I’m exhausted. I suspect that the poor guy who answers the on-call for day treatment is exhausted, too. He sent me to the local ER yesterday but they said that I was fine and sent me home. So I went to a different ER and they said that, basically, there are no inpatient beds at any hospital anywhere in the area because the current mental health crisis is so bad. So it felt like there was just no help. And I cried so hard on the way home because I felt like when I killed myself it would crush the poor guy from day treatment who was as powerless to help me as I felt like I was to help me. It felt like I had no choice. I couldn’t stop remembering the staff member from the group home asking me what I had done to make my family disown me. I felt like if I didn’t kill myself, I was proving that I actually was okay with not having a family. Like I’m the ultra-individualistic white North American who doesn’t care about her family. And with everything going on, I felt like not killing myself would just send the message to the Universe that it could do absolutely whatever it wanted to me and I would just roll over and let it happen.
I had everything regarding my demise worked out logistically but I called day treatment to leave a voicemail apologizing and telling them that it wasn’t their fault. To my surprise, they picked up. The nice guy who works there but is leaving but who’s been there for me constantly for the past three days of crisis listened to me. He and I both knew that no matter what I said, I couldn’t go to the hospital. So he urged me to really try to do my part to get through. I wasn’t really planning on doing that but I said okay. It felt only right to do my part a little bit though since he’d gone out of his way so I called the hospital where I used to be inpatient. I’ve really tried not to call them because of boundaries but I did it anyway. The nurse who I knew very well was comforting and I oddly felt better afterwards. Then the guy from day treatment called again to check in.
So, previous plan was to call the turtle people so that my turtle would be taken care of and off myself before therapy today at 3pm, because I figured that if I did it afterwards, my therapist would be traumatized just like everybody else. But it seems like, even though the system is broken, the individuals at the very bottom of the totem pole do care about me and are trying their best. I’ve always hated when my reason for being alive was not wanting to devastate people. That feels more like a threat than a comfort. But it makes me feel good that people care. And crying really hard for a few hours doesn’t hurt.
So I decided to see what happens at therapy today. Deciding whether to kill myself is like any other major choice in that it sucks to have to go through it alone. It still feels like I shouldn’t have to accept the life that has been assigned to me. The things that I need are the exact same things that most people take for granted: human touch, committed family members. And there are numerous other reasons to kill myself that I won’t belabor here. I will say that Grandma loved me and Grandma is dead and there’s probably no afterlife but basically, if there’s a chance that there is one, it’s probably better than this and I might get my grandma back. And I wasn’t invited to Grandma’s funeral because the whole extended family didn’t want me there. It was as though they went out of their way to confirm that now that Grandma was dead, I had no family. And I don’t think they thought I cared enough about her to deserve to go. Nobody else would connect the dots but I would know that I was doing what I was doing because I loved her.
Anyway. It’s just been a really shitty few days. People who read this blog and care about me can’t comment because of professional boundaries, and it sucks that the people who care about me have to have professional boundaries when normal people have non-professionals (like family members) who can support them. And I haven’t mentioned this whole crisis to my friends because I feel like it would be an unfair amount of pressure to put on them for them to know what’s happening. This kind of situation is for immediate family, and mine is shunning me. Which seems like a valid reason to kill oneself but I’m giving it a few hours. I really do want to live, I just don’t want to do it all alone.
