Apparently my 'soon' means almost four hours tonight @Former-Member 😮. I had little fish needing last minute homework, showers, lunch boxes washed - you get it I'm sure. This post comes with a huge warning that it is long. Like mega essay alert, make a cuppa, hope you're in the right headspace when you read it, no need to reply at all to it, im writing it for both of us, style long Teej.
I know that who we are, our stories, our situations etc are different so I am not sure whether there will be anything in this that you might be able to find helpful or useful. But what I will do is share openly and honestly hoping that somewhere here there might be something for you.
I was, and expect I will be for a while, suffering with trauma. It was to the point where everywhere I turned danger loomed. I was stuck in a place where nothing and no-one was safe. I had not experienced any safety in so long and it seemed everytime I remotely felt like maybe I was safe, something would happen that would show me I wasn't. As I began to turn increasingly towards suicide my own home became really unsafe too. For more than six months I have been living in panic, run, danger is everywhere mode. Having a total break from it at the break place helped, as it was the first time I had really felt safe in ages. I've been reading and revisiting books and research that helps me understand the role that feeling and being safe plays in repairing the damage caused through trauma. Being able to experience triggers, like the night that my body decided that relaxing was cause for major panic, but be in a place where I could genuinely 'know' I was safe, seems to have kickstarted some brain rewiring maybe. The more I can experience feeling unsafe but knowing I am safe, the more I will be able to reset my 'panic/danger/run alarm' to activate when I am genuinely unsafe, rather than at every single thing that happens. That's my hope anyway.
Taking the break allowed me to focus on some pretty important basic things I was missing too, particularly sleep and diet. That coffee thing hurt me for a couple of days but as I live with a very high level of anxiety as my 'norm', I can see that adding the massive amount of caffeine I consumed in my daily life was really not healthy. While it sounds easy to see now, I didn't get just how much it was adding to me being super highly charged all the time. Reducing it dramatically almost instantly had an impact and now I can sleep easier. I was able to take a good dose of sleeping meds for the first couple of days which helped kind of reset my really unhealthy sleeping habits. I haven't taken any for maybe two weeks now. I ate breakfast, lunch, dinner and (mostly) healthy snacks most days, and have continued that too which has made me feel better as well. I had time to find healthy recipes and easy dinner ideas and explore options for food that I hadn't really considered before which has been a big deal. My concentration, energy, mood have all improved and diet and sleep would be making a difference with that for sure.
A huge HUGE part of the changes in the last few weeks has been in really reconnecting with who I am. My phams worker and I had started exploring my deep values a while ago, and I came to see that really who I am and what I am about is almost all about "making a difference" (in all kinds of ways). I was massively stuck feeling like I just couldn't ever be in a place where I could make a difference in the way I wanted though. I spoke with a employment worker at the break place, which was a super hard but super helpful conversation. We went right back to when I began considering career goals and why I wanted to do it. We spoke about how it's evolved, what's made it shift etc over the years. For me with a handful of little people as a single parent and with my history, I had to have a vision and goals to work towards. I became so focused on these and so driven and determined to get there. I almost had to have tunnel vision, because if I factored in all the other stuff I had going on, it seemed overwhelming. I was determined to get my degree, then my masters, then work in family violence with clients until I could get in to social policy and make a difference that way. With life unfolding as it has, I can't imagine being able to get to those dreams. I don't want to keep up with news about it anymore, or read the latest stats or policies or research. I can't be around stories of it like I used to or see people I care about suffering with it. With the loss of these goals and dreams, my identity as a student, my passion, and the reality that I can't be around any of 'it' anymore, I kind of lost me and who I am. During the chat with the employment worker, she helped me realise that this might be another way my goals are evolving and that maybe instead of losing them, they have changed again. She helped me see that I can work in an area like mental health and she said I could "make a difference", without me having said that is who I am. I have a new plan now which has given me hope. I don't plan on getting my masters anymore, because I won't need to. I can keep at undergrad to get to the same kind of outcome anyway. I can change my direction for now and still go back to where I wanted if I want. She spoke with me about how living what I have lived can't be taught at any level which helped me feel a whole lot better about those letters I wanted after my name. There are no letters that can be given to my lived experience, which is embedded in my name and my name can not be taken from me. It will always stay with me regardless of what I study or not. I used to find myself always thinking "this can't have been for nothing", especially when I was walking the line between life and not life. Maybe for me, this hasn't been for nothing because if I can go on to work I can make a difference in a bigger way than I could have without this experience. These conversations with workers, other clients and people here including you Teej have helped me to believe that maybe I can rebuild and maybe I can be myself and make that difference. It's hope again.
