To be honest, I am nervous to publish this post even now. You see, bipolar often runs in families and left untreated it makes a person ill enough to lose their life to the bipolar illness. Choosing to publish this post not only affects me and DH, but this post potentially affects extended family members as we mourn the loss of a sister, a daughter, a friend and her children have lost their mother. DH's sister, my sister-in-law (SIL) has lost her battle to bipolar illness. This past weekend, we bid our farewells to her one last time during her memorial service. Our grief is heavy, subdued and painful as we absorb the reality of the loss of this beautiful woman.
As friends and family have struggled to come to terms with her sudden departure from this life to the next, many do not understand the complexities of bipolar illness and what could possibly drive a person to take their own life. Could it really be that bad?
While I do not pretend or purport in any fashion whatsoever to know what my SIL was thinking, feeling, experiencing or rationalizing in her final moments; while I will never speculate as to what drove her to that final point in her life; I can tell you what I have experienced with her brother, my husband, DH.
I have asked DH to read this post again after a year and a half. I have asked for his permission to post the draft that has been waiting all this time to be published.
September 29th, 2015:
To be quite frank, in the last couple of weeks, it is the boldest I have ever been in facing the issue of suicide. It was a week and a half ago that I decided to participate in the Suicide Prevention Walk put on by The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. It was almost an urgent decision, as if the moment I decided I wanted to do it, I had to register right away. I texted DH (husband) and DD1 (oldest daughter) and asked them if we could do it together. The moment they said yes, I immediately registered our family to participate.
Last week, a very good friend of mine invited me to attend a suicide prevention training meeting. In an instant I accepted, texted DH and told him I wouldn't be home tonight. I'd be attending this meeting instead.
This isn't like me. I'm not bold when it comes to suicide. I shrink from it. I fear it. The thought of it balls me into a fetal position. The thought of someone I love committing suicide controls me and has great power over me. And yet, here I am. Standing boldly. Shouting on the internet, here I am, this is important, listen to all the souls mourning and weeping for their loss. Feel the souls on the other side coming to terms with the deed they have done. Listen to yourself. Get the help you need. I am shouting to all to be aware of suicide. Don't shy away from it. Confront it because it is all around us.
I am a childhood cancer survivor. As a cancer survivor, I am a person who has always loved life and always wanted to live, who, years ago, fought to live to beat the cancerous cells trying to over take my body. I never understood the mentality of someone who would want to take their life when I so desperately wanted to save mine.
Over ten years ago, my husband attempted suicide. This blog entry has undergone some revisions to be considerate of our privacy and our detailed knowledge that is to remain only between he and I as husband and wife. Suffice it to say, my oldest daughter was four years old at the time. It was a very dark time and little did I know what the future held for DH, myself and my family. It shook me to my core and for the next decade, the very thought of suicide frightened me to a depth that is hard to explain.
Throughout the years, arguments have escalated into DH leaving the house in a rage with me remaining behind not knowing when he was going to come home or if he was going to come home at all. Throughout the years fear of suicide has gripped me unlike any other fear ever has in my life. Throughout the years, I have learned that it is DH's bipolar illness that drives him into such illogical and unfathomable actions. Throughout the years, I have had to teach myself that if DH ever is successful in taking his own life, it would not be my fault. I would not be to blame. This has been one of the hardest things I have ever had to teach myself.
The winter of 2014 to 2015, was so unbelievably hard for me. DH's medication stopped working. He had built up a tolerance to the medication we balanced him on a decade earlier. He had a good run for ten years. For ten years the medication worked. Kept him stable enough to come out of his anger, depression and illogical thoughts soon enough to prevent any major suicide attempts. Were there suicide threats? Yes, plenty of them accompanied with temper tantrums. Were there actual attempts requiring hospitalization? No.
