TRIGGER WARNING [Suicide]
When I woke up in a life that wasn’t mine. I was dying.
“She stopped breathing again— administering 15l of oxygen.” “We need to decon her.” “How is she alive?”
When you try to end your life and emergency personnel are attempting to save it, you are not entitled to pronouns— or even a name. Perhaps, they are a bit preoccupied with saving lives. Reasonable.
Unreasonable: After spending seven days in two different hospitals, my pronouns were used once, by another queer social worker. (Shout out to Freddie!)
Psychiatric Emergency Basics:
-Ask pronouns.
-If you know your patient is trans and they have told you their pronouns more than once, make an effort to use them.
-AND four Jesus cakes, please do not put the news on the TV!
I repeatedly answer the same questions, wishing I had clothes on. This is the exhausting kind of vulnerable that makes one question their personhood. I do math in my head. Have more people saw me naked now in sobriety versus active alcoholism? I laugh at the odds.
The nurse comments that I’m smiling, adding
“You are so lucky to be alive!”
I force a second smile.
She opens my file: “It says here your protective factors are many friends? a strong support network? multiple hobbies? two jobs you love? being honest?
I hold my breath, tracing the threads on my warm blanket. Secretly hoping my tearful eyes will speak truth: I no longer have those.
“Is there something in your life that gives it meaning?” I recite the usual script: my job, my friends, advocating for social change.
I want to say I no longer have these. I don’t.
When did I stop telling the truth? When did I lose myself? Did it happen all at once, in the morning as I cried into my coffee? Did I gradually slip away with each absence, each decision to not reach out, to stay home alone?
I almost convince myself connection is still possible. Then their words echo in my brain: “You brought this upon yourself.” “They create their own problems.”
Do I sabotage beautiful things? Though I’d never choose a funeral, much less a burial, I imagine my gravestone:
“Here lays Nat destroyer of good things.”
I hate my nurse because she repeatedly asks if I’m okay. Each time I tell her I’m fine, she has the same response: “Really?” “Are you actually fine?” She can see right through me.
I hate her because she asks me if I’ve had any visitors yet. And I cannot tell her— no one is coming.
I’m no longer telling the truth, and it terrifies me. But I can’t afford to be alive. I’m assigned a 24-hour sitter because the world is so good, only someone crazy would try to leave this place.
I wake up tearfully to Trump arriving in Saudi Arabia. All the anger, I’ve been conditioned to restrain comes pouring out. I feel unhinged, and this small shadow woman, sitting at my bedside—she is directly in my war path. I imagine myself knocking over my table, slamming my food tray onto the floor, throwing my ice water at the tv.
Instead I cry, silently shaking with my bed, my body laboring to breathe. My machine starts beeping a new rhythm. My phone is vibrating on my chest, only I do not have my phone.
Can a heart flinch?
I stand up suddenly, pulling out my IV.
“Ma’am you can’t be up. You can’t do that. It’s not safe for you to be walking.”
I can’t breathe. Please make her turn off the fucking tv. Please get this woman out of here.
How can it be that I’m the crazy one? Who turns on Trump in a fucking hospital!?
My nurse asks me to remove my gown again, counting my tattoos. Neither of us find this awkward, until she wonders out loud why I would want to “change such a beautiful body into a man’s…”
I pray in my head, like I have been for months:
“May my inside thoughts stay inside.”
Thou shall not scratch or bite inappropriate, middle-aged white nurses. I stay silent. Instead I cry.
I bite my lip so hard it’s bleeding. I’m grateful for this distraction. “We’re going to have to redo that skin check. Did that tattoo hurt?”
Not nearly as much as it hurts to have a conversation with you, as being alive in a country that wants to make you disappear but won’t let you.
Nope.
My doctor’s first words: “It looks like you did an impressive job trying to kill yourself.”
I want to say I can do better. I want to say I’m terrified, that I’ve never felt this depressed. I do tell her how exhausting every movement is, that I’m tearful and agitated most of the time.
