Category Archives: Suicide

What Difference Does It Make?

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What difference does it make in my life and my family’s life that I have not had any suicidal thoughts in several weeks?  What difference does in my life and in my family’s life that my depression and anxiety do not have as strong of a hold on me as they used to? 

Not having suicidal thoughts for several weeks means, my husband can rest easier and be away from home easier.  He does not have to deal with the constant worry that I will do something to hurt myself.  He will not have to keep explaining to our daughter why Mommy is in the hospital again.  His stress levels will be reduced, his blood pressure will come down, and he will be happier again.  I can work on building up trust with him again.  I will be less cranky and argumentative.  Which means when he comes home from work, he will not have to worry about what kind of argument I am going to start.  I believe we will be closer, because there will be less tension between me and him. 

When my depression and anxiety was very bad, I quit talking to people. I  would just sit on the sidelines and watch as my husband and daughter engaged each other in conversation.  I was not a part of things, and my husband missed me.  He is enjoying it now that I will talk to him and our daughter more, and do not sit silently as much as I used to.  I do not isolate myself as  much anymore either.  I enjoy it when we go places together and they are really having fun when I go with them. 

My grandmother, who I have never seen cry, not even when my grandfather passed away, has cried about me.  She cried because she was worried, and confused about why her granddaughter would want to die.  I think it is incredibly sad that I caused her so much pain.   At least now, she can worry less and I will not reduce her to tears anymore.  She is a loving, caring grandmother and it is unfair that I have caused her to carry such a huge burden of worry for all these months.    She is 82 years old, with a few health problems, I do not need to cause her anymore worry than I already have.  I am looking forward to spending many more years with her.

My brother and sister-in-law can spend less time worrying about me, and helping my husband, and spend more time taking care of their daughter and themselves.  They have been absolutely wonderful.  They have really helped me.  They have made sure that there is always an open line of communication between me and my family, and them.  They willingly listen to me express my frustrations, worries, and concerns without forming judgments.  They have been a huge source of support to my husband as he has had to help me through things.  At least now, with me not having suicidal thoughts, they can relax a bit and not have to sacrifice as much time in taking care of me and my family.                                                                                                          
For me personally, not having suicidal thoughts for several weeks means I feel free.  I look back at how things had been going, and how I had isolated myself, and it feels like I was a prisoner during that time.  Now that the depression and anxiety are lessening, and I am not having suicidal thoughts, I feel as if I have been freed from a prison cell.  I feel lighter.  Having all those thoughts in my head, and the sadness I always had, and the anger I always had, I always felt as if I was carrying a huge load on my back.  Bits and pieces of that load are going away, so I feel lighter.  My stomach feels better.  Every single day I woke up with a huge knot in my stomach because I was so anxious and nervous all the time.  As the day went on the knot in my stomach got bigger and bigger because I would become more anxious and nervous as the day went along.  That knot is gone.  I can wake up in the morning and not start the day already feeling bad.  I feel so much better.

I realize that not every day is going to be a good day and that I could have some more medication issues, but at this point I am more hopeful than I have been in a very long time.  Hope brings on a more positive attitude and  I feel like I am moving away from that dark cloud that has surrounded me for so many years.

I Am Going to Draw A Line In The Sand

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Today I had my weekly appointment with my counselor. I went with a topic in mind. How do I deal with my resentments, most particularly held against my mother, so that I do not get consumed by my resentments? When I am consumed by my resentments I become very angry and spiral down into a “rabid dog” type of mentality, I am sad, and I know that it contributes to my depression.

As usual, my counselor had a very simple solution, that is going to be super hard to implement. Basically, she said that if I would start being very clear with my mother about what my boundaries were and stuck with the consequences if she chose to cross a boundary, I would feel empowered. She believes that much of my resentment is born out of frustration, because I am not very good at making clear what is acceptable behavior towards myself and what is unacceptable behavior, especially where my mother is concerned. She feels that if I can accomplish this with my mother, that everyone else will be easy.

Let me just put it this way, my mother is a very manipulative woman, who tends to behave in a very passive aggressive/childish way when she does not get her own way. She knows what all my buttons are and knows exactly how to push each and everyone of them, and I always get sucked into whatever game/manipulation she has going on at the time. At times she can be so wonderful and be exactly the mother I have always wanted, and then when I start depending on her and really need her support, it is as if she snatches that away and I am left once again with the mother that makes me feel inferior, unintelligent, abandoned, not worthy, frustrated, disappointed and sad.

My challenge then, is when she is acting appropriate and loving to take it for what it is and remember that it will not last. That when she has has gotten whatever emotional need filled by me, she will revert back to her usual manipulative, passive aggressive self. Most importantly, I cannot change her. I can only change how I react to her. That means I will have to be assertive and set up boundaries to protect myself from her manipulations and behavior. Only when I can accomplish all of that will I be able to let go of my resentments towards her. For my peace of mind and sanity, I really need to start working on this immediately.