In the winter of 2014 to 2015, DH had four different suicide plans. He was mulling over which plan would be best. Which plan would be the most sure to be successful? Which plan would 110% ensure that neither I nor our children would be the ones that found him? Which plan would be sure that a stranger would be the one to discover his body? DH became paranoid. Paranoid that everyone was out to get him. He became anxious and fearful. Everything spiraled so quickly my head whirled to a sickening nausea. At the end of December, over the New Year's Eve holiday, DH still had enough of himself inside himself to come to me and beg me to take him to a hospital. He told me he couldn't get the voices out of his head and he was going to hurt himself. He wanted to die to stop the pain. He wanted the pain to stop. He wanted the voices telling him to kill himself to stop. We immediately got in the car and I drove him to a mental health hospital. He was hospitalized for one week and our journey of medication stabilization continued upon his discharge. Every day from the fall of 2014 to the early summer of 2015, I drove home from work wondering if that was the day I was going to become a widow and a single mother. Every day I feared for my husband's life.
I have personally known others whose stories don't continue. Their stories stop. They ended their lives. When my uncle committed suicide over 10 years ago I was filled with rage and anger. You see, he committed suicide on the heels of DH's first attempt. I don't remember how many weeks or months passed before my uncle committed suicide after DH had made his attempt. I just remember taking DH and DD1 at her tender young age, not even tall enough to peer into the casket, to support my cousin and aunt. I remember the intolerance I felt toward my uncle. I remember the intolerance I felt about his decision to take his life. I remember seething with maddening anger, insisting that he was selfish and stupid for not getting the help he needed. I was beside myself with the complexity of emotions raging through me. I remember wondering how easily it could have been DH lying in the same wooden box, surrounded by the same family members with the same tears, sniffing in the same scents of the blue and yellow carnation flowers.
In June of 2015 a girl scout leader of my daughter, DD2, committed suicide. I did not know this leader very well. I spoke with her at drop off and pick up times. Talked to her about activities every once in a while and became friends with her on Facebook. When I learned of her death, my heart sank to the pit of my stomach. Sorrow filled my heart and I ached for her. I ached for the pain she was hiding from so many people. I ached for the deep, dark abyss of despair she was living and believed, truly believed that death was the only answer she had left. Death was the only way to make the pain go away. Death was the only way to relief. My heart ached for those who loved her dearly and mourned her loss. I ached for loved ones who found themselves dumbstruck, confused and bewildered at her passing.
You see, in ten years I have learned a great deal. I have learned tolerance. I have learned strength. I have learned a plethora of information about mental illness and the pain it inflicts. Mental illness inflicts emotional pain and physical pain. Physical pain manifests when the mental pain becomes too great. Mental pain manifests when physical pain becomes too great. It is all a vicious cycle.
I am no longer ashamed to talk about DH's attempts and tendencies toward suicide. His attempts and desires to end his life does not define who he is; his suicide attempts and tendencies define the severity of his illness.
In the beginning of this post, I spoke of how I fought my cancer, leukemia to be precise. I fought for my life. I fought an illness, a cancer of the blood that could not be seen. I fought for the hope of life. Just as cancer is unseen, so too is mental illness unheard, unseen, unknown. Those with mental illness fight for their lives. They fight with every fiber of their being. They fight hard. The voices in their head tell them to go through with suicide. The voices in their head whisper with a sweet tone and a bitter bite. The voices tell them that suicide will make everything better in the end. The voices tell them that they are a burden and a curse to the ones they love and the ones they love are better off without them. The person, the mentally ill human being listening to these voices fight the voices. They fight them with a vengeance. The mentally ill person is indeed fighting the way a cancer patient fights. They fight hard and yet they are full of shame. This shame stops them from trusting anyone. This shame further instills in them how suicide is the best option.
Fighting illness is fighting illness. Whether it is cancer of the bones, skin or blood or whether it is fighting the chemical imbalances within the brain that trick, tempt, tantalize and torture the mind.
Cancer patients are placed on a pedestal. I have been placed on a pedestal much taller than I have ever deserved for surviving childhood leukemia. And with that placement, the higher the top the further the drop. There is always a fear of letting someone down. There is always the fear of not living up to the image you have been portrayed to live.
Mentally ill patients swing to the opposite side of the pendulum. They are full of shame. They are ashamed of themselves, others are ashamed of them and these ill human beings are ostracized. Sometimes mentally ill patients ostracize themselves. Sometimes others ostracize the ill patient. Fear drives this seclusion. Fear that others might contract their mental illness. Fear that if anyone finds out a mentally ill person is considering suicide, another person will consider it too. The mentality of "don't talk about it and it won't happen" takes over in communities and loved ones.
