July 7th - I'm Back!
Well, there is so much to tell, that I don't know quite where to begin, and how much I want to disclose of something so personal and intimate to the world at large. But then again, I've always believed in the beauty and power of sharing momentous and life changing experiences the good, the bad, the passionate, frightening or elating, angry, or sad, with others. Those deep life changing experiences that mark a spot on the calendar of our souls. Days or periods of our life that create anniversaries we celebrate or days we will never forget because of the depth of pain we've experienced through loss, or change or fear - those moments too create yet another kind of anniversary.
The day of my last journal entry before this one, on May 28th, I tried to take my life. I made my first, but not to be my last... attempt at suicide. At just a couple of weeks before my birthday, I had hit rock bottom in a bout of depression that probably started some time last fall, a slow down spiral of my brain chemistry brought on by work and relationship stressors that triggered childhood based insecurities and negative beliefs.
Stressors that built and built, my work situation only becoming more and more complicated with impossible demands put on me, and likewise relationship stressors that seemed to put impossible demands of me.. and of course, my own pre-wiring that felt responsible to meet those demands.
Demands that created conflicts that couldn't be resolved, all of them never seeming that they could be win-win situations.
In my management position in the home care industry, providing and organizing important care for over 250 elderly or disabled individuals in their homes with a staff team of 40. What was already a stressful job with day to day crisis on a small scale (people would joke that we were the air traffic controllers of the health industry) came to an intensive crisis situation with the local bus strike.
The lack of care providers on my team able to get to clients (70% used the transit system) to give all the essential help and support that they needed left me powerless to assist the pleas of clients who needed someone to prepare a meal for them or assist them with a bath, or even dispense needed medications and other care. Even though logically I knew the situations, and stressors, where not my fault. My job position was to make it work, even though it couldn't, and put me in the position of having to decide who would and would not receive care, because there simply was no way I could meet all of those persons needs given the situation.
People would call me and be angry, or be hurt, or people who were confused and couldn't understand why they wouldn't be receiving help. Workers who didn't have a means of getting to clients because of the strike, with families to support frustrated and angry and afraid. All pushing me for solutions I could not provide.
On the home front, I was during this time, developing a relationship of a lifetime with barbie, some one I considered another soul mate. Some one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with along with Wolfe, and Wolfe's new relationship with Kitty developing at the same time. The three of us, and sometimes the four of us sharing a living space under 500 square feet. There came other stressors of a magnitude I could not manage, where once again I felt there would often arise a no win-win situation, and now one or more of the people I loved so intensely on a day to day basis I would be hurting. There again I felt powerless and unable to resolve the conflict without doing damage.
Two major areas of my life, my work and my home life, were places where I was constantly feeling overwhelmed, and that any choices or decisions I would make would always result in hurting others and that I felt that hurt keenly. Combine that with the biased belief pattern that I developed in child hood that I was responsible and to blame for the hurt of others around me, that would end up with me taking not only the reasonable rational responsibility for my role in a situation, but would end up with me feeling almost fully responsible and guilty and hurt and powerless. Add to that the other personality trait of wanting to please the people around me, and a being a bit of a perfectionist.
Then throw in a biological pre-disposition to depression.
I broke down. I had a complete and final plummet to where I came to a place where I believed there was only one solution, and that was to remove myself entirely from the equation. I went past fear, and past anger, and past hurt to a calm still feeling of numb and almost peaceful contemplation of what seemed to be the only way to stop the unbearable pressure building inside of me. To just end.
I tried to overdose, and ended up in hospital, I won't go into details of the month that followed, of all of June, where I spent most of it in hospital, or of the three other suicide attempts that I made before the medication, the anti-depressants could kick in. The medication made a big impact in starting to erase one of the biggest parts of the suicide equation - the biological trigger of depression from my brain chemistry that fried itself out from the stress. That along with an enormous amount of support from my loved ones, from friends, and from family, and from the hospital, helped pull me slowly back from the edge of the abyss.
Many people, perhaps most people... wouldn't have written this journal entry. But as I thought about what and how much I would share with you, I thought, if I don't write it, if I don't tell it... what message does that give to my self? That I should be ashamed or that I should hide this information from others because it shows that I have weaknesses or faults? That I have a 'mental illness' or a 'mood disorder' or that I'm some how critically flawed and should tuck away this section of my life and hide it from others, or hide it from myself.
No way.
I claim it.
I became depressed, I became suicidal, I made mistakes, I made choices, and I held beliefs that harmed me, but I do not blame myself, and I will not hold shame around it. Who I am, that brought me to that place, was forged from my childhood, forged from the elements of society and self, and that it is part of me as a whole human being.
That I want to have the courage to embrace being imperfect.
Many skilled artists, and passionate people who have created beautiful things, and made meaningful contributions to life, and to others, and to history and culture... have had similar experiences, dysfunctions or disorders. That in order to continue to feel like I have something valuable inside of me that I can contribute to the world, that I have made some small ripples in the big pond of life, I have to embrace all of myself... with compassion. Otherwise how can I heal.
So there has been a big cross-roads in my life that I've come to, and from this place, there are big changes coming. For one, I'm not going to be able to return to conventional work, for who knows how long... right now, I know I can't take on those stressors. And having been a huge part of the income equation, we are facing likely personal bankruptcy and the loss of a lot of our material world (I hope they don't take the computer!). Wolfe and I have moved from the little loft... rented it out, and are living in a less expensive (though roomier!) rental suite where we have more space and save a little bit of money. We're still half in boxes, and unpacking slowly in the summer heat.
Not sure what the future will bring me, because for now, I'm taking life mostly just one day at a time.
I think that's about enough for now... but I can assure you, it won't be the last time you'll be hearing from me <smile>
XO
Katt