I am very thankful to the support system I have.Â
Two days ago, someone I thought was a friend (and maybe still is, though I’m not sure of that anymore) said something very hurtful.Â
Let me try to explain, though I’m pretty sure its a reoccurring theme in my blog if I were to go back and look. Still… Â I showed up at a business to get something done. The owner of the business is/was my friend. He scolded me (my words, he said it was just a straight conversation, no scolding inherent in such) for not keeping in communication per the business. I agreed that I had been flaky and said that I’d been having a couple of hard months. Â He looked at me and said “As long as I’ve known you, you’ve never NOT been having hard months.”
This hurt. A lot. Because I have good days, good weeks. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a full month of what I would call “good” but multiple weeks, yeah, I’d say I’ve had several good weeks at a time.
Part of what allows me to have good days and weeks is rationing my resources. So if my week is full of things I MUST do, things I SHOULD do don’t happen.Â
I was in tears when I left. Feeling like my heart had been broken. My trust in this person was demolished. Perhaps it should take more than that to break down my trust, but I admit it, I’m just fragile that way. Perhaps it was because I’d just spent a couple hours getting MRI’s of my brain done to check out the tumor in my brain. And my aunt is dying of brain cancer; I was already scared and fragile. So maybe this friend of mine just caught me at a bad time, but I don’t think that’s the entirety of the situation.
I found myself looking at a bridge abutment on the way home and thinking “Do I have enough speed to do anything permanent?” Â Due to traffic I didn’t have the opportunity to think that thought through to any conclusion. It was just a spur of the moment thought because of the immediate cycle of past pain and past thought processes that had been triggered.
I got home and stared at the suicide hotline number. Â But I’m afraid of what will happen to me if I ever DO call the suicide hotline. Will they come with an ambulance, strap me onto a gurney, and commit me to a “facility”? What would happen to Keegan and Kalev? What would happen to the rest of my life? Â So I didn’t call.
But fortunately for me, someone who knew that I had MRIs scheduled that morning IM’d me to see how it went. And I broke down. Completely. Â
Having someone who cared on the other end and could listen to me sob, and figuratively pat me on the back, was enough to talk me down to “just depressed and scared”.Â
Having that person call me back the next day, “just to see how I was doing”, was enough to bring me back to focus.Â
Having someone who posted back to me on FB, after I’d posted that I had just been reminded how worthless I was, and telling me how much I’d helped THEM in their lives, how much I meant to THEM, and asking me how would I feel if this was said to someone else was also helpful. It showed me that there are people who care enough to take the time out of their busy lives to write to me, to put some perspective on the world.
Having someone who just randomly emails me funny and/or cute and/or updates on his kids activities email me the day after reminds me that there’s more in the world than just my pain.
I have to admit that once the thought of suicide jumps back into your conscious brain it takes quite a bit to get it back out again. It sits in there and whispers to you. “Take me, I’m easy!” it says. “No one would miss you” it says. “They’d forget you in a few weeks” it says. “You wouldn’t have to worry about being a loser or a drain on society anymore” it says. Â “You wouldn’t have to fight this unending fight anymore” it says.
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But I have a support system now, varied, all over the country. And I know that they must like me or they wouldn’t have put such consistent effort into me. At least I think they must like me. I can’t be sure, not for certain.
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