On Living To Knit Another Day

Trigger Warning: Depression/Suicide. If you or someone you know is at immediate risk of suicide, Dial 911 or go to your nearest Emergency Department. If you are facing mental health struggles, emotional distress, or substance use issues, Dial 988 (Canada) to speak to a counsellor. ​

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September is National Suicide Prevention Month. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (nami.org) it is a time used to raise awareness about this important crisis, to shift public perception, and to spread hope and vital information to people affected by suicide. There is no easy way to say this, but I am one of those people.

Thirteen months ago, I tried to end my own life. After a year of clinical depression, six-weeks of (ineffective) inpatient ECT treatments, and the pain of being dismissed by ER staff (hello stigma), things had gotten pretty bad. The summer heat made it all worse, exacerbating my insomnia, and allowing the choking, nauseating, oh-my-god-I’m-losing-my-mind-get-me-out-of-here state of anxious distress to completely take me over, until I really did lose my mind, and really did try to get of here—permanently.

FYI “anxious distress” isn’t anxiety as we normally understand it. It’s a clinical term used to describe a type of distress so well-known for elevating suicide risk, it’s considered a psychiatric emergency. Having lived with mental illness since the age of 15, I’m used to feeling pretty shitty, but this was some next-level merde. I came not only to believe that everything was hopeless and that everyone would be better off without me, but also that I could not survive the pain another day.

There was no real last-straw moment. July 20th had no special meaning. I got out of bed hot and sleep-deprived, my chest so tight I couldn’t decide if I was going to stop breathing or throw up. I’d lost fifteen pounds in the past eight weeks—my appetite had disappeared, but I’d also started to think there were bugs in my food—by that point gluten-free bagels and dairy-free yogurt were sustaining me. In short, it was a morning exactly like the one before, and the one before that—and THAT was the problem. We need to believe our suffering will end in order to endure it. That morning, any belief I had that there could/would be an end to my suffering escaped me. 

Mental health pros talk about passive vs. active suicidal ideation (SI). And the reason they (generally) take all of it seriously is because passive SI can turn active in a heartbeat, as it did for me that morning. The notes had been written for months, the research on drug toxicity reviewed ad nauseam, the pills patiently gathered. But the intent formed quickly and decisively—on that awful July morning, I’d finally had enough, and refused to put myself, or the people I loved, through one more day of my suffering.

I threw on jeans and tee shirt, fixed myself up just enough to avoid drawing attention, gathered up the ‘notes and the means’, and caught the next bus. I hadn’t put on makeup for months, but for some mysterious reason I quickly polished my toe nails…as if somehow I could avoid embarrassing my corpse? I have no idea; I wasn’t well, and it showed. I couldn’t burden others by dying at home, so chose a place that felt like home instead. My plan was to stop at the coffee shop on the quaint downtown street where I grew up, take the pills, then settle down in a secluded spot by the lake and let the universe take it (take me) from there. 

In case you think suicide has an obvious look about it, let me assure you, it does not. People learn to hide their suffering in order to survive, and sometimes in order not to survive. While the barista prepared my last supper—a giant cup of hazelnut coffee--I smiled and chatted with him like it was any other day, then took a seat among a dozen other people and started trying to kill myself.

The number of pills I surreptitiously tried to swallow was so massive I ran out of coffee. I nearly ordered another, but remember chastising myself for that thought; I’d swallowed enough pills, another cup would have been greedy and wasteful.

As sad as all this sounds, for me the saddest part is that, despite what at first felt like unshakeable intent, I had to talk myself into every mouthful. I thought of calling someone, but felt too selfish and guilty to burden anyone with such a hopeless situation. I thought of going to the hospital, but that felt so fraught with pain it turned my stomach. I was too exhausted to explain myself to a triage nurse, to do the inevitable walk of shame to a fluorescently-lit locked unit, to sit with heaven-knows-who, for heaven knows how long, only to have a psychiatrist show up and dismiss me again. Accept your fate, Alexis. Save your energy for the task at hand. Spare yourself one final indignity. The depression is terminal, like a cancer taking over your mind. Terminal cancer patients don’t go whining for help in the ER, why should you?

I have never felt as helpless, hopeless, or alone as I did sitting in that coffee shop that day, tying to make peace with Death. But by the time the coffee—and all the pills it could carry—were gone, I was ready to be gone, too.

So, why am I alive today? A math error, a Good Samaritan, and a team of highly skilled healthcare pros with life-saving medicines and machines. Turns out I got the quantity of pills right, but hadn’t accounted for one important variable—TIME. It took a long time to swallow that many pills, so long in fact that the first ones were kicking in before the last ones were even down. In my last lucid memories of that day, I am walking out the door of that coffee shop—the lake just blocks away—my head spinning, my legs like jelly, and my mind panicking at the realization I’m not going to be conscious long enough to make it to the water. I vaguely remember crossing the street and finding a bench…I’ll just rest for a minute…I woke up two weeks later in the ICU.

