My friend just texted me that he wanted to #kill himself, so I told him to do it.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010 at 1:00AM
Alrite, here's my deal. People come to me for everything. From how to fix a broken image on a site, to questions on which blog is best suited for their client, to dating, and to incredibly serious life or death shit. I don't know where, or why, or what, but they do. It's awesome, I'm incredibly grateful that it allows me to be of service. I've had a very full 25 almost 26 years on this planet enabling me to be able to relate to people, and break situations down for them in a very specific manner because chances are good - I've actually walked in those shoes.
Suicide attempts used to totally be my thing. I suck at suicide actually ... one of the VERY few things in life that I cannot do. Shocking ain't it? Life's a bitch ... it just keeps going after you take an entire bottle of pills. Who knew!!! Amazing though how many organs you can actually feel the next morning. Yes, I felt my organs ... and still have a gnarly scar on my nose from when I was so high from the tylenol PM that my face smacked this white corkboard I had in my room.
So you have to understand that when I got the text from a friend from high school saying "I was thinking about suicide again for the first time since Hall (my old high school)." I knew what shoes he was standing in. Size 7 Jimmy Choos ... FAABBULLLOOUUSS!!
Rather than coddle him, or immediately call him - as again, we were texting each other ... I continued working on the post that I was editing and with one hand texted "you want an escape. You don't want to die, or you'd already be dead."
In 2005, or 2006, forgive me - those years tend to swirl together ... I wanted just that escape. I didn't want to die, I just didn't want to keep living like this and felt like I had no other way out.
I had come home from work, which was honestly a job I loved ... but was just super super super depressed. I had a history of depression, spending the majority of my life in and out of therapy and all the in betweens on every anti-depressant, anti-anxiety, anti-living medication imaginable. My boss at the time had picked up on it, and confronted me asking if everything was okay. It wasn't. But I couldn't tell him that. I instead was just offended, thinking, there's no WAY my work is suffering! I'm a perfectionist! I'm the perfect employee that you love and have consistently promoted. True story, in all my years of schooling, I never even got a detention. Served one once with a friend ... but I was on a WHOLE NEW LEVEL of goody goody.
I was also at that weird stage in your early 20s of wondering what is next, where to go, and how am I going to get there. I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed. So much so actually, that I got into a fender bender going 3 miles an hour trying to turn left out of the garage leaving work. When I got home, I grabbed a Costco sized bottle of Tylenol PM and took as many that were in there. I didn't really think about anyone ... or anything ... there was no dramatic life passing before my eyes moment ... I just wanted out - and fast. The problem was, none of it was fast. I swallowed the pills dry, and then heard a little bell. I had just rescued a dog, Rocky Balboa, and he just came into my room. Rocky had just spent 2 years in a crackhouse, now his new mommy that he recently bonded with is going to leave this world? Oh no ... this can't happen ...
I was dating a medic in the military at the time, I called him and told him what I did. He first asked for my exact address, and I told him I wouldn't give it to him. (He was active on base a few hours away, I used to go to see him, but he couldn't drive down to see me.) Even when I dry swallowed all of those pills, I didn't really want to die. I think in my head I thought I would have just woken up in a hospital somewhere, after sometime had passed, and the world would magically have been a better place. I wanted a part of me to die, but not the whole thing. I laid on the floor at this point feeling incredibly dizzy and light headed from all the crying. He stayed on the phone with me the entire time, asking me anything to keep me awake.
I remember next him telling me to get myself to throw up. I put my fingers down my throat, and I think even a toothbrush ... at this point however, you have to understand, everything was a blur. It was just this overwhelming sense of uncomfort and this scream my body was making saying, GET THIS OUT OF ME!!!
I can't remember how it came out, or what ... again - I was soooooooo out of it, but my medic boyfriend got me through it. I wasn't allowed to go to sleep for a while, and I kept having to move around which you can imagine how hard that was when you've taken that many Tylenol PMs. But again, I had an incredibly high tolerance to pills after having been on them for my entire life.
Bottom line: When you're in that place, it's not fun - but it's a great sign that you are ready for a big change. Be grateful for the wake up call. It's time for a transformation of the old to new.
Buddha tells us, to live is to suffer. We're already dying. So hurry up and go live! Our physical bodies decay a bit more every.single.day. Incredibly matter of fact - get over it, that's a constant. If anyone tells you anything different then they're just trying to sell you something.
Happiness is from within, and it is a state of being at a certain level of consciousness. I have no idea how else to describe that to someone, but I sure as shit know, you can't get this from a pill. Dude, if you could - I would totally already be bottling and selling it, trust me. Everyone's experiences in life are different, and each and every one of us experience happiness in different ways. So just go with it!
I can't change my friends state of consciousness. I can't heal the world. I also don't try. Life is reflective, all I had to do was heal myself.
Your first step towards happiness is simply finding what feels good to you. Literally - it is crazy stupid simple. Like almost too simple that you're prolly not even going to do it. That's why though that state of desperation is SO important because when you are there, you will do it - because you have nothing else.