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Check this news article out.

Study: Over 8 Million Americans Consider Suicide Each Year – Health News | Current Health News | Medical News – FOXNews.com

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My Mind Powers Can Turn You Into A Frog

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During the last few years there is a special someone who had the ability to make me smile no matter how much my depression and anxiety were affecting me.  That person was my little, four year old niece.  She was the one person in my family that I felt had no expectations of me, and just accepted me as I was, good days and bad.  Most of the time she thinks I am pretty funny, but likes to tell me all the time how silly I am.

I was very fortunate when my niece was born.  After her mother had to go back to work, my brother and sister-in-law trusted me enough to babysit her during the day sometimes.  It has always meant so much to me that I had the opportunity to play such an important role in her life when she was so young.  I will always appreciate my brother and sister-in-law for allowing me to do that. 

My niece calls me MeMe.  My family calls me Missy and when she was younger she could not say it properly and it came out MeMe.  I thought it was a great aunt name and asked if they would let her keep calling me that so I could be the aunt with the cool nickname. 

Over time my brother and sister-in-law moved to another house a bit further away and my health started to decline a bit so I could not babysit anymore.  Plus with the depression and anxiety, I could not really get out like I used to.  However, I had opportunities to let her come to my house and spend the  night, or hang out with her a bit.  I loved those times.  She was so much fun to play with.

One time I was bringing her to my house, she saw some cows in the cow pastures around us.  There were a few brown cows.  I told her the brown cows made chocolate milk, and the black and white cows made white milk.  To this day she still talks about brown cows making chocolate milk.  She has such a great sense of humor for a four year old. A few of months ago we had gathered at my grandmothers to cook out and spend some time together.  My mother had bought some bubble guns.  With no prompting from me, she would fill her gun up with the bubble mixture and go shoot her father with the bubbles and then she would always tell him “MeMe told me to do it!” 

She was a life saver when my family had gathered at a restaurant.  Between the depression and my anxiety, being in a crowded restaurant was a nightmare.  I could hardly stand it.  I had brought my niece some toys and a package of punch balls and some bubbles, she really wanted to play with them.  So every so often she would ask me to take her outside on the front porch of the restaurant. Once we got out there, she and I would punch each other with the punch balls (she always declared herself the winner), or we would blow bubbles, or we would just sit there and talk about Disney Princesses.  She and I both like Cinderella the best.  The thing is she accepted me on whatever level I could give her at the moment and if I was quiet for a bit she would play by herself, she made no stressing demands on me.  I know a few adults who could learn a thing or two from her. 

A couple of weeks ago we went to my brother and sister-in-law’s house to hang out, and have pizza.  My niece was just great!  When she saw us pull into the driveway she came running out to welcome us.  She showed me a few of her wrestling moves, and in a discussion that involved me trying to convince her that she should share a stuffed animal with me I learned that she could not because “they were all her favorites”  By the time the pizza arrived she was dressed in a Tinkerbell outfit, carrying two wands, trying to impress me with the “power” that was in her wands.  Again, there was a sharing discussion between me and her about the wands and she let me know that I could not handle the “power” her wands contained and then promptly turned me into a pepperoni pizza.  Then told me that because I was a pizza I could not talk. 

When I was released from her pepperoni pizza spell, I let her know about my mind powers, which I could use to turn her into a frog.  Then I turned her into a frog.  We went back and forth turning each other into frogs and pizza over and over again.  Her wand was waving all over the place, my mind was working very hard with all those frog spells.  We had a lot of fun! 

Once again, that cute little kid brought me out of my own depression and anxiety better than anyone else could do and had me concentrating on other things and had me laughing.  One of the things I am going to do when I have a bad day or days again, is remember “My mind power can turn you into a frog” and think about the good times I have had with my niece.  What a little blessing she is!

Did You Say Pineapple?!

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A few weeks ago, my counselor and I were discussing ways that I could let my family know I was feeling anxious or upset without having to give them a long explanation.  She suggested using a code word.  She said one couple she had counseled used the word pineapple.  So I decided to go home and think of my own code word. 

The day after that counseling session my family and I went Walmart.  At that time I still had not told my family about the code word idea, because I had not found one yet.    As we entered the parking lot of Walmart, my husband and daughter started bickering.  They had raised their voices a little bit, and it was getting on my nerves.  Raised voices in a small area really makes me anxious and we were all crammed into the front seat of our pick up.  I had asked them a couple of times to stop and they had not listened, so desperate for anything to make them stop I suddenly remembered the code word idea.  The only word that came to mind was pineapple, the one my counselor said that someone else used.  So suddenly, with no warning I yelled “Pineapple” as loud as I could. 

