suicidality – Deadman Living

OK On the Outside, But Inside…

Watching the walnut limbs swaying in the wind.

Yesterday was a very hard day for me. I have been trying to work on my book a little each day. Yesterday morning I was writing about a relationship I had where I was repeatedly lied to, used and manipulated… much to my significant detriment.

As I was writing I found myself getting angry… muttering things like, “Fucking Bitch!” or worse. However, in typical fashion for me, my outward anger quickly turned into inward anger… anger at myself and feelings of wanting to hurt myself. I had errands to run after writing which had me driving more than 80 miles from here to there.

As I was driving and interacting with various people I looked fine on the outside. I drove the speed limit. I wasn’t driving erratically. I smiled at people when I met them in stores and asked them how they were. On the outside I looked perfectly “normal.” But on the inside… I was dying, or wanting to die or hurt myself. I had thoughts of burning my arm with cigarettes, or cutting my arms with razor blades, or crashing the car, or asking a friend to literally beat the shit out of me. Externally induced physical pain is much easier to “process” and heal from than the emotional devastation I was feeling. A physical bruise heals… my heart, not so much and certainly not nearly as quickly!

So why write about this? Because much of the stigma of mental illness comes from the fact that it is “hidden.” Most of the time it’s an internal condition unlike a broken arm or even cancer that can have visible symptoms. Someone can look perfectly “normal” on the outside but truly be struggling to hold on to life on the inside. You never know what someone is feeling inside by their outward appearance… so maybe cut someone a break once in a while.

Mental Illness is a Thief

Sitting here this afternoon, needing to fill out legal paperwork for my divorce, I found myself thinking of all of the things that have been stolen from me by mental illness. Mental illness is a silent shrewd and cunning interloper that steels into our lives and before we realize what’s happening, it steals from us. Mental illness steals opportunities, stability, family, friendships, love and sometimes, even life itself. Let me clarify that for the sake of this writing I am not using “mental illness” in a clinical sense with exacting definitions and diagnoses. I am using the term to refer to deep psychological issues that seriously affected the people I am writing about; some have had actual mental illness diagnoses and some have lived their lives without an official diagnosis.

I was born into a family with mental illness. So, from the start, any chance of a “normal” childhood was stolen from me. My parents’ mental illnesses made them incapable of dealing with the stresses of life and love, and made them not able to care for or love me in the ways that I needed.

The combination of my “issues” and my mother’s “issues” led to us not having much of a relationship the first 35 years of my life. As a little child I didn’t feel loved by my mother and we grew apart. When my parents divorced, I chose to live with my father and his third wife. My mother and I didn’t start to be close until about fifteen years ago. Mental illness stole thirty-five years of a mother-child relationship.

My father also suffered from mental illness and this greatly affected me as both a child and an adult. As a small child I idealized my father and didn’t see his illnesses for what they were. I followed in his footsteps; in many ways to my own detriment. As an adult I saw his actions through the lens of accepting that he was mentally ill, but that did not make his actions and inactions hurt less. When I moved in with my father and his third wife, she told me, “I married your father, not his children.” I was fourteen years old. Natasha’s mental illness led her to being a cruel interfering step-mother and my father’s mental illness caused him to accept her horrible behavior towards me and my brother. The nature of the relationship between my father and his wife allowed mental illness to steal my father from me the last fifteen years of his life.

By the time I was a teenager my own mental illness was in full swing and often led me to acting like a total schmuck. In my lifetime there has only been one woman who truly loved me unconditionally, my high school and college sweetheart, Shannon… and I treated her horribly and eventually permanently broke up with her. I was a dick. Period. I have apologized to her and she has very graciously accepted my apology and we are now good friends… but my mental illness stole the only woman who may have ever truly loved me… loved me for me without trying to change me or “fix” me.

When I was twenty three I married my first wife, Ava. Like all people, Ava had some issues, but nothing that I would say elevated to the level of being a mental illness. I think… or I would like to think, that she did love me. In some ways she tried to save me/change me. The marriage fell apart mostly due to my acting out because of my mental illness. At that point in life I was very difficult to live with due to my depression and anger issues. At this point in life I don’t harbor any ill will towards Ava for divorcing me. I’m not thrilled with knowing that she cheated on me and ended up marrying the guy… but I was a lunatic at the time and understand her behavior. Mental illness stole my first wife from me. With the loss of that marriage I also lost our home in Georgia and everything that connected me to life. If I had been able to be a different person back then and remained married to Ava, I would have had a much better chance at a “normal” life. It was during the divorce process that I shot myself in the heart with a 9mm handgun and six months later took 900 pills.

After my “should have died” suicide attempts I ultimately ended up at The Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA. Austen Riggs is like no other place that I have ever heard of… it’s an open campus mental health hospital, which means patients are never restrained and can and go as they please. While I patient there I had several romantic relationships with other patients. One of them, Barbara, shot herself in the head with a rifle up on a hill in Stockbridge. Barbara was a few years older than me. She was a lawyer from an extremely wealthy family in California. She was beautiful. She was brilliant. She was an amazing person and had everything going for her. Mental illness stole this incredible being from the world.

The CEO of Austen Riggs while I was there was a despicable human being, Dr. Edward Shapiro. This man’s hubris was so elevated that in my opinion he was mentally ill. Again, in my opinion, his ego directly played a role in Barbara being able to kill herself. His mental illness allowed for Barbara’s mental illness to end her life. I pray Barbara’s needless suicide haunts him.

