RECITAL

Remembered! Regretted! Remorseful! Remissed! Repressed! Remindful! Reliving! Resurgent! Reluctant! Rekindled! Relapsed! Reverting! Revulsion! Regressing! …

Regardless! Regenerated! Renewing! …

… Reinterpreting! Renouncing! Releasing! Remaking! Renewing! Repairing! Repenting! Resetting! Reshaping! Resolvent! Restored! Redemption!…

RECAP
Basically, I’m stuck in the past and from its grip I cannot free myself!

IT AINT NOTHIN’

How many times have you been a victim of impulse buying? You know, you’re standing in line at a store, waiting for your turn to pay and you see some candy bar or “As Seen On TV” item that you just have to have.

Or maybe you are shopping and you have a specific list of items that you are after. You are cruising along filling your cart with everything on your list when suddenly, that shiny, glimmering fondue machine catches your eye and just as suddenly you discover that you can’t live without it. In fact, you don’t even know how you’ve survived this long without it. It doesn’t matter that you don’t even know what a fondue is or what the machine does, you have to have it.

Well, I’ve never been a victim of impulse buying either … although we are having a yard sale next weekend to get rid of a few still-in-the-box items we seemed to have collected over the years. Anyone need a fondue machine?

So, back to impulse buying, or rather, impulsive behavior to be more specific. For years after I played slice and dice with a rusty, dull razor blade on my wrist I took antidepressants. The problem with antidepressants in my opinion is that, at least for me, they make you not care about anything. Here’s an example:

I’m really a very shy person. I try not to stand out in a crowd despite my job back then that put me in front of large crowds on occasion. Well, while I was on antidepressants, the fear of having hundreds or thousands of people staring at me was still there, I just didn’t care about it.

So one day I was at a baseball game and as usual, during the 7th inning stretch, the announcer held a contest for some lucky ticket holder to come down to the pitcher’s mound, answer a couple of baseball trivia questions and win a prize. Guess who the “un” lucky ticket holder was. Me.

As I marched out to the pitchers mound I expected my nerves to get hold of me and cause me to stutter, fidget and all the other signs of a nervous introvert. But as I made my way out to the mound I became aware that I wasn’t nervous and even though I knew I should be, I just didn’t care if I made a fool out of myself or not.

Now, first of all, I know very little about baseball trivia, but in this contest you could have the crowd help you. So when the announcer asked the question, which I had no idea what the answer was, I started cheering on the crowd to give me the answer, gesturing for help, running back and forth trying to get the answer. It was like I was watching someone else out there because that certainly wasn’t like me. That was about the only time I appreciated being on antidepressants. If you have ever taken them, you know why. They just seem to numb you to everything.

OK, here’s where all of this impulse and antidepressant stuff is leading to. After I attempted suicide and began taking antidepressants, I developed a fear that I would, that I could, very easily, without any thought or remorse, wake up one morning, and it could be a perfect, beautiful morning. I could feel great, happy even. Get out of bed, walk to the closet, grab a gun, a blade, or a rope and simply, without hesitating, do the deed. Impulsively. Just as easily as buying that  fondue machine.

(After my attempted suicide I lost that self-preservation that we all seem to have. I think it finally came back after all these years but it’s not much of a barrier if it’s there at all. I hope I never have to test it.)

“It aint nothin’ to kill myself” would be one of the first thoughts that would run through my head when I woke up every morning. Once I was off antidepressants, the fear of impulse suicide went away, although now I don’t have any weapons in the house that can cause immediate death — just to be safe. Nowadays, my biggest concern is that some incident could push me through that self-defense barrier that isn’t too strong anymore. Now if I could just beat that impulse buying thing.

LEAVING NORMAL

I realized something yesterday after hearing a couple of reporters talking about a source in a story they were writing on suicide. “Normal” people will never begin to understand the grip suicide can have on a person. Or the places it will take the mind of someone who is struggling with suicide.

After a long conversation, in the end, the reporters, as typical with their breed, (I can say that because I was one for many years) made a few jokes about the person, boldly stated “THEY” (insert intellectual snobbishness here) would never consider such an act, and decided most of what the source said was too “crazy” to use. All I thought was, wow, they are really missing an opportunity to touch a lot of people with a first-hand account of a suicide attempt in mainstream media.

