Six years ago my life changed. I got a call from my boss, and when I hung up some 10 minutes later I was facing imminent unemployment. It had been a dozen years since I had been facing this challenge.
This ushered in a difficult year — my mental health unbeknownst to me (or probably willful ignorance) was fragile...about 6 weeks into my unemployment I got busy fixing up and painting my house. I finished that project in early September, maybe a month before my severance salary dried up…then I started to look for work in earnest. And it wasn’t as easy as it had been 10 years before...as the rejections and dead ends piled up, the echo’s of past troubles mounted in my head. My unknown at the time depression began the steepest descent of my life.
In the middle of November I tried to hang myself. Fortunately my wife was there to call for help, but I ended in the back of a sheriff’s car looking at my freshly painted house in the dark, knowing I was headed to a hospital. Technically involuntarily, but I think the metallic taste that I started to get while the rope was around my neck was an inflection point. I knew I had to get help.
I had been not taking care of my high blood pressure while unemployed, so I ended up in the cardiac telemetry unit for a couple days (under guard, I guess I was on “suicide watch”) before getting into the psychiatric wing. I think I lucked out that the hospital I was in for my heart ended up having a psych bed when I needed it. My eldest step daughter has been through the psychiatric system here in FL and it was not as easy. Of course I pulled out of my steep dive (giving away the story, but I’m here writing this...so you already know that?), she didn’t for quite a while.
It was another couple days before I saw the psychiatrist, but I had a good attitude about going to group and the restrictions I was under. The session before I was supposed to see the doctor was about all the common symptoms of depression — and NONE of them applied to me. An older man who was being released and I talked in the common area after the group...he was already technically discharged, but participated anyway. I mentioned my confusion, and he gave me the words that unlocked my confusion:
“I kinda feel that depression is hostility you turn in on yourself”
Maybe that doesn’t work for everyone, but it did for me. When I saw the psychiatrist moments later I was prepared to accept that I had a depression. She called it an “atypical” one, and said that I needed to stop drinking. Regardless if I was an alcoholic or not, my consumption was unusually high by any standards. I was able to accept the need to stop drinking from my rational self — a depressed person is not well served ingesting depressants.
By this point I had probably been alcohol free for 4 days.
I was released a few days later, in time for Thanksgiving. It was tense, since I was still unemployed. By mid December I found a temporary position with a company that had a less than sterling reputation in my field. Staying focused on my blessings was tough — I was taking a pretty serious pay cut on top of feeling like I was working for the bottom of the barrel.
But by the time February 2017 rolled around my view of my job had changed. The industry view was outdated, and it was a great opportunity for me. Before the end of that month my metabolism changed in response to not drinking anymore (I presume...) and 20 pounds rapidly left my body.
Sometime in that year a close friend whom I had worked with at the job that canned me re-joined me with the new company. He admitted to coming as close as I did to completing suicide — he put the gun barrel in his mouth. He said one sign of being “healed” — as much as that term can be applied here — was being able to joke about it...I reached that point after a few years I guess. But I’m still circumspect.
Sure, I’ll open up here — DK is a safe space of sorts, but it’s not “safety” per se. I trust that my story will be received compassionately here, where I don’t need the false BS from other social media. So I don’t advertise “Sober for X years today!!!” because that requires me to admit that this massively beneficial change to my life was the result of a suicide attempt. Just not really the “victory” story IMO…
But I will tell people in the proper conversation, and I’m will to help anyone who feels they need to vent. Venting is what I did poorly for 40 years until this egg cracked. I vented internally. Stewed in my own intractable juices. In fact it was Facebook reminding me of this milestone, when I posted this poem I wrote that day:
Change Up
You feel accomplished
You feel motivated
You feel appreciated
And comfortable
But keep in mind
The line from "Tom Sawyer"
Changes aren't permanent
But change is
It could be worse
It could be a medical issue or the loss of a loved one
Or you could be stuck in a war zone
Or your house could be leveled by a tornado
But somethings are difficult to move on from
And I think of another verse from Peart
Copped from Whitman
We are islands to each other
Building hopeful bridges over troubled seas
Some are burned or swept away
And some we would not choose but we're not always free
So I am saying there is opportunity to grow after trauma. We are not always constrained to be diminished by it. But it’s not easy, and you have to want to grow from that trauma, and not be afraid of it defining shaping your life.
(h/t to the Plain Truth for that final edit)