Surviving Suicide - How I Survived

My previous post about my experience with suicide would be for naught and completely self-serving if I didn't share with you exactly HOW I survived suicide. I mentioned that following my hospitalization, I was placed on medication and had psychiatric and psychological help. Yes, it did help, but I believe a combination of factors came to help me enjoy life.

Of course, each person has their own thought processes, their own environments, families, emotions and situations. And each person has their own strengths and weaknesses, so this entire combination of factors and "ah ha" moments, to quote Ms. Winfrey, may not work for everyone, but just one on its own may be motivation enough, I believe, to kick start a process of healing.

1. ACCEPT
Accept help. Accept that you even need help.
Accept that, yeah, you made bad decisions, horrible decisions, but accept that every ying has a yang.
Accept that someone might love you, and if someone reaches out to you from concern, whether they fit your ideal picture of a Prince in Shining Armor or not, they probably love you and that's worth something. (They might even be in the shape of your mother and father.)
Accept that you have feelings that suck. Feelings that hurt and that aren't pleasurable. Allow them to be.
Cause the secret is: they pass. In the moment, anxiety, anger, fear, pain, hurt, those feelings seem unbearable. But they pass. You're mind IS able to adapt and calm down.

2. ALLOW YOURSELF TO FEEL GOOD EMOTIONS
And don't immediately think about how it's going to suck when the rush of happiness is going to wear off. Cause then, poof, happiness will be gone and, well... there ya go.
When the smallest glint of happiness happens on its own, a beautiful little event that happened without whatever crutch you needed, whether it's cigarettes, alcohol, drugs, calling that person just one more time, eating that extra donut, pounding that wall, when the happiness hits you in the chest, shut up. Stop thinking. Just stop. Feel it. It's awesome. I love that moment.

3. MAKE THOSE GLINTS OF HAPPINESS LAST LONGER AND MORE OFTEN
Again, if you accept that your happy, no matter why or how, and you make it last longer and stay with it, it will become easier to come by and it'll feel like it'll last longer. And you already know how to do that, cause you've been doing great with holding onto to shitty feelings. Try it.

4. GET OUT OF THE SITUATIONS THAT ALLOW PAIN TO GROW
In my case, that was getting out of a bad relationship, finally quitting my extremely stressful job and stopping to beat myself up about my past. The day I broke down in front of my former office and realized I couldn't stay there anymore was great. But what felt even better was biting the bullet and setting up job interviews and saying "I quit." Today, I honestly have the best job I could have ever dreamed of. And what's funny, is that my employer hadn't originally hired me to do what I do now. Over time, he saw what my passion was and I allowed myself to take on the challenge. (That was a bigger chunk of happy that felt great and I stewed in for a while.) I've been with my new employer for a while now, and I've been turning down job offers. Yeah. Dude. I know.

5. LET LIFE HAPPEN
Sit back. Relax. Enjoy the show. We all love stories, the twists and the turns and the leaps of faith. We all scream at the TV when we see game show contestants bite their lips when faced with the decision to take a risk. DO IT!!! So why don't we treat ourselves the same way? You've been meaning to start singing again? Do it! (That was one of my secret passions. When I finally said, ok, I'll do it, at the age of 25, well... let's just say 6 years later I have recorded 3 albums, shot music videos, performed shows and collaborated. Feels great to see my accomplishments no matter how few people actually heard or saw me. It fffeeeeelllsss gggooooddddd.)

You also have to accept that shitty stuff IS going to happen. Bad news, accidents, loss, pain. Don't freak out when it does, it's life. Life doesn't go the way you plan it to. Never. Okay, sometimes. But the point isn't to stick your stiff view and life plan. Chong said it best. Go with the flow, man. Be like water and find a new path around the obstacle. Creative Solution Based Thinking if you'd like to use big terms. Or rather, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for the psych term. Learning to develop coping mechanisms. They should teach it in schools. It's crazy how you learn weird and harmful ways of dealing with stuff that sucks. Kids used to laugh at me all the time, for my appearance, over eagerness and all that. So I tried giving them stuff like candies and pencils to like me better. Where the hell did I get THAT idea?! Cute, but not when you're 14. Never knew that they were basically picking something about me and exaggerating it because, well, they feared that problem or thing, too. So it's funny. I could've been compassionate and brushed it off. Oh, the things we learn (or refuse to hear when your young.)

