July 29, 2019
It is Never Your Fault…We’re Just Wired Differently
(Warning…this is a highly personal note and discusses my
experiences with self-harm)
The first thing I want to point out to you as that I am
currently in no danger of self-harm. I
suffer from dysthymia, a persistent but less severe version of depression. And if I appear to be carefree, it’s only to
camouflage my sadness. I have had this
for quite some time and probably the worst side effect is that I prefer to
spend copious amounts of time by myself, can tolerate only my closest friends
for any period of time and seriously super-suck at relationships because I am
ardently moody, surly, non-communicative, harshly judgmental (of myself and
others) and often intolerant and unforgiving.
Not that you would know that but my carefully groomed outward demeanor. Suffice to say, it takes a lot of work to
present the Postman you see each day, but I inwardly desperately crave
community and companionship and do the difficult work of climbing out of the
foxhole more days than not to be a productive and considerate member of
society. So that’s that.
In March of 1999 I made my first concrete plan of committing
suicide on my 40th birthday by (unoriginally) jumping off the Golden
Gate Bridge three months later. An intense calm surrounded this intention and
as the time drew closer, my only grave concern was making sure that I returned
my beautiful lab Casey back to her original owner who lived in Oakland at the
time. I sent my “note” to my AA sponsor (this decision was
made 12 years into my sobriety) David F, not realizing that he was going to
receive the note BEFORE I had actually
done it and would actually reach out to the person who I was returning the dog
to (whom he did not know when he received the note). When
I arrived in Oakland I ultimately had to face this friend who had been warned
of my intentions, and with my cover blown, ultimately I had to “back out” of my
intention to kill myself. In fact,
Casey, Jackie and I walked across the Golden Gate Bridge on my 40th
birthday. I think a picture of this day
exists somewhere but I can’t be sure.
At other times I have sought to purchase guns, drugs or air
hoses for the same intention, but I never “planned” another event. At times on high balconies or on remote dark
roads I have the same iterations as to how “easy” it might be to end my
perceived suffering but ultimately my fear of that “one moment” where I have to
actually inflict the harm deters me from actually doing it (so far). In that respect, I count myself lucky because
I have known several people who could take the next step beyond that fear. And now I know one more.
For those who wish they could have “heeded the call” or “paid
more attention” or “seen the warning signs” believe me when I tell you, from
personal experience, that the last thing I wanted was your personal
interference. What I NEEDED was your
personal interference, but it was certainly not what I wanted. I had come up with, what they say in AA, was
a permanent solution to a temporary problem but one that in its terrible
pretzel logic, solved the problem unequivocally once and for all. The
therapy, the medications, the self-help books, the boyfriends, the support communities were all just fussy
unfulfilling options to what was an exquisite and grotesque reconciliation with
the inner demons that insist this pain will never end. Those demons are profoundly wrong, but at any
given moment, who are we to know?
So I/we trudge on.
Perhaps trying to be a little kinder and a little more understanding and
we realize how difficult it is to be THAT ever vigilant and someone else falls
through those cracks or we fall through them ourselves. As Lynn Anderson once said “nobody promised
us a rose garden” but even if they did, we’d still have to be wary of the
pricks in it.
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