Little White Lies

I went and saw a counselor on a more or less emergency basis, my work has it set up that you can't just decide you might need to go to counseling without going in for an assessment and telling someone you don't know your secrets in 20 min or less and then they decide if you need someone to give you regular counseling. My psychiatrist has wanted me to go to regular counseling for the last year but I have avoided it since I hate the process of starting over and with our system it means doing it twice. Spilling your heart to someone and waiting to hear their judgement is horrible, but I knew I didn't like where my thoughts were going, for the first time in months I felt like I couldn't take it anymore and wanted to be gone, I try not to give such thoughts a home but they can be insidious.

So I went and I sat and I told my secrets, sure enough she told me she thinks I need regular counseling, so I will get to start over again. She was a very reassuring person and I would have liked to see her as a continuing counselor but no one there is like Marcia was and skirts the rules that I can only see them three times and then I must move on. She asked if I was actvely suicidal and I told her the truth my thoughts were trending that was but that I was still in control, she asked if I was safe with myself and I told her yes I was. Then she asked what I would do if I wasn't safe with myself and I told her the truth I would lie. She was a bit taken aback by my answer and looked at me and said, wrong answer. So I told her what she wanted to hear, I would tell my husband if I was suicidal, I would check myself into the hospital, I would not hurt myself.

Part of what I said is true, I will not hurt myself, I do not want to die, I just want relief from the never ending battle that life presents. I want all "my" ducks to stay in a row and I don't want to be told they aren't my damn ducks. I want my dog to not have cancer, I want to be able to pay all my bills and have enough left over to not feel guilty doing things for myself, I want my sons healthy, I'm tired of the weakness of mortal bodies, of the endless pain.

I am going to go to a counselor on a regular basis, what she asked did I want my counselor to be like, hmmm, no one has ever asked me that, so I was honest, not too Mormon, someone who has experience with sexual abuse, not younger than me, I don't want a counselor my kids age telling me how to do things she learned in a book, needs to be female. Our time was done, she looked at me and said you are amazing look at everything you do every day, Now I was surprised, but she meant it, I get up, I take care of my grandson, I work as a nurse, I work in our tax business, I do laundry I breathe, I take care of a child with a chronic illness, I do what I have to, trying desperately to keep the ducks in line as best I can, even if they aren't my damn ducks.

Enough for Now

I Need to Live

It has been awhile since I last posted, I have been fighting my own demons of depression and pain, sometimes it is so overwhelming I can barely make myself function to do the things I absolutely must and so I took a break for a time. There were other life issues that have kept me away but none that I could not have overcome if this mortal body was not so fallible. Depression and the vertigo of menieres have left me exhausted and struggling to take each step that I must.

You would think after knowing the heartache of losing my own son to suicide that I would never let the thought of my own death at my own hand be a thought that crosses my mind. Unfortunately knowing that the death of a loved causes so much pain does not take away the thought that I want to die more often than I want to live. I try very hard to not give those thoughts a home but they are always there. I want to die, I need to live.

I need to live for those around me who count on me, I keep thinking that the time will come when I am not really needed and I can then check out of mortality without guilt and then something will happen and no matter what I tell myself I can't find a time when there isn't someone who needs me here. I am and have been the primary provider in my household for years. I used to believe that I was worth more to my family through my life insurance and death benefits at social security than I was as a working mother, but we no longer have as much life insurance, my death needs to be accidental for them to get more and my children are getting older and so the amount of social security that would come in would no longer support the needs. I need to live.

I can laugh, I can joke and play around and sometimes I even genuinely enjoy myself but the war inside my own head is always there. I have been to therapy, years worth, and many different types of therapists, I have been on MANY different types of medication, on them, off them, know I do better on them so I make myself keep going to appointments and tweaking and adjusting and on and on. It never goes away it is chronic and is worse in the winter as the daylight hours dwindle. Winter solstice has become a strange kind of goal, if I can just make myself live until then, when the daylight hours start to lengthen again, I can make myself live through till the spring. I need to live.

It is often said suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem and that those who die at their own hand are short sighted, I don't believe that, people with chronic illnesses know that their disease is not a temporary problem. No matter what I do or how much counseling I get my disease is not going to go away. I try to control my thoughts so that they don't become actions but death does not scare me so much as living through the pain I feel in every part of myself. I have found the poem Just for Today from AA to be helpful, the first line is: "Just for today I will try to live through this day only and not tackle all my problems at once. I can do something for twelve hours that would appall me if I felt I had to keep it up for a lifetime." If a day is too much I live through an hour, a minute, a moment. I need to live.

It is interesting that I want there to be some kind of after life for the son I lost and yet for myself I want oblivion. I don't just want to have my mortal body die, I want to cease, I don't want to have an existence of any kind, living as a spirit seems like more punishment. I want my reality, I don't want the christian heaven, I don't want to be reincarnated, I don't want to be  disembodied energy, I especially don't want the heaven that Mormons believe in. I want peace. I need to live.

Two other things keep me from killing myself, number one is that someone has to find me, I know that people never get over that, I have thought how easy it would be to die in the hospital where it would be medical people who found the body and I still hesitate. Someone has to find me and the worst person I know still would not deserve that kind of emotional pain. I have flashbacks of the day Colley died whenever I see magpies clustered together a certain way and I didn't find his body. The second reason is that I would be autopsied and they will not know the difference between scarring from a willing participant and a victim of abuse, there is still shame tied to the sexual abuse I have suffered at the hands of others, if I was absolutely sure there was nothing after this life it would not matter but I am not sure and I don't want anyone to think I invited that abuse. I need to live.