6. HAVE CONFIDENCE THAT YOU DO KNOW HOW TO MAKE GOOD DECISIONS AND GO FOR IT
The day I stopped kicking myself and expecting to make bad decisions and just let myself live, things changed. I changed. Good happened. (And then I allowed myself to bask in that, too... you know, cause it felt good.)

And when it comes to love. Love... that thing we all crave.

They say you need to love yourself before you can let someone love you back. Yeah, okay. I'm getting married in love because I accepted that someone thought I was worthy, even loved the way I look (every day I didn't wear those ripped sweatpants) and I let him love me. Now, we both help each other get those little and big poofs of happiness as often as possible. His love does help propel me to be a better me, I said that in a previous post, but I think I get better when I propel him to be a better him, help him reach his goals, tell him I think he's worth it. Quid pro quo, baby. Works both ways.

Anways, that's enough for long posts. Letting yourself be helped was the first step for me. From then on it was Oooh's and Aaaah's and Now-I-Gets-It. (And, in my case, reading and informing myself on depression and anxiety, both medical and spiritual - Eckhart Tolle, Jill Bolte Taylor and Deepak Chopra had profound effects on my psyche.)

I look forward to more and more poofs of happiness and now know how to work with the less happy stuff.

Surviving Suicide and Its Consquences

Last night, while my fiancé and I were watching the Montreal Canadiens struggle (yet beat) the Pittsburgh Penguins, I saw a tweet by @jolieodell pass through my feed. Its title changed the course of my evening and my day today.

It was simply titled : The Subject of Suicide & Why I'm Alive Today. (Read her complete post here.)

What happened next shocked me. She made me think of my own attempted suicide and the reasons and the incredible fact that I, too, survived it. Her transparency and blunt honesty pushed me to deal with the most sensitive topic for me: my failure to die and success in living.

Let me finally explain and... go there (whether you chose to read this or not). And to learn the steps I took to actually survive long term, you can read this post.

Almost ten years ago, I had gone through a very tough and difficult time for myself. After having had a rough adolescence dealing with being a social reject, hanging with the wrong crowds begging for acceptance, dealing with drugs and abuse, family issues, mental health issues, losing my first job, oh hell, there was a big old thick black cloud storming over my head for so long (years) I could no longer deal with it.

We hear that so often when it comes to depression: I could no longer deal with it. But what does it feel like when that decision to end it hits you?

Believe me, choosing to end your life is not a spur of the moment decision. It's a decision that accompanies physical, emotional and psychological exhaustion and sometimes comes in the shape of the little voice in your head. Mine told me: "You suck. You're stupid. You got yourself in all of these dumbass situations and now you can't get yourself out. Bravo. You'll never be happy, don't even think about it. No one can help you. No one will understand. You're a cry baby. You're selfish. You fucked up. Again. And again. And again. You'll never get it right. No one loves you. Just finish it. I just want to die." (Those words were like a broken record in my head night after night after day after day for years on end. You eventually believe them and find a disgusting comfort in them).

You delve so deeply into the comfort of giving in, of not moving or talking or leaving the house (because you're too ashamed and tired), that the only feasible way out (in your very ill brain, at that point), that the easiest and simplest way out seems to be ending it all. It's impossible to look at the ones around you that DO love you and believe that it's enough, that they'll be willing to undertake the care necessary to heave you out of it, because even you know that you can't do it alone. You don't want to bother them, though. You're ashamed and don't even want them to know YOU know you're a failure; your little voice lets you believe that they'll just agree with you and beat down on you even more. Depression truly is a black hole and you become blind and ignorant.

When issues accumulate, you lose the capacity to deal with the racing heart, the shaking, the head aches, the body aches, the crying and weeping, the utter physical exhaustion, the exasperation of constantly having to deal with stressful situations, the anxiety attacks before having to go to work, the sense of utter failure and disappointment. Dragging yourself out of depression seems completely impossible or just too difficult to even begin to believe you'll make it out alive.

You actually believe you want the earth to rip open and just swallow you so you don't have to deal with anything anymore. You can't deal with anything anymore. Your cup runeth over... and not in the good way.