I just leave out the part where I’m stuck in a dark hole, and I’m certain there is no way out.
I cannot speak those words out loud because— I have to leave. I have bills to pay, and I can’t do anything in here to pay my rent.
I’m not suicidal. I just feel terrified at the prospect of staying alive. I just can’t see a future without this unbearable weight. I’m just so fucking tired and don’t have the energy to reassemble a team, to ask for help, to fix all the broken things.
Simultaneously, I feel grateful I’m still alive. I picture all the people I love. Even if I’m convinced they all hate me. I miss them. I want to see them again. Plus there’s my dog. And Paneer Makhani.
A week has passed of more lying. I am being discharged.
As I move through a line of goodbye hugs, I inch closer to the door. With each hug, my crying more frantic—I am told it’s going be okay: This is a good thing. I am supposed to feel hesitant.
A nurse offers me a hug, grabbing my face and pulling it towards her. She forces our eyes to meet. “No matter what, choose life.”
I want to scream wait. I’m just going to do it again.
Nothing comes out.
I know I shouldn’t be walking out that door.
I do anyway, with all the words I couldn’t say.
I’m “home” again. I try to go to a meeting, shrink my growing to-do list, do something social every day. I’m consistently tired. I can’t stop sleeping.
I start to berate myself, and I stop. Of course I’m exhausted. I’m grieving the loss of a job that I adored, several significant relationships. I’m grieving the loss of a way out. I deserve to rest. Grief is a leech, and my body is its last supper.
Still, I have to move, rebuild, show up. The bills won’t stop, the days won’t stop, the microwave won’t stop… beeping. I can’t afford to keep isolating. I have to move.
Yet it’s so much effort to pick up the phone. I can’t stay awake long enough to reach out. Sleep swallows me. Like Rue in Euphoria, a walk to the bathroom: unfeasible. A ghostly grip holds my head to the pillow. I wait till it burns so bad that I can no longer ignore it. Until my bladder is so full that it doesn’t even come out .
As a species who evolved to survive, how is it my brain is trying to kill me? How will I find a job, find a therapist, pick up the phone, socialize with others—When I can’t even walk to the bathroom?
I wish someone would drag me out of bed. Throw me into the shower. Forcefully shove me back into my life.
Sinking sand. I feel the spiral pulling me in.
I reframe: I’ve done the work for years—I have people to fall back on from years of showing up. Everyone cannot hate me, I’m so fun. My brain is lying to me.
It’s nearly impossible to show up when you are too tired to do the work of creating a place to show up to. I’m consciously choosing connection, but my body is jerking me the other way. I am stuck and there is no way…
Spiral.
I’ve done seemingly impossible things before. I have faith that I will be okay because I always have been. Even if it wasn’t the okay I would have chosen. I’ve made it this far, people beside me.
But I’m irritated with everyone. The worst symptom of depression for me is the agitation and anger, the emotional outbursts. They only push away people I love, add to the shame I already carry.
Isolation sounds like kindness.
My brain is a broken balance beam. I need other people. I have to do this on my own.
“No human is coming to save you” Okay, but could I get on a waitlist until we can find someone who can?
There is this photo of me, my first year in Kindergarten. I must be 5. I’m holding a red N down at my knees, the middle letter of SANTA. I am sobbing, snot visible on my red dress.
My mother isn’t there.
When she finally arrives, I transform into a different child, smiling, singing, jumping.
Danger is averted, we are safe once again.
I can’t show up for my life because I’m still crying, waiting for someone to come—who never will. I’m still defending myself against a danger that is no longer there.
Three weeks ago I woke up in a life that wasn’t mine, and I was dying. As I literally fought for my own life, I realized
the ghost I had already become.
A year and a half has passed, static. I can no longer let my body colonize my mind, but I don’t see a next move. Stalemate.
I ask myself if there is a way back, already knowing the answer.
There never is.
I have to find a way forward. Even if I have to crawl.
I can see the next move now—I need to be honest.
I’ll take a nap first.
~N~