Statistically Speaking
Ground Zero
What’s wrong with you?
You’ll be fine. Just take a few days off work.
Maybe it’s your medications interacting. You should get a second opinion.
Snap out of it!
You’ll get over it, it’s just a bad day.
You’re stronger than this. Don’t be a weakling.
You were laughing an hour ago!
What’s wrong with you now?
What Happened —
The panic attack that woke me at 3:11 am on October 22 was indescribably horrific. It lasted a little over an hour. Using my phone as recording device I was able to type out what I was thinking and feeling. With shaking hands that could not feel the pressure of the keyboard on the tips of my typing fingers, I documented the terror I was trapped in.
Sending it to my therapist and my children’s father (more on this later) before I gave myself the chance to change my mind. Hating myself for sending it but knowing, somehow in the middle of the cyclone of fear, that I had too. Deep in my bones and buried at the base of my skull a small alarm was sounding. The incessant sound of a tarnished bell found on the countertop of a forgotten motel front desk. A tinny ding-ding-ding; trembling hands sending out an urgent S-O-S. I couldn’t explain it any more than: This time it’s different, it is bigger than me. I am scared. I need help.
The next morning during a phone call with my therapist, I was placed on suicide protocol — I was not allowed to be alone. I had to respond to texts and phone calls promptly. I had to eat. I ended up following my brother around that Saturday like a dazed puppy. My cognitive functioning was slow and disjointed, like a retirement community’s chair aerobics class under a strobe light. I met with my therapist and my safety team, my brother and my children’s father, throughout the day as we (they) tried to figure out what to do next while I sat nearby like a collapsed marionette. I couldn’t speak in complete sentences much less make serious decisions. I did not trust myself for the first time ever. Despite a lifetime spent learning how to keep myself and then my children safe from anyone that could hurt us, I had somehow become the dangerous one. Feeling like a failure and a fraud, I cried as I removed my .9 mm handgun from the safe under my bed and handed it to my brother. I was embarrassed and angry at myself for being such a fuck up. As the self-appointed poster child for suicide awareness, I was the one person I knew would never be that person. Yet, here I was.
The next panic attack was four days later and I had a witness. My first husband, the father of my children whom in every way is the very last person I would ever have thought would offer a safe space for me. He watched as I was crumpled to the floor by the weight of emotions pouring out of me via salty tears and dripping snot. I was so incapacitated by my panic that I could not control my body at all. I could not speak but for deeply anguished utterances and the occasional mumbled “oh my god” and “what the fuck” and “I hate this”. As I watched from outside of me I was absolutely disgusted with myself. Who had I become??? A weak embarrassment huddled on the floor at quite literally the feet of a man who had betrayed and wounded me. “What a shame” echoing around my clouded mind… I am filled with shame. That night almost ended in an emergency room visit to keep me safe from myself. The next morning I gathered all of the sharp things I could find, anything that could possibly be used as a weapon against me. Placing them in a bag that I gave to my first husband, my safeguard, to hide away from me to keep me safe. And all along, the woman outside of myself was watching and shaking her head and spitting on the floor in disgust at the sight of me.
The following days were filled with my scattered thoughts, therapist and psychiatrist appointments, a lot of prayers and a final decision. One made with a lot of wincing discomfort and barely concealed fear — my decision to voluntarily enter a psychiatric hospital for an unknown amount of time was like the moment before the physician pops a dislocated joint back into place. I knew it was going to suck. I knew my ego was going to take a serious hit. I knew that I was embarrassed, humiliated and disappointed in myself. But more than all of that I knew that I had to do this. It was, for me, the only choice I had. The alternatives that my wrecked mind kept trying to force were unimaginable.
A few days before I would enter the program I had to do a psychiatric evaluation over the phone with a licensed professional from the clinic. Until that two hour conversation I had never really, truly looked at all of my shit. Sure, I wrote a book about it. But that was one chapter at a time. Yes, I have been in therapy for years. But those sessions were an hour long and generally only once a month. And to top that off, I only ever told most of my therapists about the shit that was floating on my surface (if I was even telling them the truth) and never going below that top layer. Over the last few years I have begun to acknowledge that there might be more there, hidden in deeper and darker places, but I had never looked at it all at once. Explaining it to my therapist later that afternoon I said, “I had only ever taken one or maybe two drawers out at a time and put them on the kitchen table to look at, discuss and dissect. Today I had to take all of the drawers out, lay each of their contents on the kitchen table and take stock of it all. Honestly, I’m impressed that I’ve made it to 42.”
I worried [too much] about what others would think. They are going to think I’m crazy. They are going to think I can’t do my job. They are going to think I am a hypocrite. Truthfully I was [am] afraid that their judgements of me would mimic my own. The cruel words that I berate myself with would be justified by theirs. “See, what have I been saying all long? I am a weakling. I am worthless and taking up too much space and a burden to everyone. I was right to be ashamed of myself. Everyone is thinking it”… Even now my inner voice continues to whisper lies in an unending loop.
And so, I agreed to put myself into this program. To work, everyday, more hours than a full time job, on myself. To stop running and turn around to face these demons and skeletons and trauma and bone deep sorrows. To look them in the eye, bold faced, defiant and determined to survive this darkness. No matter what it takes. The statistics reported on suicides in every demographic and category only report the ones who lost their fight. No one ever counts up those who won. I have become one of those. The unreported survivors. I refuse to be anything other than a woman who will fight like hell to survive. No matter what my fight looks like or what else I may lose in the process. I am doing whatever needs to be done to keep myself alive. No matter the cost. I pray that I will always and forever choose to fight for me even when it is the absolute hardest choice to make — I will choose to stay.
No matter what.
