Sunny with a Chance of Clouds

(TRIGGER WARNING – suicidal ideation)

I got this tattoo a week ago. I’ve wanted one for years, and finally decided to just do it! I incorporated the semicolon; it’s in response to Project Semicolon. “The goal of the project is to restore hope and confidence in people who are troubled by addiction, depression, self-harm, and suicide.” The idea is that instead of a period, where life would end, there’s a semicolon – life continues. Like their website says, “Your story is not over.”

Back in 2009, the medication I was taking that caused the serotonin toxicity made me think lots of suicidal thoughts (suicide ideation), to the point of having a plan of how and where (but not the detail of when). While I was never truly suicidal (my level of suicide risk was not high enough – I didn’t have all the markers), at the worst all I could think of was that I didn’t want to live in pain anymore, didn’t want to be “here” (in this life); I just wanted it over.

I had those “death thoughts” for days and nights and weeks, increasing in frequency. It reached an intensity that the idea of death ran through my mind constantly, even in the background when I was busy with other distractions like work. I was so incredibly miserable, so hopeless, and I couldn’t imagine that I was ever going to feel differently. The ache in my chest was all-consuming, and felt like it was eating me from the inside out, wearing me down, gnawing at me. My plan was to take all my pills, but when I was driving I would fantasize about plowing head first into a large on-coming truck or driving off the edge of a cliff. I had these thoughts, but the plan never went anywhere because I couldn’t imagine putting my family through the aftermath-pain. I never got completely to the point where I assumed everyone would be better off without me. I thought it a few times, but quickly pictured faces of family and friends crying, and knew I couldn’t do that to them. So technically, I wasn’t suicidal. But it sure felt like it to me.

One evening before bed, I poured a handful of my sleeping pills into my palm and looked at them all. “How easy,” I thought, “to simply take them and go to sleep and not wake up. ” I scared myself a little by having them in my hand, and so I poured them back into the bottle, all but those prescribed on the label.

Several days later, I called my therapist and told him that I was feeling very out of sorts, rather hyper, and that I wanted to hurt myself. He asked if I had a plan, and I told him yes; then he made me tell him what it was. I told him that I would take a huge handful of pills, probably all of my sleep meds, and just go to sleep and not wake up and the pain would all be over. He asked me where I was. “At work.” He told me to call my husband, at his work, and tell him to go home immediately and gather up all of my medications and hide them – he would be the only one allowed to give them to me. I promised my therapist, hung up, and sheepishly called my husband and told him what I needed him to do. I think it was the first time I had to openly admit the seriousness – the depth of pain – of my illness to him. My husband put all of my meds in our safe in the closet, and carried the key with him from then on.

The suicidal thoughts felt very real – they were in my head – but my therapist and psych doc and husband and friends kept reminding me that they weren’t my thoughts. They were caused by the wrong medication and resulting chemicals in my brain. They would eventually go away as my system got used to a different med and as I began to feel better. I didn’t believe them, but I trusted them, and so I started telling myself that when I would begin to think hopelessly. And it did work – took awhile, but eventually I could see that the thoughts were caused by the meds and the depression, and were not really my own.

But I wonder sometimes if they ever go away. Completely I mean. Once I’ve had those thoughts, they are somehow a part of me. I have to be cautious to fight to keep them away when depression comes and brings hopelessness. And even though I still have those safe-guards that will keep me from following through (concern for those “left behind,” promise of God’s Presence – my personal faith in Jesus, fear of the physical pain, and the shame that would remain – I’d be worse than just depressed, etc.), I know the thoughts could come again.

I later became friends with a person who had tried to kill herself with meds, and I learned that my plan would most likely not have worked, but would have made me incredibly painfully sick, perhaps throwing up blood as I tore apart my insides and in a coma with breathing difficulties. I would have had a whole other layer of shame to deal with – not just the shame that often comes with depression, but shame that comes from putting loved ones through such trauma as a suicide attempt.

I now look back on this time and thank God for saving me, for putting my husband and therapist and doctor and friends in my life who didn’t give up on me, even when I kept thinking about giving up on life. I thank God for different medications, for keeping me safe, for His Presence. I thank Him for the semicolon, and for the way He can use my depression now in helping others because my life goes on.

2 Corinthians 1:8b-10, personalized
“I was under great pressure, far beyond my ability to endure, so that I despaired of life itself. Indeed, I felt I had received the sentence of death. But this happened that I might not rely on myself but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered me from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver me again. On Him I have set my hope that He will continue to deliver me, …”