The second time i tried to commit suicide i was 24 years old.

I had spent the nine years in between my first and second suicide attempt barely getting by, Sometimes i had good moments, even months.

When i was sixteen i began a ten year struggle with self-harm, addictive behaviours and engaging in activities that were dangerous to my mind and body.

I discovered the agonizing pleasure and pain that came with sexuality and throwing your body to strange men in the hope for love, or freedom from self-hate, but resulted in personal lows that were so immobilizing that the only cure was more sex. A cycle that continued for years. More drugs, more alcohol, more sex, more hate, the lowest self-esteem and debilitating depression coupled with days on end of uncontrolled mania.

I had never been told that my depression was something that could be helped. I spent my days thinking that the way i felt was how my life was going to be. That i would always hate myself and, in turn, let others hate me and abuse me.

I was molested as a child. I learned that sex was a way to hurt, be hurt, and control.

I fell in love when i was 21 and spent three years struggling with my desire for my boyfriend. I loved him and sex was, for the first time, mutual and enjoyable. But, i would spend my hours late at night, when i was alone, confused by my feelings. Wanting to destroy the love i had before it crushed me.

I wanted him to leave me. I wanted him to hate me. I wanted him to love me forever.

I wanted to die. I wanted to die rather than deal with all the fucked up thoughts in my head. I wanted to die rather than let myself be loved and eventually destroy him.

I had started on the road to seeking help. I was diagnosed as manic depressive (bi-polar nowadays). I was given ativan and lithium. I was sent to psychiatrists who diagnosed me ninety-nine different ways depending on my mood that day and how i answered questions. Thus beginning my hatred of therapy and the mental-medical profession in general.

I hated the way i felt on lithium. The out-of-body feeling. Looking in on myself, but too drugged to scream at my screwed up self. I stopped taking the medication, but continued filling the prescriptions until i had my little stockpile. My arsenal.

I overdosed quietly and went to bed. I lived.

fading, you are

I saw dead people. And they suck.

I have never been to an open casket funeral. That was the thing that first broke off a piece of my heart today and smashed it on the floor.

I went alone to the funeral, after at least an hour of outfit changes, which was strangely important to me. What would he want me to wear? I can’t wear a retro dress with modern shoes. That would offend his thiftshop sensibilities. In the end i chose the perfect outfit. One that he would have been proud of.

Today was such a profound, life-changing day for me i don’t think i can put it in words. But i need to try.

It is different going to a funeral for someone who killed themselves. Different for me.

There was lots of talk in eulogies of people being happy that he had ended his torment, that he had found a cure for the buzzing in his head. I listened to these people, breaking down in tears, grown men reduced to empty hearted vessels before their friend laying lifeless in a coffin. I cried so many tears. Tears for Jeremy, tears for my friends and the pain he had caused them, tears for myself – knowing that at so many points in time it could have been me up there in that wooden box. Tears of anger. I wanted to stand up and yell that it was not okay. He had not found a way to end his pain. He had ended his life. His pain is gone, but so are the fourty years of happiness he could have had in between. The children, the nieces, the friends, the unknown.

And there we all were. Insignificant. Sad and crying. It doesn’t matter if it was 200 or 2,000 people. It is a tragedy. A life lost. A life he let go. And it makes me mad. It makes me jealous.

I have wanted to let go. Many times. And the fact that he did makes me not just sad, but envious. He didn’t fight the fight.

He didn’t tell everybody that it was possible. Beauty. In the midst of sadness. He let go of okay.

If he let’s go, if we all let go. What is left. There is no beauty. There is no beauty without pain. No joy without sadness. No love without loss.

And here i am.  My heart torn out and smashed on the ground in the most beautiful church on vancouver island just at that moment when i thought life could get better.

I saw dead people.

I have begun behavior modification therapy. Which, as far as i can tell, involves looking into my brain and finding all the ways it’s broken.We are looking at my “Core Beliefs” and “*Filters.”

* “A filter is an extremely stable and enduring pattern of thinking that develops during childhood and is elaborated throughout an individual’s life. We view the world through filters.” (Young, 1999)

Not surprisingly i scored very high on many filters that are bad. BAD. Highest on the list were self-sacrifice, vulnerability to harm and illness, emotional deprivation, and defectiveness/social undesirability.

Of course i am pessimistic, at best, about all this hocus-pocus and nobody wants to know how screwed up they are. Do they? I know i’m supposed to be learning from this. Looking at these “filters” and understanding why i feel the way i do. All i see is that i am socially undesirable and vulnerable all wrapped up in an emotional straightjacket.

Lots of homework. Mood logs to fill out. I just have so much trouble being honest. Seeing the benefit in all of this when it leaves me swirling in a muddy pit of despair.

I think the biggest misunderstanding about depression is that a person has control over it.

That i should be grateful for what i have – just get over myself. Believe me i am grateful and i would give every penny i have to just get over it.

Since being in the hospital, which is such a humbling and embarrassing situation to be in, and changing medications my sadness has changed. It’s not right there on the surface anymore. I no longer well up with tears at the thought of any mildly sad thought. It’s deeper now. It’s more all consuming. I just can’t brush it off. I can ignore it, but happiness and laughter completely elude me now.

I am working harder than ever at keeping it all together. Keeping the house clean, doing laundry, taking the kids on adventures. Ensuring that everything around me is not falling apart.

My children are happy. They frolic about in the yard, enjoying the sun that has finally appeared, making up games. Being kids. Oblivious to the giant, often frightening world around them. They have everything they need, including plenty of love from me.

I’m not sure why i feel this need to defend myself, or more aptly my mothering skills. But, when i open myself up to this giant world of therapy it is difficult not to focus on all the ways i am broken. There is little to no thought about the things i have done right.

The first time i attempted suicide i was fifteen years old. I had just quit the Canadian National Diving team; walking away from something i had spent eight years training for. Being an athlete had been a source of immense pride and extreme anguish. At fifteen years old i knew that i was good, but not quite good enough. I would never go to the Olympics. I would never be the pride of my hometown. It was a hard conclusion to come to when my peers at school where most worried about whose house they were going to watch Friday Night Videos at.

Being an athlete i had had more adult experiences than childhood memories. I could travel on my own without a worry, i could manage my own education even if i only attended school a few days a month, i could shoot tequila at late night parties in hotels in winnipeg, i could keep my weight down with vomiting and laxatives, i could manage my anguish by slashing up my arms with a rusty swiss army knife.

What i didn’t know was how to be a teenager. How to be around happy, normal kids. Kids who didn’t self-medicate.

When i think about it now, about my lifetime of struggle with depression, i wonder why nobody ever stepped in. Why didn’t anyone help me? All the signs were there, from an early age. Why was my family so scared? Why was ignoring the problem easier than dealing with it? Why am i so angry about this?

When depression is ignored it doesn’t disappear. It may retreat for moments, or even years. But, left untreated, it will almost always come back.

It is difficult to talk to someone who is on the brink of madness. It is so important though. To reach out, to try and reach out. Often when people ask me how i am doing i will just say “fine.” But, the caring question remains with me. I hold them close to my heart and when it is aching it helps me to remember that people care about me.

Having four kids i am all to aware of their genetic predisposition for mental illness. As i percolate and try to work through my life and that first suicide attempt. A suicide attempt left totally ignored. (I was left, unconscious, in my room for three days and sent to summer school on the fourth.) I have paid a huge mental toll for that ignorance. I am completely, age-appropriately, open with my children about my struggle with depression and anxiety. I am hoping to lay the foundation for an open discussion of their feelings as they enter adolescence.