cold shiver down my back.
The nurses sit back in their chairs just outside the room. They chart us every
fifteen minutes or so. They look at us and I can see the sadness in their eyes.
I’ve tuned out, preferring my ipod to the near constant chatter. This is the
first music I’ve heard in days. Tomorrow I leave for the new ward and new faces,
but I never forget the ones I leave. Over the years each one has left some mark
on my life. Some things you don’t forget. I stay apart from them, but to be in
this ward, I know we share some common ground. I am much younger and my brain is
in its early stages of a life long disorder. While confident in being able to
manage this brain, I wonder what the years will do to it. I can’t help but fear
in the end I’ll be the one sitting in the corner, with a husband looking sadly
at my newly colored pictures. I have no crystal ball to prepare me for what the
future brings. I know I can only be here now and trust in my faith and hope.
Trust the medications I know so well and the treatment plan I’ve worked hard to
put together. I trust these moments, not the ones to come.
While watching the scenes unfold in front of me, my blue wristband slides down.
I look down and see name, age, account number and birthday: my pass into this
hospital. I can take it off easily. Does this mean I’m not a patient? Slipped
back on, I’m a patient again? The signs of being a patient: Morning meds, night
meds, groups, workbooks, bed checks, terrible food, wrist bands, no sharps,
barred windows, locked doors, bed times, wake up times, vitals in the wee hours
of the morning, two safety contracts a day, few clothes, many nurses, many
mental health techs and doctors, no shoe laces, and no draw strings. I get the
feeling we are all caged birds. Maybe this is why Michelangelo sometimes sings.
The next day, I’m in a new unit. We all sit around and begin to talk. We soon
realize we all belong in the same club: abused and bipolar. We share our stories
of believing interstate 95 meant we can go 95mph with our music blaring. Or talk
about the $1000 spending sprees and of the agitation and euphoria. Yes, we have
our own impulsive, euphoric, manic club. Though we each talk in jest, our eyes
reveal the fear. Each of us knows the dangers that follow our high. These locked
wards and wristbands quickly remind us.
Hseus stands in the sun, though it only shines through another locked door. I
imagine him thinking of his freedom in a few hours. Discharge, a welcoming and
fearful thought. We wish him luck and return to conversation. I begin to discuss
how I can’t get my sleep medication here. Gayle puts words to what we all feel:
afraid to fall asleep. We see the flashbacks and monsters that go bump in the
night. We need to sleep to keep away the mania, but we don’t want the images. A
true double-edged sword and we have to find out which side is sharper. I know I
must sleep so I don’t face mania, a fatal mood for me.
You could take the curtains off. Or the blinds. Stick a paper clip in the
socket. Tear up a blanket or pillowcase. These are all ways we envisioned we
could kill ourselves while in the ward. Positive talk for four bipolar women who
survived their suicide attempts. We say this all in jest though, knowing in
reality we are lucky to be alive. A counselor looks at me and asks me why I
would want to kill myself. A heavy silence fills the air.
”Ahhhhhhh.” A piercing scream cuts through the silence. We look at each other
and cock our heads with interest. The screams begin again and the counselor
excuses herself. She closes the door behind her as she rushes to the ICU. The
four of us stand watching and waiting. Maybe she’ll be taken to the seclusion
room on the other side of the door. Our locked door. A nurse comes to the
seclusion room and we think we will get a look, but she’s just getting the wheel
chair. Then our counselor appears and the excitement is over. She was screaming
only at a hallucination to get away. We say “oh.” That’s not a far-fetched
reason for the scream. We know that experience. We return to our seats un-phased
and return to our suicide talk.
The counselors question throws me into a tailspin. I try to come to grips with what has happened to me. My mind leaves the unit and descends into a dark reality surrounding my suicide.
Borderline
I used to wonder
About living and dying-
I think the difference lies
Between tears and crying
I used to wonder
About here and there-
I think the distance
Is nowhere.
