Suicide Prevention Month

I’m terrible at blogging. It’s not really my thing. So, as a little prompt, I figured I’d look up what September was for. Talk about heavy….

I’m not really qualified to speak on this. But, we’ve all been touched by it in some way, haven’t we? If not directly, we know someone who knows someone. For that, I suppose we can get a little raw in my corner of the internet.

But, where does one start?

I suppose we’ll start from the beginning. I’m sure anyone who is anyone realizes there’s nuance to someone’s story. They can tell you one facet of their story, and there are a million other little etches that make up the same diamond. What’s the number of chances it took for us all to get here? Some astronomical number. That number of chances makes me forever grateful for every interaction, every little choice, and this breath and the next. It could have not happened, any number of times. but it did. That same collection of chances makes up someone’s story.

I can look you in the eye and say, “Well, I just left my free ride scholarship behind because I was unhappy,” and it would be true. Ask me another time, and I’ll tell you it was because I wanted to be a doctor. That would be true. If you asked how I got into shipping, I’ll give you my, “Long story short, went to school for it, and now I’m here.” It’s just easier. Who really wants to sit down and listen to someone’s entire story? Who can really take the accumulation of little events and voice it in a concise, condensed little package of a story? For all my writer friends, you know what that’s like. Ask me to condense my entire story, all the nuance, relationships, moving parts into a paragraph!? You’re insane. Jane at the register or Charles at the bar doesn’t really want the nuance. Nor would I ever want to share it with him, because not every aspect of it is who I identify with anymore.

So, since you’re still here, reading this, and it’s suicide prevention month, let me weave how suicide guided me.

I struggled a lot as a teen. Who didn’t, right? I was an overweight, ultra-sensitive, judgmental (that’s a new thing I’ve admitted to myself), awkward teen who never knew how to occupy the space I held. If you know me as an adult, you know I command a lot of space. I’m into anime, and metal, and Lord of the Rings, and D&D, and I spent most of my teenage years in my basement playing video games. Today, that would be super cool and accepted…. 15 years ago, not so much. I had the world’s biggest chip on my shoulder, and I occupied a lot of out there spaces. Still do, but I’m finding my people. Add that to a set of parents and siblings who made fun of me for drawing dark things, watching anime, being overweight, and the music I listened to, and really, just everything. Man, being a teenager was hard.

I’d ask for rides to guitar lessons and Civil Air Patrol and get lots of shit about how much time it took. Instead of saying something I created was something special, it was always, “Why did you draw that?” I’ve said it as an adult, but god forbid they found the things I wrote. Just, on and on. It was gross. Still is. Did you see my newest drawing? The castle on the seaside looking down on a lighthouse and buildings crumbling on the cliffs? Instead of, “Michelle, that’s really beautiful. You’re doing something really great,” I got a nasty, “Are you copywriting your stuff?”

It’s icky.

So, just take that…. and know that anytime I struggled emotionally, I was asked how in the world I could be so sad because I had everything. A big house, my parents together, food on the table. Michelle, why in the world are you so sad? Why are you self-harming? Why would you ever want to kill yourself?

I didn’t talk to therapists honestly, because I knew they’d tell my parents, and that always made it worse. That silence. Never, “How can we help?” and mean it, but instead, “Why would you want to do that?” When I’d reach out to friends, bless their hearts, they’d tell an adult because no child should have to carry the burden of their friend’s mental health. They’d tell my parents. I’d call suicide hotlines, and immediately hang up. I can’t count the number of times I’d cry in my car and just wish to die after I hung up. I’m wholly convinced I took years off my life I wished it so hard. That was my method… to just wish. Because I didn’t want anyone to know. I just wanted to disappear. My method couldn’t be messy, but it also couldn’t possibly fail. So, I just wished it would happen.