November 2002

I had just lost my job, my first ever "career" oriented job. My best friend (and former boyfriend) no longer wanted to deal with my destructive behaviour and cut me off. My parents had divorced not long from then and I had moved into my first apartment. I was in the midst of abusing drugs and alcohol to 'feel something'. I had returned to hanging out with my high school "friends" that also abused drugs and alcohol and abused of my ridiculous need to be generous and kind and loved and accepted.

One morning, I woke up sluggishly. Alone. I went into the living room. I hadn't showered in days, my head was pounding. I lit up a cigarette and turned on the TV. I got up and went in the bathroom to get Advil. When I opened the medicine cabinet, I felt a rush of relief. "Today. I've had enough. It's today."

I grabbed all of the pill bottles I could find. Advil, Motrin, codeine, something my roommate used, no idea what is was (I left 10$ on the sink to pay her back for them, whatever they were), a new pack of sinus pills. Literally every pill in the house.

I dropped them on the coffee table and headed to the liquor cabinet. Goldshlagger and that half and half wine liquor, whatever it's called... They were my chasers.

So as the cloud of smoke from my cigarettes thickened, I started swallowing pills, 4-5 at a time, chasing them with the alcohol. I watched TV, kept smoking and swallowing.

I didn't bother writing a note. Instead, I wrote in my journal three words. "Free at last." I then proceed to fill pages and pages with what I was feeling, how the pills were affecting me, how comforting death was going to be. (I no longer have that journal... I think it's a blessing.)

Eventually, I got sleepy, so I remember grabbing all the proof and taking it with me in my room (my roomie was a stickler for cleanliness and I was ashamed of the mess I was making.) I then remember collapsing in my bed, face first in the pillow.

From there, everything is fuzzy. My friend (and saviour) says I had paged him. I don't remember doing that. He said he tried calling me back. When I finally answered, I wasn't coherent, was making no sense. So he rushed over to my apartment and was about to break down the door when my roommate got back from a weekend trip. He burst into my room, tried slapping me awake (this is what he told me, I was out cold).

All I remember is my head hitting a car door when he tried sitting me in the front seat of his Civic.

My next memory is the excruciating pain and burn of the doctors shoving a tube down my nose and throat and pumping my stomach.

My parents and sister showed up... and then the wave of reality slammed into me like a brick wall.

Shame. Anger. A plethora of swear words were in my brain until a weird euphoria hit me. I scared myself and my mother when I just got extremely light hearted and funny and happy all of a sudden. I couldn't explain it. Still can't. Once I was well enough, they transferred me over to the psychiatric emergency ward of the Douglas Hospital. That was the scariest night of my life.

After years of therapy, ups and downs, diagnoses and medication and more therapy, I'm happy to report that I'm alive. I made it.

There were a few severe depression attacks after that, of course. But I made it. I dealt with thoughts and desires of death for years... but 10 years later, I'm happy. I wasn't supposed to be here so I've learned to take nothing for granted anymore.

I finally wrote to the friend who saved my life today to thank him. We'd parted ways about a year after the "day". My turmoil was far from finished (it was very recently that I'd successfully escaped depression), and we were destructive to one another.

I owe him my life, though, and all of the amazing things I'm living these days.

I learned that the road down into darkness is long and slippery and the road up is hard and bumpy, it's tiring and exhausting to deal with, but with the right help, unrelenting love from just one person or an army of people, care, and relearning to "deal" and learn new coping mechanisms, it DOES get better. Much much better.

Thank you Jolie and thank you Manny. (And thanks Mom for calling me 10 times a day all those weeks after the Day. I know I called you annoying back then, but I appreciated it. A lot.)

What is Marriage?

In 7 months, I will be making the most important promise of my life. My childhood dreams and my adult desires will combine into one long-term promise to someone who has transformed me into who I am today.  Beyond the planning of the wedding, I look forward to more days like today, no different, no harder or easier, nothing will have changed, except for a new qualitative for the man in my life: husband.

Sometimes, I feel my excitement about this big move might fluster some feathers from women who wish they were living what I'm living now or simply don't get it. Sometimes, I get a plethora of suggestions and tips for a long-lasting marriage, and sometimes I get asked : "Why? What's the point?"