Due to ongoing legal issues (divorce) I can’t really write about my marriage to Lena right now, let’s just say that we both had serious issues that led to the marriage not working and yet again, mental illness stole love, family and home from me.

At the beginning of this year I started dating a woman, April. April is a nurse and seemed to be a very caring and loving woman. When things were good, they were great. But April suffers from severe insecurity, specifically about infidelity. I have many female friends. Several of those female friends are ex-girlfriends. April’s insecurity led to her acting in very antisocial ways: threatening to beat up women I interacted with, threatening to kill someone and a phone call in which she cursed out an ex, Aubrey, that I have been friends with for more than fifteen years. April accused me of keeping these ex-girlfriends “on the side” in case we didn’t work out. Nothing could have been further from the truth. After the phone call, April told me that I had to choose between her and this woman who was nothing more than a good friend to me. She wanted me to call up Aubrey and tell her that I would never speak to her again. I refused… and April stormed out of my life. April’s mental illness stole another love for her and for me. April wasn’t “the love of my life,” but I did love her and felt very content with her. It was the first time in my life that I loved someone, without being “crazy” in love and felt content with that. This was and is a huge deal for me that I will write more about in the future… I thought it was a much healthier form of love, at least for me. Mental illness stole that cherished contentment and love from me.

There are many more examples from my own life that I could write about regarding the thefts committed by mental illness, but these were the big ones that came to mind while procrastinating filling out boring legal forms. The point is that mental illness effects many people in many ways and causes all kinds of loss… real loss… that hurts… and sometimes… kills.

We Need an Honest Open Discussion on Suicide

This is the second “celebrity” suicide this week. We need to have an honest talk about mental health and suicide.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/08/us/anthony-bourdain-obit/index.html

Invalidated, Unaccepted and Rejected

I saw this meme online {No one should have to live their life in silence because they’re scared of being invalidated.} and it really made me think about the circumstances that I accepted surrounding the reconciliation with Lena last fall. Last October, when Lena told me she wanted a divorce, I was in shock and desperately wanted to work things out with her. I was so desperate that I agreed to circumstances that had no chances of survival. I gave Lena everything that she asked for and asked not nothing in return, other than to not get divorced. Part of what Lena needed from me was for me to be in Westchester full-time, to get along with everyone there and for us to have a “normal life” in Westchester. In order for me to make this request a reality I had to constantly bite my tongue. Day in and day out was an exercise in me keeping my thoughts and feelings to myself both inside our home and in public. Even our therapist, Ralph, said this was an impossible scenario to keep up.

This notion of a “normal life” had come up numerous times during our seven year marriage. Lena married me knowing all of my history. She knew about my suicide attempts. She knew about my depressions. She knew about my totally dysfunctional family of origin. She knew about my first failed marriage to Ava and the fiasco of a relationship I had with Jessamyn. Lena knew about all of my hospitalizations and all of my psychiatric history. So, one can imagine, it came as somewhat of a shock a year into our marriage when Lena said, “I am a normal person. I want a normal life and a normal marriage. I need you to be normal.” This totally blew me away!

Aside from all of my psychiatric history, which was obviously significant, separate from all of that I was never “normal.” I never wanted to be “normal.” I had always been an outspoken critic of our government and politically correct social trends. I had been a long-time and vocal supporter of various underdogs. I had a long history of writing about my thoughts and predictions for the whole world to read. I had always been known as someone who told people just how things were; there was no beating around the bush with me. There was no way I wanted to be a quiet, sheltered, spineless, voiceless suburban mouse!!!!

The first time Lena brought up this issue of desiring normalcy I really wasn’t sure how to react and probably just ignored her. If she wanted normal, she married the wrong guy. I am not sure if she had any idea of how hurtful this was on her part. Her expressing her desire for normalcy was a direct act of invalidating who I was. She married me knowing exactly what and who I was; and then immediately expected me to change to something completely different. Why do women marry a man and then try to change him? If she wanted me to be different she should have told me before we got married.

I don’t remember exactly when certain things were said, but at some point Lena went as far as to say, “You are not a mental patient anymore.” I assumed, at the time, that she was saying this in a positive way… as in, look how far you have come from the days when your mental illness dominated every aspect of your life. She may have meant it nicely, but in fact, it was very dismissive of me, my history and in part of my very identity. There was a point in my life where I allowed my designation as a mental patient to define who I was. At some point in life, starting before I married Lena, I no longer defined myself by my illnesses. There were, however, some things that were still important to me that Lena never gave credence to… such as the anniversaries of my suicide attempts. She never remembered them… she never asked how I was around those times. To people who have been through what I have, those dates are important. There were also times of each year that tended to be harder for me, specifically the months of March and November. I always seemed to struggle more in those months. Again, Lena either didn’t remember this, despite me telling her several times, or she just didn’t care. Our marriage ended on a horrible note… in March.

Perhaps I expected too much of Lena because of her work. Lena is a molecular biologist who studied the biology of suicide. I thought that she had a better understanding of psychology and specifically of suicide. Apparently, one can study the biology of suicide, and be good at it, and not understand the psychology of suicide at all. I also mistakenly thought she was more in tune to me.

This image is for artistic representation of a feeling only. It does not represent any threat or intention to harm myself.

This self portrait displays how I felt… I could not speak because Lena had a gun to my head… If I spoke my mind, she would end the marriage. I was being emotionally held hostage. I feared Lena would become my Natasha; my father’s third wife who beat his spirit dead and held him emotionally hostage.