Ten years.
Ten.
Years.
I almost died ten years ago. It’s wild to think about how close I got to ending my own life now that I’m in such a better place. Maybe if you’ve only started reading this blog recently it doesn’t seem like I’m in a very good place at all, but it used to be so much worse. Even I lose track of that sometimes. There’s so much further to go that I can forget how far I’ve already come. That’s why I like to take this time, the time when my memories from back then are most able to cause pain again, and turn around. See how much ground I’ve covered. The past isn’t going anywhere, but I am.
I wrote about this before several years ago (and again back when I was writing book reviews), but back then I didn’t explicitly state I nearly committed suicide. That was partially because it was hard to admit back then, but I was also dealing with this odd sort of imposter syndrome, since I was caught before I actually did anything. You can’t call it a suicide attempt if the attempt was never made, can you? Is it enough that I made the plan? Gathered the necessary materials and packed up my apartment to make things easier for my family? I still struggle with how to word what happened to me even now, but I realize the semantics only matter because I’m alive. So I’m happy to keep parsing that one out as long as I can.
My parents got to me two days before I going to do it. I wanted to end things on the weekend, like it would give everything an extra sense of finality. This baffles me now. Like, who gives a shit if I die on a Tuesday or a Saturday? But this absurd thinking is what saved my life. If I hadn’t had this irrational mindset, my parents would have gotten there too late. If my dad had ignored the sinking feeling in his gut that had been growing since our last conversation, had decided it could wait until the weekend rather than take off work, I’d be dead.
Dead.
I can’t explain to you how happy I am to not be dead right now. Of course, I could go into detail about the nasty business of recovery, the pain I inflicted on myself as well as friends and family, the pain I’m still inflicting on us as I continue to fumble forward, but right now I just want to rest in the joy of how not dead I am.
This shift in thinking took years of work and therapy and failing and fighting to accomplish, and I still slide back into self-destructive thoughts and behaviors sometimes. I’ll have to be vigilant the rest of my life. Maybe someday I’ll talk more about that process, but it would take a lot of preplanning, so for now I’ll just end on this:
About three months ago there was a horrifically loud beeping sound coming from somewhere in my home. It was the carbon monoxide detector, and I about lost my mind with worry. What do I do? How do I fix this? What do I do with my cats? Turns out it was actually the detector signaling that its batteries were dying and all I had to do was replace it, but once the dust settled, I recognized the irony of the situation.
Without going into detail (I don’t want to inadvertently provide a guide for anyone) my suicide plan involved carbon monoxide. I chose it because I thought it would be a gentle, comforting way to go. Now the mere idea of it has me scrambling, frantically calling my family for help.
I thought it was kind of funny, but it was also a sort of confirmation for me. I struggle with anxiety as well as depression, and it can be easy to fixate on the uselessness of fear, to be angry at myself for panicking over seemingly small issues (a battery died in a cheap detector, for chrissakes), but there is such a thing as good fear. Fear of death, for instance. Fear of hurting my loved ones. Fear of carbon monoxide.
I don’t want to die. I’ve been saying that for years, but some times I’ve meant it more than others. Now I really mean it. Dying scares me, and I’m grateful for that fear. Ten years have passed since I nearly lost everything, and the thought of fifteen, twenty, even thirty years passing… I’m just happy I can even think about it.
heather arleney 