What does marriage mean today? 

In the past, it was a religious contract for two human beings to be bound to one another under God in order to procreate and manage a family. The roles were tightly defined before the post-modern feminism that I have been raised in: women managed the homestead, men managed the income necessary to do so. Women cooked, cleaned, raised the children, loved their man unconditionally, supported them in their follies without missing a beat. Well... let's be honest. Times have changed, but not that much. Is it me or is my generation looking at our grandmothers with a lot of respect and a little bit of romanticism about those days? (Or maybe it's just because of "Mad Men".)

But today, in my non-secular, non-traditional life, where divorce is not taboo but a "way out", an "oops, I made a mistake", where pre-nups are no longer only for the rich, what does marriage stand for? What am I getting myself into?

First, let me state what most women most likely state before they walk down the aisle: Yes, I am getting married for life.

This statement must seem like a big "duh" to so many. But I don't take this lightly. My experience of marriage is two-fold. My parents divorced, so did my fiancé's. For different reasons, like many of our parents. Mine married very young, raised children, lived separate experiences but one shared life where sacrifice was a constant. They grew up, matured, to realize they were very different people from the day they said "I do". Divorce was the reasonable solution to their unhappiness. But when they got married, the answer to "Why" would certainly have been "Because we love each other and want to be together, no matter what." Oops. But believe me, as their child, just as the children of so many divorced couples, divorce was the best possible outcome : I love my parents, but I love them more divorced. I no longer see them as one entity, as 'my parents', like we do when we are children, but I see them for who they are as independent people. They are stronger apart. Divorce did not equate to failure, as the stigma dictates.

My grandparents lived a different definition of marriage. They were very religious, god-fearing people. My grandmother would never have imagined leaving my grandfather, even amidst his crazy ideas and questionable business decisions; that's just not what a lady did. Even after his death, she remained faithful to him for over a decade until her own death. On days like today, I wish I could dial up Heaven on Skype and ask her "Why? How? What did marriage mean to you? How did you do it?"

Why am I agreeing into this institution even though my education on the topic is confused, mixed, overtly personal at best? Why do some get married telling themselves that if it doesn't work out they can always get divorced? Why is that even an option? Why bother getting married? Well, what does marriage mean to me?

I am a woman of many levels, I guess. I'm getting married because I believe that children are better raised with two strong, loving, constant role-models. Because marriage is a confirmation that I have found my partner in life, the ying to my yang. This man has shown me both support for who I am and challenge to be better. Because he's accepted me for what I do and say and feel, but always has a smile on his face knowing I have yet to push my own limits and he wants to be there to see me do it. Because we share many opinions and thoughts on how we want our lives to be, both personally and together, but still think separately - neither of us is "whipped", for the record. And because the human beings we'll create together will be awesome, cause we're awesome. (Hehehe, well what!? It's true!)

Because at the end of the day, I finally have tasted what real love is and have not felt the desire to ask myself "Is there someone better out there?" Because there isn't. He's perfect... for me. I've never been a better me since I met him. And I want that to continue, because oh baby, it's so just the beginning. (And if you knew me, you'd know that I spent my entire life looking for something better. The fact that I've found it is incredible.)

I believe the path we've taken, having been together for nearly 5 years, living together for 4, is testament to how well we know each other. We live together as if we already are married. No decision is made without both having a chance to pitch in our thoughts and opinions. Compromise? Yeah, we know what it is, but it's not so much about compromise as it is about "What will make you happy because your happiness will rub off on me." (We'd never force the other into a situation that we know would make the other uncomfortable. Do you know how much that is worth?!) We both share passions together, but have talents that are our own. We have one life, but two different experiences. We know each other deeply, but take nothing for granted. And yes, after 5 years, he just keeps getting hotter and more attractive. I still have those butterflies and the excitement to see him after work. We tell each other we love each other every day, but we don't just say it. We mean it. We bicker and argue, and we've fought, but we hate it. We hate upsetting the other. It never lasts. And no, we've never been to bed upset at one another. We don't just say we're sorry, afterwards either. We correct the mistakes we each made and explain each other.

But still. Marriage.... wow. What does it mean to you? What have you experienced? Learned?