Motion of Death
Was I almost dead or close to death? Some might say there is no distinction- I
was just nearer to death. They fail to see the motion of death. If I were almost
dead, my motion would be toward death. I am in the act of dying and almost
there. I am not ceasing the act. I have planned to die and I am almost there.
If I was close to death, the motion has ceased and left me in a particular
state. The act is completed and I stand next to death. Motion has stopped and I
come to rest at deaths bedside.
The distinction is clear to me. One week ago I was almost dead. One more pill
bottle and the motion toward death would have been completed. Instead, the last
few weeks I’ve simply been close to death. Being close to death, I’ve come to a
new level of understanding. Nothing can ever be the same. I closed my eyes
Thursday and never expected to see the light of day again. I never thought I’d
feel the sun in my face, the relaxing deep breath or my brother’s laugh. When
you come to peace about such decisions and become ready for death, any other
outcome leaves you forever changed.
I look in the mirror and I see a shadow of who I was. I see the tired eyes and
dark bags under my eyes. My clothes are wrinkled and dirty from the several days
of sharing two outfits. I see a fear that was never there before. I fear the
actions I now know I can take. I broke a trust with myself that I don’t know if
it will ever return. I know, I know I am capable of being my own grim
reaper. I am not only capable of having suicidal ideation, or taking a few
bottles of pills and puke it up, but capable of taking all the pills and
then to close my eyes hoping for forever.
I didn’t just see death and realize dreaming about it was ridiculous. I was
experiencing death. I was in favor of death. I asked for death to come. I set
off the motion of death. Somehow that changes the facts about everything. It
wasn’t a warning. It wasn’t a cry for help. It was just the motion of death.
I think about the toll suicide has taken on my body. The toll being close to death has taken on both my mind and body. Words still come slow to me, not always able to put the right sentence together. People ask me why with regularity and I can only shrug my shoulders. The answers lay in a sealed envelope in the polices hands. There are many suicide letters written and a letter explaining my actions. Deep in my heart I know those letters will never be enough. The real answers will forever stay locked in my mind though
I hope with time, my memory can help unlock that door. Or maybe my memory is protecting me and I don’t need to know. All I need to know is that I’m alive and will stay this way.
I smile and exude
confidence that I can hang on, but one fact still remains: I am afraid. I feel
that staying somewhat manic for a few days has kept me from an awful truth: I
wanted to die. My memory protects the more intense situation once in the
hospital, but each day my brain recovers those last few moments before the
overdose. This fear, I know we all experience it on some level. Some fear
animals or reptiles, murderer’s and rapists, old age and dying. Some fear going
crazy and others fear staying crazy. I know what it’s like to fear, but now I
know the experience of having a large amount of people fear the actions I may
take. Days without phone calls no longer means I’m just busy, but that I may be
in my room dead from an overdose. The times I get excited and energized will not
be taken for strict enthusiasm, but the beginnings of mania.
One day soon I know I
will have to deal with the decision to end my life. Not the after effects, but
how I felt now about almost dying. The moment I stopped popping pills and
decided to lie down and die and before I was found. As far as I know that time
period was less than a half hour. Thirty minutes of labored breathing and
increased heart rate. Thirty minutes to come to peace with my decision. Thirty
minutes to remain quiet and not ask for help. Thirty minutes of a peacefulness
I’ve never felt before. Thirty minutes of knowing I made the right decision.
Thirty minutes of harmony within my body and mind. It seemed so right. I made
the decision for myself, in my best interest. I gave validity to my feeling that
I was to live hard and fast and die young. To make a big splash in this world
and get out before I drowned. Were all of these feelings only the mania? Were
there any truth to these feelings now? Or maybe these feelings only come because
I knew I couldn’t change my blistering pace to one slower. I wanted a sprint to
the end, not a marathon. That was my personality, wasn’t it? Suicide suddenly
casts doubt on so much. Were those thirty minutes everything I feel them to be?
Or was it all just a few neurons mis-firing. I’d like to think I was very in
control. Yet, my mind continues to battle the thought of whether I had control.
After all, I could have called someone or taken that extra therapy session
instead of all the pills. That was a choice. But the feelings then, they were
real.