Most of us “suicidal crazies,” at one time, never imagined that we would ever be in a place so lonely, so desperate, so full of pain and so dark that we would ever consider suicide either. Although I don’t remember ever making fun of anyone who had attempted suicide, it mostly really scared me.

Take care and be strong. CAll someone, talk to someone. Whatever it takes to wake up tomorrow and fight through one more day.

DON’T LET SUICIDE WIN

Former Cy Young award winner Mike Flanagan died of a self-inflicted shotgun wound to the head, the Maryland medical examiner ruled Thursday. A police investigation revealed that the 59-year-old pitcher was upset about financial issues. He left no note. Flanagan’s body was found Wednesday afternoon about 250 feet behind his home. An investigation showed he was home alone when he took his life.

SUICIDE HOTLINE: 1-800-SUICIDE (1-800-784-2433) 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8255 )
There’s local numbers in your phonebook as well.

DEATH

DEATH
One of the scariest words to some. One of the most comforting to others.

Foster the People

Just cause I like this song. No other reason. This is an up and coming band.

IT’S BETTER TO WRITE

A songwriter once said, “The best I can say is that it’s better for me to write about despair and darkness than to be incapable of getting off the sofa. It’s better to write about suicide than to contemplate it too heavily.”

Writing spared my life many times back in the day. There was something about putting down on paper the craziness that would run through my brain when the pain was so overwhelming. When hope had ended and indescribable loneliness smothered me, writing would calm me, help me make sense of the hurting.

I never had a particular interest in writing before that time. I remember being in the hospital sitting and watching all the other “crazy” people and suddenly having this overwhelming urge to put down on paper what I was feeling. How scared I was. How lost I was. So I went to the nurses station and asked if they had paper and pen, which I didn’t think they would give me since they only gave us plastic spoons to eat with. I figured any sharp objects were off limits. To my surprise the nurse gave me some paper and a nice, sharp pencil.

I returned to the sofa where I had been sitting and listening to a lady next to me talking on the phone about her dream of killing hamsters that looked like her children and started writing. Emotions flooded out of me so fast I couldn’t write fast enough. I wrote about everything I was going through. The betrayal, the loneliness, the loss of privacy, my loss of reality, the armed guard at the exit and the humility of being in a place like that. I wrote about being “imprisoned” just because I was hurting more than I could stand. I wrote about having to strip down to nothing and have someone check to make sure I didn’t have any drugs on me. And about how there were surveillance cameras everywhere. There was no privacy.

Between the crazies, the nursing staff and armed security, the only place to escape was my room, but I shared that with a strung-out heroine addict who didn’t seem to sociable, or safe to be around. Sometime that evening I wrote a story I titled “The Eye” that to me at the time, express how much I was being punished for having my life ripped a part and not knowing how to deal with.

I’m a fan of screenplays, whether it’s for TV or the movies. I’d rather read the script than watch the movie most of the time. One of the writers from the first few seasons of “One Tree Hill” wrote this for one of the characters to narrate: “Ever wonder how long it takes to change your life? What measure of time is enough to be life altering? Is it four years, like high school? One year? An eight-week walking tour? Can your life change in a month, or a week, or a single day?” My suicide journey lasted about a month. Within that month there were several life-altering moments that still affect my life.

Of course there was the actual slice and dice episode on my wrist. That’ll change anyone’s life, if they survive. There was THE moment it all started, April 11, 1997, a date which will live in … the recesses of my mind. There’s the sessions with the doc who would try to convince me that it was wrong to hurt. There was the moment in the hospital when, with one visit and one short conversation, the betrayal was complete and what little hold I had on my world and reality slipped quietly away as I stood there unable to breathe, or even react for fear of being trapped in that place forever.

“Ever wonder how long it takes to change your life?” A single moment, a single word can change it.

“The thought of suicide is a powerful solace: by means of it one gets through many a bad night.” You gotta love Nietzsche, which I don’t but he had a way with words, nonetheless. Unfortunately, he was write about the it. The thought of suicide helped me through a lot of agonizing nights until one night I couldn’t stop the hurting and the temptation of “the pit” was too strong for me to resist … and the rest is history.

I’ll leave you with one more quote. One that hopefully give you a little hope.

“Do you ever feel already buried deep? Six feet under screams but no one seems to hear a thing.
Do you know that there’s still a chance for you cause there’s a spark in you?
You just gotta ignite the light and let it shine. Just own the night like the 4th of July”
- Katy Perry, Firework