A piece of me died that day. And another piece of me died two years later when I tried again and this time just wound up walking to a rehab clinic down the street saying "I need help, but just from myself." Yeah ... that was a fucking trip. Wound up in a hospital on a 5150 aka 72 hour hold, but was released after 48 hours because I was deemed sane and not a harm to myself. No worries ... those 48 hours in a nuthouse will be another post ... haha!! YAY LIFE!!
So yeah, I get it. It sucks, but welcome to life. We're all dying, that's a constant ... so wake up and start living.
xoxo #NerdsUnite
Reader Comments (6)
hmmm. in a way i'm very lucky. although i lost an uncle who i'm named for before I could meet him to suicide, at a young age i learned about that and understood the pain it would cause my sister and parents, so for THAT reason, the pain it causes those you love, that reason alone, i could simply never ever even think about it.
BUT recently, I've had to help some friends who've openly called for help on Facebook. Its tough. I'm afraid if i say just do it, they might. this person's sibling had similar problems, till he finally was successful. It destroyed this friend of mine. Always send people to counseling. I hate this shit. Too many people are dying in my life. Let's just fucking live a little everyone! Keep up your inspiring writing Jen and never stop revolutioning (aka blogging) on your own site. never.
thats the thing though, if they're calling to tell you - they wont ever do it.
when you want to kill yourself, you will. period end of sentence. of course, i need to preface that clearly I am not a qualified professional, just a qualified suicide failer. =)
I knew his exact state of being - and certainly it wasnt fun ... but he didnt want to die, he just didnt know how to recognize a change that needed to be made. all comes from fear.
I had a moment like that in the 6th grade where I contemplated ending it all.
I know, right? Sixth grade. What the hell?
I've always been a little older than my age would have people think. I'd always been called an "old soul" which is cool but hearing it constantly can get a little tiresome.
But anyway...
There was a lot going on at that age (which was about 10 or 11) for me, and I really had no one to talk to about it. I was keeping it together for the most part, getting my thoughts and feelings out in my writing, but after a while it got to me. I remember getting into some kind of fight with my three cabin mates during a camping excursion for all the 6th graders at my school. Now when I say "fight", what I really mean is something happened to have all three girls not like me for some reason, and no matter how often I tried talking to them about it (since I like to talk things out face to face), they just wouldn't talk to me. Stuck in the room we were in for several days, surrounded by girls who supposedly "hated" me - that was sort of the straw that broke the camel's back on my self-esteem/stress/chaos-in-my-world.
I recalled there being a razor in our cabin. One of the girls had started shaving her legs, and I had created this entire scene in my head of how during the day while no one else was around, I would sneak back into the cabin, get into the locker, and use the razor on myself. In all honesty I thought about it more than actually doing it. I didn't really have the nerve. Plus there was so much stuff I wanted to do when I got older.
Around that time with everything going on in my little world, having to deal with kids in school nearly sent me over the edge. Nobody gets how mean and cruel kids can be and how the slightest smirk or joke or gesture in your direction can make you feel like crap and depress you to the point of wanting to end it anyway you can.
I remember later somehow it got out that I had tried to take my life (which I had only talked about it but the people who knew acted as if I had really made the effort and came really close to doing it). Me and the girls were each called into the office post-trip to discuss how I felt and everything. The girls put on a show for the adults but later were mad at me for causing such a fuss, etc. To this day I have no idea what I did, and admittedly a small part of me is still curious though the rest of me could give a fuck.
Nowadays, I pick my battles. There are things to get mad at and then things that are just not worth it. I mean, there are more serious matters going on in the world that totally beat out my little issues for the number one slot on the "Holy Crap!" scale. Now I choose (or at least try to) what bothers me and most of the time it works.
Bitch = I'm a woman who knows what I want and questions everything who doesn't just do what she's told by anyone
Nerd = usually used because I got an A+ plus on a test or knew something others didn't (So I'm smart. I can dig that.)
Geek = just means I'm passionate about something which is fine by me since having passion is cool
There are some things that still get to me that linger for a bit before they fade away. Like at present. I'm at a low in my life, and I'm trying to stay positive that things will change - that they can only get better from here. We shall see, but admittedly the longer it takes, the harder it is to stay so optimistic.
So I live. I live the best I can with what I can constantly looking for more, striving for better, and hoping one day that I'll get there.
[sorry about babbling... your post took me back down memory lane to a place I haven't thought of in years]
dude own it!! thanks so much for the share fro! #nerdsunite xoxo
Very glad you're still around
my grandfather once told someone who kept talking about suicide to get it over with and the person did and my grandfather was like pfft whatevs. well i'm paraphrasing. but it;s a famous family story. he was not a callous man most times but he refused to play along and thought that the person would either do it or not and that it had a lot more to do than just one person saying something dismissive because they felt like they were being manipulated.