Dial “H” For Help

Twelve years ago, I tried ending my life. I was in a deep, dark place. No one could talk me out of it because no one knew. I didn’t look for help because I didn’t want it. I had been dating BFam less than a year and was almost positive this would send him over the edge. I wouldn’t drink because my father was an alcoholic and I saw what it did to him, but I smoked until I couldn’t feel my lungs anymore. Anything to destroy myself made me feel better.

A year after my initial attempt, I tried again. BFam was suffering from insomnia at the time. We were in Columbus living in a small town home. Young, dumb, and wondering what life was all about. Neither of us were happy with how the start of our adulthood was panning out (me being 21, he was 23). We were both taking turns fighting our own personal demons, and failing miserably. A nearby University campus doctor prescribed sleeping pills to BFam to help him get a good night’s sleep. In a normal world, the pill had good intent, but side affects were awful, leaving him jittery and more nervous than normal. You see, the normal world and prescription drugs are not nice to BFam’s system. What should have been nightly doses turned into one night, and BFam toughed it out instead. Of course this meant his pill count was unmonitored… and, boy, the Devil loves idle hands, lemme tell you.

People talk about guardian angels all the time. I must have had one that night because the pills wouldn’t stay down. Chasing them with a cheap wine cooler, it wasn’t long before I wanted to lay down on any hard surface that would have me. There was no plan after I’d emptied the bottle, no next step to my wanting to take a permanent dirt nap. BFam’s battle with sleep deprivation was part two to my blessing because his tossing and turning made him alert to the stirrings of the house. Our stairs were carpeted yet I apparently made quite a riot, flopping like a fish out of water up the stairs, intoxicated, because he was standing over me in minutes and I don’t know how he got there. Details between that stair well and me on all fours in the grass of our backyard, giving my insides back to Mother Earth, are a blur. That night… well. That night. Later, I’d be in the ER drinking a charcoal and chocolate milk cocktail from a Styrofoam cup – a cocktail I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.

Suicide is a selfish act. So is depression. The sufferer doesn’t set out to be selfish on purpose. There are no forests or trees to see the difference between. Just you and those pills. That razor. That tall building’s ledge. A (wo)man on an island. I don’t know if you ever stop feeling this way once it starts, but if you get to the place where it gets a little better (a place I hope I’m dwelling in at present), you start to see you aren’t alone.

I frequent sites to help me remember how much I’m not alone.

It’s comforting. And still… sometimes I wish I were.