Where does the line get so blurred. the one that I live with everyday. Created from my life and my upbringing. The backbone and integrity that shapes who I am and how I define the edges of my life and my actions. I am a person a strong will. I strongly view the rights and wrongs with conviction. I am no-nonsense, hardcore honest as they come. I’ll tell it like it is, even hurting people in the process. My edit button doesn’t seem to work when it comes to honesty. I don’t sugar coat it. I won’t look the other way. So how do I, in my darkest moments chose deception and dishonesty. Both to those around me, and even to myself. As I spoke with Beatrice, I realized the power of the deception and the reason it is there. The me who charges through life, tough and honest can’t kill herself. No, I need to create space, a void, between me and everyone else. I even need to create distance from myself. I must lie, cheat, disengage from all I value and hold dear. I must disrespect myself and others, or I cannot follow thru. I must fail. Give in and give up. It hurts just thinking about it. The tears in session were in response to that pain. A reaction to examining the person I become to end my suffering. The mind is distorting everything. The pain unimaginable so the mind bends in response. Nothing is as it seems. Nobody around me is there because I have created distance. The more the better. Little endless arguments with my partner coupled with silence. Each day ticking past and the distance grows. Sessions stretch in uncomfortable silence and disconnection. I am moving farther and farther from who “I” am. She is disappearing a piece at a time. The plan becomes the primary focus and everything else pales. Deception comes to stay. A stranger in my house of integrity. Still I accept it with open arms. Anything to stop the pain. Hours spent online looking and reading. Finding confidence in the study of death and suicide. Deleting the browser history, and closing the laptop. Not letting anyone see the path I am walking alone. I have chosen a path. In the vast richness that is life I have skittered off to the very outskirts. Nothing out there but the daily study of death. The obsession. The HOPE. Alone I continue on this path. I do not share my plans. I don’t let anyone see anything beyond the crushing depression I am surviving under. But they know me well enough. They knew I could not hold up much longer. Those bitter cold days toward the end of January as the clock ticked unbeknownst to them. I was getting closer. I had found purpose and hope. The end was in sight all I had to do was stick to the plan. and so the deception continued. I parted ways with everything that makes me me. I failed me and everyone around me with my decisions. I gave up and succombed to the distorted reality by brain was flashing before me. IT WILL BE FOREVER. IT WON’T GET BETTER. IT WILL HURT MORE. Enough, I had come to the outer edge of what I could cope or even comprehend in my slow dumb depressed head. Though becomes hard. Everything feels like you are swimming against the current. Day after day. I had enough. I let go. I went with the current. I stepped off that chair into the blowing snow. I chose death over life. I harmed everyone around me.
It is never spoken about, ever. Not in treatment and never ever at home. This changed. I let my mind drift back into the snow. I lit upon the fear and terror beneath that mound of snow. I followed my footsteps in my mind as I crawled up those icy steps. I saw me in my most vulnerable of places. Under the weight of so many nameless emotions making me smaller and smaller.
Was I relieved? No, I was not relieved I failed. There was however a primitive part of my brain that dragged me inside terrified of freezing to death, or losing my fingers and toes to frost bite. The same primitive part that fought the rope and tried to intervene. Often coroners report hanging victims with their fingers between the rope and their neck, or marks that show an attempt was made to fight the rope. It is the part of us that breaths. The part that keeps us upright and alive. It is always a fight to take one’s life because we are biologically programmed to live. I know that part of me. I found it that morning in the snow. I could have just let go and gone back to black as it was beckoning. Just close your eyes. I crawled instead.
My fear is that the wiring has changed. Once you make that choice, and act on it, it gets easier. That neural pathway lights up like a landing strip. Suffering/ Pain ——>GO HERE.
I don’t know why it is that way. I know I’m not alone. I have met so many others like myself. The battle isn’t depression at that point it is putting the brakes on a well-worn descent. It is finding the part of you that says NO, I’m not a deceitful lying person. I’m not about giving up and giving in. I am a survivor. NO, ————->TURN HERE. And so it goes, over and over. This is why there is such danger once a person has done it before. The odds go up. The path is there to follow. It isn’t scary anymore. It is accepted, and even fostered in the face of pain and suffering. How does one choice under such extreme circumstances paint such a different future? How does one alter that? shut off that path? Remove the option from the table? I don’t know the answer. I’m, not sure it can be done. All I know is it flashes neon in my head at the first sign of change. When the pain arrives at my doorstep and looks to be coming to stay a while. WHY NOT? TURN HERE———–>
It doesn’t fade. It doesn’t waiver. Ever. I watch it in silence. I try not to look, but it is like a car wreck. You can’t peel yours eyes away. I absorb it like a sponge and start the obsessing all over again. The scariest part is the more times it happens the shorter the interval. It is right there. So fast and so bright. I can’t help but be lured. I try to move past. To turn my mind. Find something and concentrate on it. I do okay under most circumstances, but there is always that moment of choice. Keeping my integrity intact. Opening my mouth and allowing my treatment team in. Allowing them to make the good choices they make. Err on the side of caution, even if it would probably work itself out. I trust that, for sadly I have learned I can’t trust myself. I can’t fight the allure of an endless peace with no repeat cycle of pain and suffering this life has offered me. Does that make me weak? yes, in my eyes it does. Does it make me a failure. yes, I believe that as well. Does it make be deceitful? yes, as I have lied and omitted to create the space I needed to take my own life. I am all of those things and I don’t know how to alter it. I know I can be a powerhouse of tough. I can battle and pull myself along by my fingernails. I know I can push myself beyond all I think is possible, except when that neon light flickers on and I take the hard right. TURN HERE——–>
Skinner would have a field day with that one. but I think it goes beyond just conditioning. It is a complicated mess of emotions and distortions. It is a storm that lights up my head with the lighting bolts of the past, present and future. It is a storm that drives me to the nearest shelter I know. Unfortunately that shelter is the most unhealthy, awful choice. It is the end, but somehow my mind can’t see that. I can’t see that, because if I truly did, I would not even consider it a choice.