So, here’s the truth. I wanted to go into the military, so I’d hopefully get shot. Go down in a helicopter accident (I’d be ok dying in an airplane, actually, no-morbid.) That was my goal. So…. que working hard enough to get into an academy, because I was too chunky to enlist. Besides, I was good at school. It’s what my parents wanted from me… to go to college and be an engineer or something equally prestigious. Luckily, I loved math and science. How lucky that my long-distance boyfriend at the time lived in New York. Perfect.

Except, at the very heart of why I had to leave that school, was because I had “mental health issues.” I ended up talking to the school nurse (not really, they were actually military doctors). They flagged my file. When I say I wanted more than anything to be there, I mean it. It was a love-hate relationship. But I never wanted to leave. I just wanted to take a Leave of Absence. Go home, have my own doctor say I was ok to be out at sea. They wouldn’t let me, I had to go through them. So, I just gave up. I ended up passing all my classes despite that nightmare of a trimester, and I’m still mad about it. That was half the stress.

Behind all of that, too, I got involved with an icky man who was 12 years my senior, who 100% took advantage of me and my low self-esteem. That’s another facet of the story I don’t mind sharing, but not tonight. Just know, that relationship also left a major hole in my heart.

My depression is triggered by all my unrequited loves in life. The whole thing where you look for love in all the wrong places, and when they don’t love you you feel unlovable, because you’ve never been loved in a healthy way. I’ve never been very good at dating. Any boy drama in my life would result in self-harm. I’ve been single for 6 years now, except for little attempts, and let’s let the tears flow when I say I’m kind of convinced I’ll never be able to manage it. Bless all their hearts, too. I was too broken and ignoring all the incompatibilities because I just wanted someone to be there.

Fast forward to my last major relationship. That one nearly broke me. Actually, it did. I thank God every day that at that time I still had my head on my shoulders. I bought a gun for this guy…. I never bought bullets, because I knew either he would shoot me, himself, or I’d shoot myself. I refused to buy bullets. Said it was because we had kids around., it was really because of us. We were awful together. But, the thing with self-harm, right, is you do it to feel alive? If you can still feel it, you know you’re ok. Well, I’ll always vividly remember the night he held that empty gun to my head and I didn’t care. I held it to my head at one point too, and man, am I glad there were no bullets. Use that as a very good reason for gun control here in the States. I bought that damn thing when I was drunk 5 minutes before the pawnshop closed.

Just to put into perspective how awful my parental relationship is, I told my mom I’d rather go live with a man who beat me than live with them. I’ll always remember that, too.

But, when I say I left school because it was expensive, that’s actually a lie. I’ve made it true. But the reality was I was so fucked up on drugs, alcohol, and self-destructing with the help of a man that they refused to keep giving me money. I was dropping too many credits. The credits I kept were A’s, but the ones I dropped counted as F’s. I was literally so sick, and so tired, and so broke I couldn’t even buy books.

I did want that piece of paper, and I still love engineering. I miss that aspect of myself when I’m creating. I’m glad I’m doing leather, and hopefully other tool-y things. It brings me so much joy to work with numbers and my hands.

I’ll never forget how broken I was at that time. I drove around (sometimes drunk) without a seatbelt. Again, go figure I didn’t quite want that method, either. I had the seatbelt buckled, I’d just sit on top of it. If I went, they’d know it was suicide. But, it was also out of my hands. I hardly drank anything for an entire week. I’m on a medication that is hard on my kidneys…. let me tell you, I felt where my kidneys were during that time. I started losing the weight I had gained back with him because I didn’t eat.

I’ll also never forget when I went into Walmart after work at midnight to buy razors. I was drunk, go figure. I ended up talking to an associate about how I was going back out to sea, and he thought it was so cool. We talked for a solid half-hour, and when I left, I didn’t want to hurt myself anymore.

That was really special.

It took me 6 years to get here. I haven’t hurt myself in a long time. I survived postpartum depression alone in California while dealing with the heartbreak of my son’s dad abandoning us when I was 2 months pregnant. THAT pregnancy was miserable for all the external nonsense going on. Not surprising, my parents were a nightmare and unsupportive of ME during the whole thing. I was out of work, sleep-deprived, and had very little help. I stopped lying on the questionnaires, and they didn’t do anything. I had all the red flags, but they still let me go home. That was wild.