And yet, a cancer patient hailed as a god or goddess and a mentally ill patient outcast like a leper are fighting the same fight! They are fighting to live and they haven't the foggiest idea how. The cancer patient and the mentally ill patient don't know how to combat the war raging inside themselves. They don't know what treatments will work, how they will work or how long their remission will last. They are screaming at themselves to continue to try, continue to push, continue to fight a fight that frightens them to their core. They try medications, they have setbacks, they seem to come out of the dark moments and then another blow takes them down.
DH loves me to the ends of the earth and back. DH loves our children to eternity and beyond. DH would do anything for us, including ending his own life so he is no longer a burden for me and our children. DH knows logically this is not the way. He knows this is not the choice he should make. When the pain becomes great, he has to fight it. He has to fight it hard, and fight it he has. It is my prayer that he will continue to fight. That he will fight for his life with the same vigor and stamina that I fought for mine so many years ago as chemotherapy dripped through my veins.
Let me be as clear as I can be to you at this very moment. Losing someone to suicide is NEVER your fault. You are NEVER responsible for their decision to take their own life. You DID NOT cause this loss to occur. You DID NOT do or say anything that caused this loss. You are NEVER responsible for knowing or preventing this loss from happening. Those who follow through with suicide have been planning it. They have been contemplating it. They have been hiding it from you ON PURPOSE because they know you love them enough to stop them from following through. They know you love them that much to stop it from happening. They carefully hid it from you and it is not your responsibility to read the mind of another human being. Do what you can, do what you must but in the end, know you did your absolute best and your best is all that can ever be asked.
Even as I write these words, I know that I must recite them to myself regularly to actually believe it is never my fault, I did not cause this and I am not responsible for another's actions. Truly believing and relying on this mantra is far from easy, but learning, knowing and believing the truth of these words can be done. Be patient with yourself as you mourn the loss of loved ones. Be patient with yourself as you fight the fight of mental illness either within yourself or with someone you love the most.
There are multiple types of suicide attempts. In my experience I have seen four major categories. The first is "a cry for help" which are those who attempt suicide as a cry for help with no real intent to actually successfully take their own life. The cry could be manipulative in nature or it could be because the emotional pain is so great, they just don't know what to do and they need help. The second type is "accidental suicide". The individual was crying for help but was accidentally successful with no real intention to actually succeed in taking their own life. The third type is "failed suicide" where the individual had real intent to succeed in ending the pain and ending their own life but the suicide attempt failed and they find themselves hospitalized under suicide watch, sobbing because of physical malformations they may have caused to their body. Despair overcomes them as they realize their desperate desire to leave this world has failed. The fourth type is "intentional suicide" the successful taking of one's life with the real and actual intent to take their own life.
I will end this post with this: nobody, not one single soul leaves this earth without God's permission and authority. I have seen too much, experienced too much and been too close to loss time and time again to know that until each and every person has fulfilled their personal mission on this earth, they will not be permitted to leave. Until such time that God has deemed that they have fought a good fight, the battle is done, their mission is complete and they have served their purpose while here on this earth, He and He alone will grant permission for their return home to Him. While many question God, His existence, His mercy and love, know this: God will allow respite when the time is proper. God will allow relief and welcome his children back home when He and He alone deems it correct and true. Divine intervention has stopped suicide attempts time and time again. As mortals, we think we are in control of everything and when it comes to life and death, we are in control of nothing.
It is our job to tend to the sick, provide medical treatment, nurse the afflicted and comfort those who stand in need of comfort. It is our job to apply the Balm of Gilead to the pains of others at all times whether they be cancerous in nature, physically chronic in nature or mentally and emotionally debilitating in nature. It is our job to do the absolute best we can with every resource we have until such time God calls each and every one of his children back home. And when He does, when He does call that soul back home to Him it is our job to nurse our own personal pains and apply the Balm of Gilead to our own afflicted, sorrowful hearts surrendering to the loss of the loved one who is gone suddenly and tragically. It is our job to apply the Balm of Gilead to the loved ones we hold close and dear and support each other through such terrible pain and loneliness we find ourselves in that can only be felt at the finality of life of another.
~Elizabeth~
No comments:
Post a Comment