My memory takes me back to the flashes of my past and reminds me of all the hurt. I begin hurting as if it was done to me today. I fight back. I already survived the abuse, now I just need to take a deep breath. Breathe in, breathe out. I feel a rise in irritability. My hands shake. Breathe in, breathe out. I am fighting back. In my head I picture the neurons are standing around in a circle with a mischievous grin. They take turns on the trapeze. Only they like to intentionally miss the transfer and enjoy falling to the net below and jump up and down. The net is the medication I am now on to keep me from crashing to the floor but my moods are jumping up and down. I am depressed every morning, and back to hypo-mania in the evening.
Strange Hurt
In times of stormy weather
She felt queer pain
That said,
”You’ll find rain better
Than shelter from the rain.”
Days filled with fiery sunshine
Strange hurt she knew
That made
Her seek the burning sunlight
Rather than the shade.
In months of snowy winter
When cozy houses hold,
She’d break down doors
To wander naked
In the cold.
Mood Madness
The moments bouncing
between depression and mania reminds me of the erratic nature of my disorder.
The hallmark of my disorder is the shift from mania to depression. Depending
upon what mood I’m in, my perception of the world changes. Before the moment I
decided to take my life, I had a place to live in the dorms, I felt great on a
high with hypo-mania. I was caught up on all my classes, I had the trust of
others and therapy was going well. In this manic mood my suicide was planned and
delivered without prolonged ideation or thoughts. I had the energy to keep these
dark thoughts from everyone else. Manic, I barely even flinched as I said
goodbye to a promising future. I closed my eyes for one last time and felt a
sense of peacefulness and happiness with my decision. There was no fear in the
manic mood. No one feared I was going to commit suicide, no one was waiting for
me to prove my sanity and no one doubted my judgment about my disorder.
A week after my suicide attempt, I come off my mania and have started the path
to depression. I stop talking, put my nose in a book, ignore therapy
assignments, lose patience and have sky rocketing irritability levels.
Depression shows me a new reality: I have no where to live, I’m crashing into
sadness, I’m behind in classes, I face mistrust and fear from others and therapy
takes a few steps back. I went into suicide with all the confidence in the world
and have come out a deflated balloon. Depressed, my suicide was planned for
weeks and not delivered because they were only thoughts. I will not have the
energy to keep these dark thoughts from slipping to someone. This coming
depression also focus’ my mind on those moments before the overdose. I am
smacked with the notion that I tried to murder myself. A week later, my neck
hurts from the tubes and I can’t have pain medication because I’m healing my
liver and kidney’s. Depression makes me miss those moments of peacefulness and
the strength by which I made my decision. Since I woke up, almost everyone is
afraid I might end up dead on my floor, that I am not stable and that I am not
right about my stability. Frustration sets in. I know this is my fault and I
take responsibility, but that doesn’t make it easier. Depression has come to
remind me that I hate the frustration.
I am amazed at the difference between the two moods. I am also frightened. Both
moods have their difficulties. Depression takes away my lifeblood and takes away
so many things such as housing and socialization. Mania has so much good, but I
get fatally suicidal so it doesn’t matter what I have. Do I take and use what I
do have quickly and later die while still in possession of good things such as a
job, housing and friends. Or do I go without many good things (housing, friends,
job), but live a long life? Waking up after a suicide attempt makes you ask such
questions. I strive for a balance between the two: a few good things in life and
a medium length of life. I know it is only this mood madness that makes me see
in black and white.
Through all of this talk of mood madness and the motion of death and of my own suicide attempt, I forget that I am still alive. I took one single step that cold Thursday to living and hope. My memory flashes back to that one moment. I stand at the bookcase holding my Lithium bottle. Haziness has already set in my mind from the other pills. I know I’ve probably taken enough to kill me. Still, I hold the Lithium bottle. If I take this I will seriously damage my body. If I take this I will die. I feel a wave of nausea. I drop the Lithium. My death leaves room for hope. I wanted to be dead, but if I lived though this I didn’t want to substantially hurt my body. That small window of doubt was enough for me to live. While I did take enough pills to kill me, I also did not take the one set of pills that would have left no room for error in dying. This revelation has meaning, but my mind can still not comprehend the enormity of the decisions I made: both to die and to live.