I owe that level of survival and strength to sailing and all the little moments of support and love that people did offer. None of them knew how much I was struggling. Not all of them made it on the other side of that experience though, and I’m sorry for that.

Maybe you’ve seen me mention before about how being stuck on the ocean really puts you up close and personal with yourself. It’s true. Honestly, as sad as it makes me I had to drop out of school, it’s good I did. That’s not a lie. I’m better for it. For the first three years, I struggled with alcohol still. If I drank too much (hello, sailor), I’d get depressed. I’d end up with some coworker in a vaguely intimate relationship that was really just sad, and then I’d get depressed more. I’ll never forget when I was heartbroken because a guy I really liked at home called it off. I was deep in the bottle, getting hardly any sleep between my insane work schedule and sneaking into a man’s room at night. I was just a mess. I thought about jumping overboard that ship. It’s a way to go, let me tell you. It was winter, way up near Alaska. I’d freeze pretty quick. By the time they’d realize, homegirl would be long gone. I wonder if they’d even bother turning around.

But, I didn’t jump. That’s a really awful way to go. I didn’t want to watch the ship pull away and be stuck there regretting it.

And that’s where I want to end this. I read a book recently that made me cry like a baby. Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell.

There’s a bit in there about suicide, and why it happens. I like numbers, it makes me feel safer. It helps me quantify everything. The research he did found that people don’t kill themselves to kill themselves, they kill themselves because they’re committed to a method. It happens that we think about killing ourselves. But that’s the difference between those who do and don’t. The ones who do know how they want to do it, and they find the means to do it. That’s the thread through my story, right? I just wanted to disappear. I didn’t actually want to die. I didn’t have a method. Remove the method, and they won’t kill themselves.

That’s the one thing I really want you to take away if you’ve gotten this far. If you’re worried about someone, ask them one question: Do you have a plan? Press them. Ask them. Because if they say, “Not really, I just want to disappear for a while,” you’ve got time. They just want a safe place to be. Get them help. If they say, “Yes,” then they need immediate help. Don’t be afraid to be direct, either.

That bit of information came from reading an article written by a suicide prevention counselor. Or maybe it was in Malcolm's book. Either way, I can’t quote that but know it clicked between those two pieces of information.

I’m so thankful for the way my stars aligned…. I’ve managed well with getting away from my family, and being too stubborn to quit. I was too afraid to take medicine because I loved how creative I was, so I always declined it. I’m glad I did. Did it get wild sometimes? You bet…. but I managed. That’s half the battle; learning how to manage.

Not everyone is so lucky.

Remember that man I mentioned? The one who I loved so deeply yet we were so awful for each other? He ended up killing himself. His family let me know when it happened, and I flew home for his funeral to be with them. It makes me so sad that he did it. But, I was far removed. I knew then, with all the clarity of a battered woman who survived, that there was nothing I could have possibly done for him. I always sent him warm thoughts when he crossed my mind, and I’m sorry that we never got to see each other again on the other side of our addictions and broken hearts. But I didn’t have the tools to help him, and he didn’t help himself.

So, there are the cuts of my diamond I’ve never been honest about. I’d be willing to bet a few of my long-time friends will read this, and be shocked they never knew. That’s how it goes, right? So, if that’s you reading this far, I don’t blame you in the least. That’s the thing about me, being violently in my head all the time. I really mean it, that I’m beyond thankful for sailing. In so many ways, I did die. Over and over out there. And between thinking, and rebuilding everything, and facing so many of my fears head-on (hello, men busting into my room asking for sex), I can say it’s not your fault. No one could save me, but me. The fact you guys continued to show up, even after I was a shitty person, and still put up with me as I grow, is more than enough.

It’s those people in Walmart at midnight who have a conversation. It’s the ones who offer to get a hotel for you after weeks of living in your car. It’s the coffee shop talks, the massage therapists, the people online who hype you up. It all matters. You all matter.