I attempted to kill myself on Thursday, November 1, 2008. While I felt suicidal during the day I never actually thought I would make an attempt.
The normal routine is I would feel suicidal, my husband would take me to the hospital, I'd spend a few days there until the feelings passed. So why was this one time different.
My husband insisted that I planned it. Except I didn't. I always promised if I was going to do something like this I would never do it if one of the kids was home. I didn't, one daughter was home.
A lot of what I did became about other people. How what I did affected them. Because it's always about other people.
I came home from work that evening. It had been a rough couple of months. One daughter going through a rough time. She had been in a day program, briefly hospitalized and then back into the program. The program was really a waste of time and did nothing but put her way behind in her school work. Her boyfriend at the time broke up with her while she was in the hospital (what a guy). She had to be pulled out of school for treatment and that wasn't helping at all. She had drivers ed first period so on those days I would drive her to school and then pick her up after drivers ed and take her to the day program then off to work. Later I would pick her up and take her back to work with me. She'd hit the conference room floor and slept while I worked. After the day program she went into the aftercare program. For this I had to drive 15 miles to pick her up after school, again drive her to the aftercare program and then pick her up after work and drive her home.
This was my life from August through the end of October. There were also psychiatrist appointments and therapy appointments, not just for her but for myself too. Now I don't want anyone to think that there was any resentment towards my daughter for any of this. I love my daughter, was extremely worried about her and would do anything to make her pain go away. It hurt so much to see her this way. But I was tired - physically and emotionally drained.
And there I was in the bedroom, just swallowing handfuls of pills. I didn't feel like myself at the time. Almost detached. A very strange vibe. But I remember 3 times I took a handful and 3 times I swallowed. Don't remember much after that. Bright lights from the bedroom and kitchen. Should have just layed on the bed and gone to sleep but I didn't. On daughter was home, no one else was. Someone they did find out, damn cell phones, don't know if I called or or my daughter did, don't remember. And my daughter won't talk about it so I don't know.
But I think I figured out more of the why as more and more distance has come between the attempt and my life now. It was the perfect time. On daughter was ending her aftercare and would be back in school full-time. She didn't need me anymore (at least not for transportation). My life which had pulled me back and forth for so many months was now coming back to me. Maybe I felt my purpose had been serviced. It was time to go. And if there was going to be a time, this was it.
The anger directed at me during and after this was enormous. My husband tells me I argued with him at the hospital. I guess I'm suppose to remember all the details, since according to him there were no drugs in my system (there were). He talked to me like I was some coherant normal person. Didn't he understand what I had just done? Didn't he understand that the pressure, the stress, the constant worry had done this to me. But no, it was all about how this affected him and more specifically what I had done to him. And of course it was a shameful secret that should be kept from others. They might think bad of him otherwise.
They like to say I'm the focus, the center of attention, but really I'm not. I'm the center of what can she do for me. I'm the center because someone needs to do the laundry, the grocery shopping, pay the bills. Someone needs to drive me here or pick me up there.
They can't be ready to leave for school when my husband wants to drive them for school, so I have to drive them to school. He'll drive them to the doctor, but as a favor to me, not because they're sick. Why should he clean, it's not his mess. Those aren't his clothes. She found a way there, let her find a way home (meaning I'll have to go pick her up). And my all time favorite, "when I was their age..."
So the after effects were how could I make this up to him, how could I get him to trust me again, not what can he do to help me, to make sure this never happens again. Sure he'll ask me what can I do? But how do I know what he can do. I don't even know how to help myself. Why doesn't he see that? Why doesn't he find out for himself how he can help me. Isn't that what other people would do? So now I have the burden of helping myself and telling him how to help me too?
So now I more or less just keep my mouth shut about it. What they don't know...
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