And then I realized that, a year ago, I'd still been reading a lot on suicide and grief. At the time, I was still trying to get a handle on what'd happened and what was going on with me. However, I haven't felt much need to be reading or looking into that anywhere near as much in the last 10 months or so. I didn't have the same information at my fingertips I did before. So I had to sit down and go through some of the stuff I'd read and get some notes together. The last thing I wanted to do was stand up in front of the class and be, “Uhh.....suicide happens a lot. And it's bad. Uhh......any questions?” So I got a lot of stuff together.
One thing I pulled up is something I'd brought along last year. It was a piece I'd written up about six months after her death, trying to describe what it was like for me. It seemed like a lot of people didn't get it, and so that'd be the best I could do to help with that. When I presented to the class last year, I ended with that, and figured I'd do the same this time, too. The whole thing is about two pages typed out, but here's some of it:
It's kind of like what happens when you get a bad cold or flu. It's hard to think straight. I know what's going on around me and where I am, but getting the thoughts into coherent order is hard, sometimes impossible. Things suddenly feel unreal, even if it's circumstances that have been familiar for years or more. Sometimes those simple, basic things just don't click or make sense. In an abstract sense, they do. The ideas are still there. Getting them to click together, though, to feel like they've become REAL, is sometimes just impossible. It's like trying to put together a 3D puzzle with pieces made of barely-tinted glass that's coated in oil. Along with that, the level of energy present for doing much of anything is drastically reduced. The thoughts come to mind more than once that it's like watching the Energizer Bunny trying to keep “going and going and going” with only one or two of it's four batteries. There's no lively little step or smart rap of the drum. Instead, it looks like it's trying to drag its way through a swamp of cold molasses, wondering how many more times it can hit the drum before its arms just go dead and drop. Sometimes it's better, sometimes not so much, but it's never what it used to be as far as energy for doing—or even enjoying—things goes.
Suddenly even normal, routine things are complicated and hard to understand and kind of scary. It's again like having the bad flu and having to go up or down stairs when I'm weak and shaky and my balance & equilibrium are just shot. Something like walking into the grocery store where I've been dozens of times before feels like walking through a field of tazer mines. They're not going to kill me, but I don't know when something will suddenly pop up and hit like a blast of electricity...and hurt. The same is even true about thinking about who's now gone, who's been lost. It's kind of scary, as there's no way to know what will suddenly pop up in association with those thoughts. And none of them will just take me out, remove consciousness, no matter how bad they hurt. If several go off in a row, they just keep adding to each other....and taking what there is of me at the time apart. When it gets bad, reality starts to bend, and what's most scary about that is that at those times I'm aware there's less of me to be afraid than there was before it happened.
Thinking gets just....strange. Odd and unexpected thoughts come up sometimes. Some of them make sense, like wondering why it happened or what I did to bring this to myself in this life. Sometimes it seems like life's not worth living, especially when it hurts that bad. It's not the thought of ending myself, but just wondering what the point is anymore. It's hard to see something good coming. It's hard to see much in the future at all. In that way, it's like coming back to consciousness in the middle of a thick forest in heavy fog. I can see about five feet in front of me but that's it, and I have to get out. There's no way to hurry, too many low-hanging branches and rocks and unstable footing. I just have to pick a direction and hope I'm going the right way, 'cause I just....don't.....know. And it seems to go on and on and on and on and on.....with no real way to tell whether I'm getting anywhere or not. I just know I can't stay where I've been. Sometimes my brain just seems to shut off and I find myself staring at whatever's there for....I don't know how long. Especially if there's not someone else there that snaps me out of it.
One of the things that also stands out is that humor and joy are pretty much just gone. For awhile, sure, there's nothing that's funny or in which I find joy. That's bad, but not the worst of it. The worst comes a bit later when I started regaining at least the wish for it, the impulse to sing a song or make a joke or do something silly and funny. In the beginning, the impulse would half-form and then die in a cloud of sickening futility and despair. Over time, it's changed to where it doesn't die that quick. Sometimes I'll get out a line or two of song, the start of a silly voice I'd used before....and then it collapses. In some ways, it hurt less when there was just no capacity for it as opposed to the conception and then abortion of some of the more enjoyable things I used to treasure....and take for granted.
When I read it off last year, I could still very much relate and connect to that. It didn't feel like I was all that far from that place at all, even though a year had gone by. This time around, though, it was different. This time around, as I was reading it to the class, I found my stomach tightening and getting queasy, while the thought came up, “Man, I was messed up!!” It wasn't in a derogatory or critical sense, more just one of surprise. I could remember having written that. I could remember that it had fit rather well. I just didn't feel the same connection to it this time as I had before. And part of what was so striking about that was that it wasn't something that had come from me thinking about it and reasoning my way to a conclusion. It was the initial, gut-level reaction to reading what I'd written and where I'd been.
I know I'm not the same as I was before. I know I've still got more to go with regard to healing and working on actually LIVING my life. At the same time, though, it's good to see the proof of the progress that's happened. And, as intellectual as I can be at times, there are some things where it's just got to come from experience, from my gut, for it to really sink in.
Since that night, I've noticed the feeling of a core of stability in me that hadn't been there before. Maybe it had been, and I just hadn't seen it yet. Maybe it'd been getting built over the last weeks and months, and it wasn't until I was hit by something else that I got to find out that it's there. I know it doesn't mean that there won't be times that will hurt. But at the same time, it now means that, when those times come, I'll KNOW I can handle them. I may get knocked to my knees again, but it doesn't mean I won't get up again. It doesn't mean I won't heal.
It doesn't mean that I will ever be trapped in the Hell of loss and grief due to suicide.
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