My kids are of course an emormously giant huge part of my life and values. I'm going to be really open here as I have lots of respect for you and know your kids are part of who you are too. As recently as just before admission, I'd spent lots of time reading books, websites, blogs, articles etc about suicide. I guess in a way I kind of wanted to find something to tell me it was ok for me to take that option because my most important people would be ok eventually. All I heard were stories about people left behind who wished their loved one hadn't completed suicide. I didn't find a single person who said they were glad their significant other suicided and I searched widely. I know the stats about kids who have had parents who have died through suicide. I felt enormous guilt about even thinking about it but I couldn't shake it and the guilt was eating me on top of the scary thoughts and feelings. My time away helped me shift my thinking from wanting it but feeling guilty about it, to a different way of seeing it. I really feel now that in living what I have and fighting my way through it, I will be showing my kids that there can be a way to climb out of the deepest darkest holes. I want them growing up not with even more stats against them than they already have, but with the knowledge that life can be seriously hard, but they have to be living it to be able to find their way through the hard stuff. That in having people who get it and who will support them through their struggles, no matter how dark, ugly or scary they might be, that they too can work their way out of it.
Another huge part of who I am is that as much as I kind of hate that people can be so awful, I am very much someone who needs to be part of something with others. I had my world almost disappear, and then withdrew myself from what was left. This forum was about it for social interaction (and this forum has been and is so important to me). I started to venture into the non-virtual social world more and more during my time at the break place though. By the end of my stay I had made real friends. I'd giggled, laughed, cried, laughed until I cried, watched movies, hugged, cooked, shared meals, played craft, sat in silence, walked, listened to, chatted with, went out etc with other people and was able to feel like I can actually be around people again without my heart breaking, my soul being crushed or my head imploding like I thought it might. I am still grieving the loss of my people, and will continue to do so for as long as I need, and this friend idea was and is scary because of what happened. I have no choice in what has happened though and no amount of wishing it hadn't will give anything back to me. What I can do is make a choice about what next and I realised that. I can try to make a life where people outside my family don't exist, and that's a legitimate choice. It's not who I am though. So I can choose to get back out there and at least stay open to opportunities that may arise. Maybe I can even seek opportunities, especially if I take baby steps and be gentle and easy with myself. This is also hope for me.
The other important thing that happened was that I was able to properly work out what is helpful and what is not, then make a plan as to how to manage it. What I am talking about here is the giant team that surrounds me, some of which I can't disengage from without huge consequences. I can manage it though and use what I have in a way that will work best for me. The people working at the break place helped me feel a lot less like it is all doom and gloom out there. I think it's also worth saying that there's a big ugly scary team of people that stopped working with me when I entered the break place and the effect of their absence hasn't gone unnoticed by me. I really feel their 'support' was very unsupportive, and a big part of the very ugly muddle that happened in the weeks leading up to the break place. Almost the moment the scratches stopped, things started easing a bit. I'm not going to say much more about it now, but working out how to use what's out there is helping me feel more in control of my life, rather than having my life controlled by others.
In essence I guess what actually changed was rest from stress, attending to some basic needs I had overlooked, gaining confidence that I can still be me in this life that doesn't seem mine but I am learning to make mine, and the realisation that while my goals can and have to continue to evolve, my values and who I am are still very much there. It's all given me hope.
Of course, I am very very aware that I am three days out in the real world again. I know that recovery is a long process, that it will probably have huge ups and downs and rounds and rounds. I know that I am yet to really step in to the world full of triggers that is study and working with people. I know this could all fall apart again and I know that I will live knowing that suicide is something that is always going to linger. Tonight though (which was planned before your post), I will sit with my means and discard of it. I spoke to the psychiatrist about how this means was so symbolic as it was my conscious choice to live rather than be stuck in life. I told him that I was never ever handing my means to the catts as it would symbolise way too much bad stuff for me. Tonight I will consciously make a choice to put this particular choice away.
I am sorry to hear that suicide feels so close you can feel it Teej. I wish I had an answer for you that I know would help shift something for you. All I know is that for me, when I truly believed all hope was lost, I found it in some unexpected and surprising ways and I plan to hold on to it for as long as I can now. I hope that what I've said doesn't sound too preachy or wishy washy.
I will hold hope for you too Teej, if it is helpful for you.
