CN: Suicide

I’m not sure where to begin.  I have written about this and wrestled with this multiple times over the past week.  I’m still very uncertain as to how I should proceed but I do know that steps forward MUST be taken.

Writing has always—always—been my way of processing thoughts/feelings/emotions.  I’ve written a lot to myself lately, though, and have yet to reach any satisfactory conclusions or explanations as to the events as of late.

I have been extremely ambivalent about sharing this on my blog.  My current battle vacillates between my drive for authenticity and honesty as a psych nurse/human being and the backlash of stigma (discrimination) I KNOW I will most surely face from making this public.  But if I were not to disclose something that is so clearly a part of my battle with depression/mental illness, I would feel like a coward and a fraud.

So here’s what happened….

I’ve been down.  Depressed.  Even called my doc a month or so ago to get back on lithium as it seems both to help even my moods as well as lift the depression to some extent.  With the Wellbutrin I have been exceedingly compliant.  Not as much with the lithium—but the point is less about the compliance and more about the fact that I noticed that something wasn’t quite right even before the unit closed.

Unit closes September 7^th.  By mid-October, I’ve got a new, an AMAZING job lined up—quite literally what I’d always referred to as my “dream job.”

But.

Depression is a beast and my history of loss created the perfect storm.  While I was (am) thrilled with my new opportunities, the loss of not only the job but all of those patients, all of those nurses, all of those PEOPLE that I love so much felt very, very heavy.  And it wasn’t a loss that most people seemed to either understand or want to understand, although my perception doesn’t really matter.  The bottom line is that I felt very, very alone and without anyone with whom I could really share these thoughts.  The logical side of me said, “Jen!  Do you know how lucky you are?!  Do you know that not everyone was/is able to find not only one but TWO jobs in a lifetime that they will love?!  Do you not realize HOW FUCKING LUCKY you have been to have worked with such amazing people?!”  And so expressing or even allowing myself to actually grieve the loss of this job was difficult and didn’t really feel like an option.  It made me feel selfish and ungrateful.  Oh, the irony.

So, yes, I’d been down.  And I still don’t know exactly what happened, because while it had been a crappy day, it hadn’t been a horrendously crappy day.  I did yoga.  I took myself out for a decent meal and 1.5 glasses of red wine.  I was social with the other peeps.  Charming and even funny, perhaps.  If you had asked me if I were “safe” as I walked out of that place, I’d have answered “yes” without hesitation.

But something happened that night.  I still don’t remember what.  I’m assuming that I had some sort of trigger but for the life of me have not been able to figure out what it was.  Doc says that may be retrograde amnesia.  At around 10pm that night, I started downing the pills.  I don’t remember ever having a conscious thought of overdosing; I don’t remember even considering reaching out to anyone for one second.  I was in a different place.  Klonopin, Ambien, Flexeril, Phenergan …. Everything I had and as much as I had (and there were MANY).  I have a vague recollection of typing a note on my blog and a pretty clear recollection of vomiting all over myself, literally picking the whole pills out of the vomit, and taking them again.  And I also took them all with water because I did have the conscious thought of not wanting people to believe that I did this just because I was drunk.  I was not rational; of that, there is no doubt—but I also was not drunk.

I had enough wherewithal to set the suicide note up to publish at 6am the next morning which I figured bought me enough time to be dead but also ensure that my daughter  wouldn’t be the one to find me.  When it posted, a few friends alerted my sister who alerted the police, my brother, and my ex-husband (since he lives 50 yards away) who all found me unconscious on the bathroom floor, surrounded, I’m assuming, by vomit.

The note:

(And the fact that I made a typo on my mother fucking suicide note is not lost on me.)

This is the note that I wrote after taking the pills that I did not ever publish.  I’m including it because I think it’s important to see the progression, the state of mind.  Bear in mind that none of this altered mental state was from alcohol but from the overdose itself.

They deleted the note and rushed me to the hospital.  I’m told that on the way to the hospital, I stopped breathing.  My family was not allowed to see me for quite some time while the amazing ER staff fought for my life when I didn’t want to.  I was intubated, restrained, and given a propofol drip.  The nurses told my sister that they weren’t sure if I’d regain consciousness, and, if I did, if there would be brain damage.

But I woke up.  After a couple of days and some aspiration pneumonia, I woke up, surrounded by my family.  I don’t remember much of those couple days except that I was literally NEVER alone.  There was always someone at my bedside.  When I was stable enough, they transferred me to a psych unit to obviously adjust my meds and to keep me safe.

I came home yesterday.  My entire family is, understandably, terrified that I will do this again—especially since there seemed to be very little warning before the overdose.  I’m somewhere between numb, gob smacked, and sad.  And scared to death that I could’ve fucked up a job that I actually do really want and think I’d be really good at.

The police, a therapist, and a paramedic showed up at my door today.  They do follow ups, I guess, on suicide attempts or overdoses.  It is both hideously ironic and humiliating that I had to stand there and tell them, “I have no idea what happened.  Yes, I have a psychiatrist and have been with her for 17 years.  Yes, I know the resources in the area.  Yes, I’m FUCKING PSYCH NURSE AND I OVERDOSED.”  They were wonderful.  I’m grateful this county has such a service, and I actually asked if they were hooked with the hospital I’ll soon be working at because, I told them, I’ll be connecting people to you.”

Insert disgusted laughter here.

So my happy ending is that I’m alive.  I’m here.  My girls still have their mother; my dad still has his daughter; my siblings still have their (favorite) sister; my friends still have that one obnoxious friend.  I want to tell you that this will never happen again, but I’m shocked as hell that it happened at all.  I can say that I will be damn compliant with my meds and I absolutely will find a new therapist (new insurance).

This is real.  This is my life.  This is part of what depression can do to people—even people whom you would never expect to do such things.  I’m human.  I’m someone with a mental illness. I’m also a mom, daughter, sister, friend, nurse.  I’ll continue to fight the good fight.  I’ll continue to blog about it.  You, strangely, may continue to read it.

I’ve now sat for twenty minutes staring at the computer screen, trying to figure out how to wrap this up.  Sigh.  There is no wrapping this up.  There is only continuing forward.  Not exciting or glamorous or even inspiring.  But it is real.  And that is who I’m committed to be.