Regular poster, but not for this one. HH, I wish I had a great answer to help you out of this time. God damn it, I wish I did. But all I can offer is a cliche: hang in there. Make it through each day. Get help. Talk to someone. And I can tell you my story, and let you know that it is possible to survive the worst days, even when you're convinced you don't want to.
Ten years ago next Saturday I entered a psychiatric hospital for the first time. My shrink forced me there after I talked about the suicidal feelings that had overwhelmed me. He listened patiently as I sat in his office and told him all I could think about was how I'd be able to do it as soon as I left. Then he told me I had two choices: go to the hospital voluntarily, or sit in the chair until the police arrived and took me there. I stayed in the hospital 17 days. My parents visited the first night. All I could think about after they left was the crushing disappointment they had to be feeling as they drove the 20 miles back home. Jesus, I was the good kid in the family, my sister was the screwup. And there I sat in a room with no handles or windows. A few days later my two young nephews visited. They didn't know exactly what was wrong, only that their uncle was sick. The second they entered the room I held one in each arm and cried for five minutes.
The place was filled with crazies. And many of those people ended up becoming friends for life. There was the 35-year-old housewife who slit both her wrists in the tub. There was the 45-year-old bipolar man in the midst of mania, who insisted - insisted, you mother****ers - that a UFO had landed on his yard and that if he didn't get out right then, the world would end. Later, after his manic episode, the man sat in disbelief as a nurse told him it'd taken 8 cops to subdue this wimpy-looking 150-pound middle-agedman. There was the 10-year-old boy who'd tried hanging himself in the family garage. Nicest kid you'd ever meet. You could see the rope burns on his neck for days.
They gave me a full physical. I have no ****ing idea why they had to feel my balls or check my prostate, but they did and what do you know, they were fine! They tried one medication, and then another. They'd walk by every 15 minutes and once two nurses barreled into my bathroom because I wasn't answering them. They found me in a ball in the corner, weeping, wishing for death.
A week into my stay a girl I graduated with - a girl I went on a few dates with six years earlier - was on my floor. She was a nurse in the building and was on psychiatric duty that week. She'd seen my name on the list and didn't want me to be uncomfortable. She only approached after I asked her to come talk. Remarkably the humiliation I felt about my friends and family and co-workers knowing I was in there didn't crop up with her. She was a professional, but also a friend, and talked to me late one night, about high school, old basketball games, old dates, and suicide. Whatever she gets paid, it wasn't enough.
My co-workers visited me and I can only imagine what they thought. I'm a guy who's always happy, at least on the outside. I'm a guy who everyone confides in. I'm the guy who can make them laugh when they're at their lowest or offer a shoulder when they had to cry. It had to be awkward for them to show up there, but they did and I never forgot it.
At the time my grandpa was a month away from his death. He was in a hospice, dying of cancer. For two weeks my parents were unable to visit him as they came to see me every day. One night they told me grandpa had a panic attack at the hospice after my uncle had told him I was in the hospital, but wouldn't reveal why. It still tears me up to know he was frightened at that moment. It still tears me up to know I robbed my dad of two weeks he could have spent with his father.
There was talk therapy, group therapy and game therapy. Try playing Scattergories with an 85-year-old dementia patient. The game devolves quickly and if you're not depressed before that, you surely will be after it.
More than two weeks after I entered, they let me out, finally convinced I wasn't a danger to myself. God it was good to be out. The first day out my mom took me to McDonald's and I had a quarterpounder, large fries and a 20-piece McNugget.
For six months life improved. I saw a new therapist. My new medications worked. Then around Thanksgiving that year all the demons came back. But I'd learned my lesson. Don't tell your doctor. In the first week of December, I went home after a long night at the paper. I'd covered a wrestling meet that night. Filed my story. A pretty good one. Said goodbye to my boss. I drove to the grocery store and bought a bottle of aspirin and a two-liter of Mountain Dew.
At about 2 a.m. I started eating aspirin two at a time. I did it for about 45 minutes, maybe an hour. I could feel myself getting sleepy. I thought I'd finally done it.
I woke up at 8 a.m. with the most excruciating stomach pain of my life. Vomit covered my lips. I was dizzy. And ****, I wanted to live. I'd failed at death. And I'd succeeded in living.
I staggered down the steps from my apartment and drove a block to my friend's house. After a minute of pounding on the door, she answered and wanted to know what the hell was going on. All I could say, in a slurred voice, was "aspirin, aspirin." She thought I needed some and went to the bathroom to get a bottle. I shoved it away and collapsed on her floor. I heard her scream. She brought me to my feet as she finally saw my face and realized what I'd done.
She drove me two blocks to the emergency room. They pumped my stomach, gave me a disgusting charcoal thing and admitted me to the psychiatric unit. I spent the next six hours vomiting black tar. I sprayed the bathroom walls with it, unable to keep it in the toilet. One time I failed to make it to the bathroom in time. Black vomit covered my floor. I kept apologizing to the nurse who told me not to worry about it. They hooked me up to an IV for two days. The only sound I heard for three days was the ringing in my ears. Doctors had to write down their thoughts and instructions.
"We don't think you did any permanent damage to your liver," one note would say.
"We think your hearing will return in a few days," said another.
Days later my friend told me that she'd gone back to my apartment after I was put into the psychiatric unit. She counted how many aspirin were left. She returned to tell the staff I'd taken approximately 200. Explained the bad hearing. Later I thanked her. Not just for opening her door that morning. But for the fact she'd told me months earlier that if I ever had to come to her, her door would always be open. If she hadn't told me that, I never would have gone to her that day.
The same friends visited. The same co-workers visited. They all asked why I hadn't come to them. I didn't have an answer.
Six days later I was out.
The next years were always a struggle, with a lot of good times and just enough bad times to remind me of why I swallowed those aspirin. But slowly, slowly it got better. I'm on medication and always will be. I'm married now. My wife knows everything. And she has more insight into the human mind than even my best psychiatrist.
And yet...
I tell myself it'll never happen again. I'll never again succumb to the demons. I'll tell my wife next time. I'll tell a shrink. I'll call a hotline. But part of me knows that the problem is that when I"m in that state, when I'm planning my destruction, I'm not thinking rationally. Now I know that if I died at my own hands, my parents's lives would end about five seconds after mine. I know that my wife would never be the same person, that I'd be doing the cruelest thing possible. But in that moment, I'm not thinking those thoughts. So I have to do everything in my power to keep from getting to that point again. I try to be proactive. I see a shrink twice a week. I take my medication. I talk to my wife when I'm feeling down, and we talk about how that's normal, how she doesn't have to be scared that it means I'm on the verge of something horrible.
I get through each day. And you can do it, Harley. Get through each day. Tomorrow might not be better than today. But it might be. And if not tomorrow then the next day. And the only way you'll discover that is if you make it through each day. The only way you'll discover that is if you don't pull into that truck. Life can get better. Finances can improve. Family situations can improve. But more importantly, your brain can get better. But you gotta be around to give it a fighting chance.
Take care man.