I don’t remember the Good Samaritan who called the paramedics. Don’t remember being in the ambulance, or the emergency department. Don’t remember being changed into a gown, intubated, or transferred to intensive care. Don’t remember the CT scans of my head when I failed to regain consciousness. Don’t remember the chest X-ray that revealed aspiration pneumonia. Don’t remember having an NG tube inserted to feed me, or who took care of the other end, changing my  “adult briefs”. Don’t remember the pneumonia spawning potentially fatal septicaemia (blood poisoning). The only memories I do have are delirious nightmares of being held down while fake doctors tried to sew things to my back. Even after I regained consciousness I wasn’t really “there”. I vaguely remember having the breathing tube removed, but still had no real concept of where I was, or why. Until my father came.

I will never forget the look on his face—or the way it brought me crashing back to reality. The pain and disbelief in his eyes as he took it all in; tubes everywhere, my hair in knots, my voice too raspy from prolonged intubation to whisper more than a few words, my hands still tied in the soft cloth restraints used to protect me, and the staff, from my delirium (apparently, despite me making multiple attempts to pull out the life-saving tubes, every time they tried to remove the breathing tube I “fought like a banshee”).

Another thing I’ll never forget? How painfully helpless and ashamed I felt in that moment, watching my father watching me there, knowing there wasn’t a damn thing I could do or say to “manage” it, to explain it away, to soothe him with the usual lies about how I’m feeling a bit low, but really I’m doing fine.

I was only in the ICU for another day or two. Both compos mentis, and medically stable, I was ready to be transferred to a regular medical unit. I spent about a week there, finishing the required course of IV antibiotics, and regaining the strength to walk without support. Despite a brief evaluation by a psychiatrist, and my assurances I had no intention of further harming myself, a guard was posted at my door. I shrugged and mentally added that to the growing list of humiliations I’d brought upon myself. Still, the doctor, nurses, and even the guards, who watched over me that week were so exceptionally kind it was hard not to imagine that I might never have ended up there in the first place, had the mental health staff I’d encountered shown half as much compassion. Sadly, the stigma against patients with mental illness is often greatest among the very people responsible for their care.

My mother brought the occasional coffee, and some comforts from home…toiletries, underwear, etc. She cut a mat out of my hair that had formed during those sweaty unconscious weeks in bed. My two best friends came, arms full of junk food, eyes full on pain. My father surprised me with a second visit, as painful for us both as the first. Except, now, I was back “on”, reassuring everyone that I was fine, that I hadn’t meant it, that I’d just been overwhelmed. I even suggested that the aftermath of the overdose had provided some sort of ‘neurological nudge’, freeing me from the anxious distress and severe depression. The purpose of each performance was to mitigate the damage I’d done, to ease their pain and assuage their fears. When I was alone, I cried like a baby.

A few hours before the last antibiotics went in and the IV came out, which would have made me medically ready to go home, another psychiatrist stopped by. I begged her to let me discharge me, but it was the Friday afternoon of a long weekend and I was not her problem. She was only there to inform me that I was being placed on a legal hold for inpatient evaluation.

When the IV came out, I was transferred to Psychiatry, where I spent the long weekend all alone. A knitting friend came to visit and, although our visit was short due to the difficult circumstances, I was extremely grateful for the company. Other than the legally required “are you thinking of harming yourself” questions with every shift change, the staff on the inpatient “mental health” unit didn’t interact with me the entire time I was there. I spent the majority of the weekend trying to figure out how to convince the psychiatrist to let me go home. I wasn’t happy I’d survived but I had no intention of trying again any time soon. My body was exhausted from the physical assault I’d prevailed upon it, and my mind was even more exhausted from a week spent spinning that assault into kittens and rainbows. I just wanted to go home where I could lick my wounds in private. To my great relief, the psychiatrist saw me Tuesday morning and discharged me immediately.

I suffer no illusions that the absence of me or my patterns was a noticeable event. Still, it feels important to finally say what caused that event. It would be nice if there were a happier ending. I wish I could say that almost dying led to a life-changing epiphany and that things are all hunky-dory fine now. But it didn’t, and they’re not. I’m still managing a chronic mental illness, still taking it one day at a time.

Some things are better since that day, some are worse. The ironic thing about the aftermath of a suicide attempt is that it actually drives people away from you. None of my relationships have been the same since that day. Nor have I.

​Which brings me back to today and to the pretty pictures I’ve added (below) to remind myself that even when life is dark and not blog-worthy or social-media-ready, I am capable of creating beautiful things. Soft things. Warm things. Valuable things. And that’s enough for now.