I still want to die, I need to live. Enough for now.

Aftermath

How do I describe what the hours, minutes, seconds were like after the death of Colley, the police did come into the house eventually, Lee took them down to Colley's room. In my panic I had not noticed how carefully he had prepared, he had cleaned his room, put notes on various items as to what he wanted us to do with them, had lit a candle and had music playing in the background. I am sure he intended his father to find him when he went down to wake him for church, while I would have spared Todd's dad the agony of finding Colley's body, I am grateful it was not Lee or I believe I would have been burying two instead of one. Yes he left a note, the words are burned into my soul, "Please don't blame anyone, it's no ones fault but mine. Love you all, Colley".

I had collapsed after yelling at the police officer who told me my son was dead, I wanted him to take it back, it wasn't true, I wanted to throw up everything I had ever eaten in my life, I wanted to escape somewhere in my mind and never come back. My husband ran to me and I pushed him away, I told him it was his fault, not because he had argued with Colley but because the guns were too accessible and I had asked him less than two months before to get a gun safe, even as I said the words I wanted to take them back, I meant them and I didn't mean them, I loved Lee and hated him. I wanted to die, Oh how I wanted to die! How do you describe the agony of soul and body and mind and yet the world refuses to stop moving and keeps pushing, forcing you to make decisions that no parent should ever have to make.

Your home becomes a crime scene, photos are taken, some of Colley's belongings were taken along with his note, those few last words we were left with, documents must be signed, questions answered. Lee handled the questions, took them around to see what they needed to see, I sat, frozen, hoping to die, hoping to find this wasn't real. The female member of the sheriffs office who was taking photographs left with tears in her eyes, she is the only one I saw any emotion from and it touched me, I do not know her name, I wanted to thank her but I could not make myself move.

We wanted to go to him in the trailer, they wouldn't let us, not until he had been moved out of the trailer onto the stretcher and in the body bag. I could not see him that way, not in that bag, I know what they smell like, feel like, I have carried the little bodies of lost babies in those bags, we carefully swaddle those little babes and my son would not have that same care and I just could not see my son that way. My husband and my oldest son did go out to say a last goodbye before they took Colley away. When someone dies violently it becomes a case for the medical examiner and as a family you lose any right to refuse an autopsy, my precious son was going to be taken away and I had no power to control what was going to happen.

I donated Colley's eyes, I don't know why it became important but I needed some part of this make sense, I never thought I would be able to donate a part of my child but I wanted to have something good come from the loss of this part of my heart.

So much happened in the space of a few hours that felt like days, we were surrounded by people and yet felt alone, isolated, we had to find someone to clean the trailer, family needed to be notified, paperwork signed, we had to find a way to tell our younger children their brother was dead. I am not sure I could tell who all the people were at our house, I wanted to bring my other boys home, I wanted to wrap them up and keep them safe, I had to call work and tell them I would not be coming in. My son was dead. I had to make arrangements with a funeral home so that my son could be released once they were done at the medical examiners. People kept coming by, words must be said comfort given, food showed up, I couldn't eat. The magpies kept coming back. I needed to sleep and yet my brain would not allow it. A funeral must be planned, a cemetery chosen, Colley's friends needed to be called to let them know their friend was gone.

As on that day a brain can only take so much before it will begin to shut itself off trying to isolate the pain that is too much to bear all at once. Memories can be the same way, reaching a point where you must stop for a time or you must perish. I must stop, enough for now

Ideations

When you are so distressed you have thoughts about but no plan or actions tied to committing suicide they call these ideations. Most people have had transient thoughts when things are tough of killing themselves and if all followed through our population problem would cease to exist. As it is suicide is the third leading cause of death for children 14-19 years of age and children as young as 8 years of age have died of intentionally self inflicted injury.

 In previous posts I have told of my own attempts starting at approximately age 9. For many years I found comfort in having my plan formulated, it gave me a kind of peace that treatment did not. I am a sufferer of chronic depression. If you know someone with chronic depression you know that living with them day in and day out can be draining, medications that worked suddenly stop working and you start the cycle of trying to find balance all over again. We also have a tendency to stop taking meds when we are doing well because there is still a heavy stigma attached to mental illness and we think the depression won't reoccur.

Suicide is often referred to as a selfish, cowardly act, a permanent solution to a temporary problem, I do not see suicide this way. One of our most basic internal instincts is that of survival, the tiniest of premature infants will try to push away things that touch their face and are occluding their airway, they are not strong enough to stop it but they will try.

 Suicide is self execution, the person must override the most ingrained instinct to preserve their own life often using methods of execution that the ACLU would brand as cruel and unusual.

Why this subject? On November 18th my youngest son will be 14 years, 4 months, and 11 days old, he will have outlived the brother who we lost on Fathers Day June 17, 2001. Colley was our second child, part of the Sensational Six, bright, talented, not perfect, but perfectly ours. I name him here by his pet name because I want to remain as anonymous as I can, although I so dearly want to see his name and hear it, to feel this most important part of my heart has not disappeared. Colley died of depression, the instrument he used to self execute was a nine millimeter handgun, I do not often talk about him not because I am ashamed but to protect him and his brothers from the intentional or unintentional cruelty of others.

Colley has a story and in time I will give voice to it, I miss him fiercely, I will never be who I was before he died, but he was not selfish or cowardly. He was broken and felt that he was so damaged by his own secrets of abuse that for our family to be whole he needed to remove himself. I know that pain only chance has kept me here.

Enough for Now