We try a new drug, a new
combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again
like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home.
I can find my way back.
Today, I realize that it took only one moment to decide I wanted to commit suicide and it will now take me years to undo the effects suicide had on both me and everyone around me. I think too, of the moment I dropped the Lithium bottle and wanted to live. Thankfully, that decision I made in one moment will allow me to live for years to come. My suicide was inherently a selfish act, yet I watch loved ones struggle to understand why I would have chosen to end my life. They see my promising future, the children I work with as a therapist and my two younger brothers who I love more than anything. Surely, they think, I thought of them before I took my lethal dose. Tears well behind my eyes when I tell them that I did think of them, and still continued to go through with my impulse. Part of me knows I will spend the rest of my life trying to make up for the pain I have caused others. The other part of me knows I will spend the rest of my life trying to quell my own pain I feel inside.
I feel a bit like the time I experienced the sun for the first time in weeks. I finally received courtyard privileges from my doctor. I was excited because it looked wonderful out and I was tired of looking only at locked doors and barred windows. A nurse opens the door and I step out. My eyes instantly close and I feel a slight pain. I open one eye. I hadn’t seen the sun in at least a week. It was beautiful. A wind tugs at me gently. Then again with more force. I can only smile, realizing how lucky I am to feel such a wind. I hesitantly open two eyes. I see that I’m surrounded by a brick wall and dead vegetation. There’s a padlock on the wooden door. I realize that anywhere else, this would have been perhaps a courtyard to a restaurant or the patio of a house. I hear the near constant sirens of ambulances and I realize how close to the hospital I am and so, I walk back into the unit. I didn’t like seeing only the illusion of freedom.
My memory returns me to the present. I still feel like I have one eye open as I adjust to the world again. It’s a little painful and I don’t have both eyes open yet. The scenery still has brick walls surrounding me, only this time they have unlocked doors I can walk through. For a while, I smiled each time I came and went through unlocked doors. Just like the time I first began to breathe on my own or had the use of both hands. It’s the little freedoms in life you don’t realize are more of a privilege than a right. By trying to commit suicide, I instantly took away many rights I enjoyed. Somehow, in the fantasy of suicide you never realize how messy taking your life really is. When my eyes opened to the land of the living, I was not shocked or angry, but immediately accepting. Not much else you can do when a machine is breathing for you and your arms are tied down with restraints. In the moments before my imagined death, I saw calmness and a beautiful picture of death. But, suicide was not beautiful in any way: from activated charcoal and stomach pumps, to chocking on tubes and having bedpans. While I was lucky and came away with no brain damage, there are so many stories of people losing limbs or brain cells and not their life. In a way, such a thought saved me, as I didn’t take Lithium, which had the power to either leave me for dead or leave me wishing I was dead. Today, I breathe in and out and prepare to endure the years it will take to remedy the one action I took so many weeks ago.
I am an unsuccessful suicide. It’s probably the only time I will be excited over something I’ve failed. If I chose to take my mind on a dark path, I’d probably say I couldn’t even get suicide right and get upset. Instead, I choose to remember the moment I left hope hang in the air and I am relieved my attempt subsequently failed. Though today I contend that I am a different person and feel a little lost, I know I will work hard to leave suicide behind and focus on how I can remain healthy. I still remember the woman who colored pictures with her husband and I watched her live through each day during my stay at the hospital. Though her mind was diseased and she lived in an alternate reality, she was still vivacious and had such love in her eyes when her family came to visit. I realize then, that although my disorder may progress in such a manner, I at least want to be the woman with the husband who comes every night to color with me. There doesn’t need to be any more death in my life. I woke up alive and will continue to wake up alive each morning until the moment comes that my death is out of my hands. Now that I’m off of deaths ledge, I think I’ll stay on stable ground and continue to experience life. Breathe in, breathe out. Smile.