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Suicide, triggers, and one perspective from a manic depressive

*Trigger Warning*

Seventeen years and however many months, I sat across from the very together, all business woman shrink, who handed me a ‘life sentence.’ I looked at my mother, and burst into tears. No, no, no please god. I could not believe it, yet I already knew. Hallucinations, ghosts, talking way too fast, dancing in Radio Shack (mortifying), writing furiously on stacks and stacks of paper on a cardboard box. Brain zaps, months with no sleep, sobbing in the fetal position, alternating between Nascar velocity and black, nothingness. Me, the traveler, the unafraid mouth, unpredictable was gone. I should have known, seen it coming. My father, now gone, was lying home, fighting his own battle with the insidious, genetic mad mind disease. His eyes recognized me, his mind did not, stealing the best parts of him. Fast forward today, the present. It takes between one and two hours for me to wake, take the required psych drugs, supplements, to quash the anxiety, numbness, physical pain, tremors, the thousand questions flying through the diseased brain that betrays me. I look to her, my mother for grounding, keeping me here, asking her fifty times over a day, “do you think I’m going to make it? Am I strong enough?”

She nods, “of course, as she lies.” Even her empathy, understanding, and patience is wavering. She is tired, it has been a long, thankless journey and I am exhausted.

Triggers. There are triggers, so many triggers I cannot rationalize, wish away. There is no control, no choice, there is only fear and the will to fight. I dig deep, some days the Marianna Trenches aren’t deep enough. I can not win. The crickets chirping sound like an air missile strike, I fight because that’s what I’m told to do. Seventeen years, ECT, hospitalizations, psyche meds that don’t work, the invisible pain only I see. Only I feel, without reasoning, rational answers. Do I think Robin Williams, Chris Cornell, Mac Miller, Carrie Fisher, and countless others ‘chose,’ to die? No way, I fucking don’t. That’s absurd, their exhausted, beautiful, chaotic brains did. They chose to live rich, empathic, colorful lives, sharing their genius with the world, passionate enough to keep on loving, giving for as long and well as they could. They chose to ignore the voices, squash them under layer upon layer of the mad mind. They didn’t give up, give in to suicide, didn’t quit. Nor did the rest of the millions afflicted by the brutal, incessant war that is Mental Illness. So, fuck you. Fuck them. Fuck everyone who has voiced their uneducated opinion on the why, how, the particulars, mob mentality spectators. None of us are smarter than the intangible, invisible mystery that is the mind. I keep the one piece of control I have, a mental note zipped in my back pocket with one word, suicide, exit strategy.

Realistically, I’ve read all the statistics, had my heart shredded watching loved ones lose the fight and their lives. I’ve done everything right. And still, I know, there is the very real possibility, that someday for no apparent reason, I may whip it out. So if you see me and think, she’s doing great. I’m not. No, not really. I’m not at all. Just because a person smiles, laughs on the outside don’t make assumptions. Know that I am working very, very hard to make you, and I, less uncomfortable. Smiling from the inside, turned out.

Published in BLOG MENTAL HEALTH MENTAL ILLNESS POETRY & PROSE

One Comment

  1. Cindy Cindy

    As usual fantastic and so well written. As usual so insightful. You my friend, are not “the usual” you are Jackie and you are you. Keep on keeping on.

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