The result was an instantaneous silence.  Then my husband, out of shock I believe, started asking me if I “wanted a pineapple milkshake” or did I want to get a pineapple while we were at the store.  I explained to them that pineapple was my new code word for when something was going on that was making anxious or that things were going horribly awry.  My husband and daughter thought this was hilarious and kept telling me what a pineappled up idea that was.  Despite their laughter and making fun of me they did agree to listen for me saying the word pineapple and know that things were not going well.  Little did any of us suspect that something being “pineappled up” would become a regular part of our language around here.   

For example, while I was spending some time in the psychiatric hospital, my husband decided that my daughter was in desperate need of some new bras, so he was a brave man and took her bra shopping.  Things did not go well.  After they got home, my daughter called me and was telling me how it was so hard to go bra shopping with her father, that he pineappled everything up.  Then she said there was pineapple over the whole shopping experience.  In fact she spent about five minutes telling me exactly how her father pineappled up bra shopping and how she was never going to go pineapple bra shopping with her father again. 

Funny how a simple thing like the word pineapple can change how you look at a situation and put some humor in it. 

How Did I Get That Lonely?

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When I was looking for topic ideas for today’s blog, I came across a song, sung by Blaine Larsen, that was about suicide.  This part of the song really caught my attention.

“How do you get that lonely, how do you hurt that bad
To make you make the call, that havin’ no life at all
Is better than the life that you had
How do you feel so empty, you want to let it all go
How do you get that lonely… and nobody know”

Those lyrics get right to the heart of what my family was thinking and asking when I tried to commit suicide.  They get right to the heart of what I think as well.  How did I get that lonely and full of pain and no one really knew?  Were they not paying attention?  Or was I that good at hiding things?  Or did they just pretend not to see?  Or did it just never cross anyone’s mind that I would attempt suicide?

My personal opinion is that there is not just one answer.  I kept all my pain and suffering inside of me.  I did not know how to ask for help.  I did not know how to tell anyone that I was obsessed with my own death and was so full of pain.  I always felt that if someone had just asked me I would have told them everything.  I even tried to get people to ask me.  When I would go to a new doctor and I would fill out those forms they give new patients, there is always the question “Do you feel depressed?”  I always answered yes, and not one doctor ever asked me about it.  I think that they do not really read those papers, even though you are told how important they are. 

In some ways it was so very easy for me to hide what was going on.  Since I have other illnesses, it was easy to blame the fact that I had spent all day in bed on not feeling well.  Or to use the excuse of, “I do not feel good” to stay home when the rest of the family went somewhere.  It even came in handy when I had no choice but to go somewhere, I could use it to leave early.  The more I used my illnesses to isolate myself, the more sad and lonely I became. 

My husband knew better than anyone that something was really wrong with me.  He saw me everyday, he saw my in-ability to cope with normal, everyday tasks.  He saw me start crying for no reason, or saw my face after I had been crying for no reason.  He withstood the brunt of my anger for months.  I think though, it just never crossed his mind that I would try suicide.  I remember him telling me, after I tried, before I told anyone the truth about what happened, that the nurses in ICU told him that I had tried to commit suicide.  He said that he did not believe them and told them I was “too intelligent” to do something like that.  

Why didn’t I tell the love of my life that I was hurting so much?  Why didn’t I go to him and ask him to help me?  Even now I am still not really sure.  Embarrassment, maybe? Not wanting to worry him?  Lacking the ability to explain it to him, since I did not really understand it either?  I think that is close to why I did not, but not a complete answer yet.

Why didn’t I go to another family member and let them know what was going on?  That is a painful question and one that is fairly easy to answer.  I did not trust them.  Those lonely, sad, depressed feelings and thoughts are some heavy stuff.  I just did not feel  I could share those with people whose motives and/or actions I could not completely trust.  To be quite frank about it, I believe the poor state of my relationship with some of those other family members contributed to my feelings of loneliness, sadness and abandonment.

As I became more and more focused on suicide being my only choice, I realized I could not tell anyone anything.  If I did, they would have found a way to stop me.  By that point I was determined in my course of action.  I did not want anyone to get in the way of that. 

I was surrounded by people who loved me and I still felt an unbearable loneliness, and sadness.  I carried it alone, for months, years even.  I get sad now when I think about how heavy that burden was and how I felt like I could not share it with anyone. 

Things are different now.  My husband is very good about asking how I am doing.  How I am feeling.  I learned that there are some family members that I can trust with anything.  I learned that there are family members I can trust with nothing.  Now I know who I can go to when the thoughts in my head start pointing toward a dark direction.  I know now that I do not have to carry such a heavy burden alone every again.