Suicide

A young woman killed herself the other day. She was an activist for young parents, being a young mother herself. By all accounts she was fierce, vocal, strong, and proud. She'd done much to politicize young parenthood -- she rallied girls with children to get active, to finish school, to take charge of their bodies, to fight for their rights, and to not put up with the privileged bullshit of older, wealthier, whiter parents.

Word is that although it looked like a suicide, it was not intentional. I don't know if this is true or not. I didn't know her. Those who knew her say she was troubled -- sad and angry and lonely and full of pain. This was who she was. She struggled with mental health issues, though in what form I don't know.

My response upon reading of her death was unkind. I thought, "Why you selfish little shit." And I stand by that thought.

You see, I struggle with mental health issues. Out of nowhere they appeared on my horizon, darkening my skies. There was no warning -- no family history, no suicides in my family, no courses of therapy or antidepressants for any of us. That isn't to say that maybe there shouldn't have been. Indeed, it healing myself, I've come to see that there probably WAS a history of something -- the numerous relatives with alcoholism alone would suggest that, no? But hindsight, of course, is 20/20.

So my own mental illness seemed to spring from nowhere. And I have struggled with it. I have a variant of bipolar called 'bipolar 2' or 'soft bipolar.' It means I get all the depression of a person with unipolar depression, but it's punctuated by these LOVELY little manic episodes that aren't as severe as true mania, but nonetheless leave my head spinning.

The problem lies in the diagnosis; because the manias are farther apart and not nearly as severe as true bipolar manias, they often get mistaken for "normal" periods, especially when the sufferer is fairly high strung to begin with (which s/he usually is...wouldn't ya know). So the incorrect diagnosis - usually of unipolar depression -- leads to incorrect treatment -- usually SSRIs or some such anti-depressant. Now this eases the depression initially, but it tends to trigger rapid cycling and more frequent manias. And even in cases where it doesn't, the SSRIs, etc., only do so much good, because the depressed brain and the bipolar brain aren't exactly alike. So, with traditional anti-Ds, you sort of hit a wall.

Anyway, my digression here is to illustrate that I went wrongly diagnosed for a LONG time. Sure, I was getting my depression treated, but when a cycled up, no one caught (not even me) that things were still not right. All of this led to a severe crash earlier this year.

I came very close to suicide. VERY close. Past thinking about it, past picturing myself out of the picture, past ideating, and on to buying the razors and having them out of the package. There was no miracle zot that kept me from it, no voice of god, no stunning realization that there was hope after all, no knight in shining armor to knock the razor out of my hand as it trembled above my forearm. It doesn't actually work like that. That's the stuff of Hollywood.

Because, you see, choosing to kill oneself is, I have learned, rarely a decision one makes over night. It is not a rash. That's the real horror of it. It's slow and deliberate...it involves planning, thinking, hoping for some answer to come in the darkness. It is the result not of great traumas, but of being worn away slowly, like sandpaper on a block of wood, until there's nothing left but dust. There is no drama, and certainly no melodrama to it; it's almost mundane, because you've been living with the fatigue of it for so long.

I did not do it, though. Close as I came, I didn't do it, because in the end, my child's life meant more to me than my own. To cause her to suffer because I didn't want to anymore was unthinkable to me. Yes, I thought she'd be better off without me. I said it more than once, and believed it a lot of the time. But, I knew from experience that my death would WOULDN'T leave her better off.

You see, I lost my own father to alcohol when I was nine. I KNOW what it is to lose a parent suddenly when you are young. I KNOW how it sets your world on an axis so wobbly that it takes years to feel stable and secure again. I KNOW how it leaves a child with fear that people will abandon her. And that from a death that WASN'T planned. How much more cruel to willingly choose death over remaining in the child's life. How cruel and selfish.

So I fought. I summoned up something very primal and very deep and I fought. I ended up hurting someone I love very much. My life turned inside out in the ugliest of ways and I am still picking up the pieces from it. But in the end, I got a correct diagnosis, new drugs, a little relief. I was willing to tear my life apart and put it back together again despite the pain and fear and anguish I was feeling, so that my daughter wouldn't have to live through what I had to live through.

So you see why I think of this young woman as selfish. I am angry with her for forever fucking her son up. I know she would never abandon him in life, so why do so in death? Why cause him such pain. If he meant ANYTHING to her, she should have fought for her own life as if she was fighting for his. She should have fought like hell.

And if it wasn't intentional? Then she isn't worth my pity. Although many are saying it wasn't suicide, it apparently LOOKED like it, which means that it wasn't accidental a la "the toaster fell into the sink while she was doing dishes" or "she slipped in the tub." So what does this mean? That it was a part of a drama. There was drinking, there was a fight with her partner. And she ran with it. Wanting to be oh so tragic. Well, she certainly got that, didn't she? I'd say "grow up" but...

Such a waste. Such a selfish fucking waste.