Day Twenty-seven: Fighting to Leave and Stay

Note: This is a continuation of my story of my journey through depression in my 31 Days series. This entry takes place in October of 2013 and because it wound up being so long, I have split it into two parts. This is part one. Click here for part two. To read the rest of the series, click the 31 Days tab above or click here to go straight to the Day One entry.

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Fall leaves are everywhere now and the weather is cool enough that jackets or long sleeves are necessary for most mornings as we send the girls off to school, although the afternoons are still warm enough for shorter sleeves. The weather doesn't really affect my clothing choices though. They have been the same for months. Black. Black. More black. I really have about two outfits that I wear pretty much every day and they are both black shirts and pants. The only break in my parade of black is Sunday mornings when I wear a long floral printed maxi dress with a solid yellow shrug over my shoulders. To be honest, it is another reason that I hate Sundays lately. I don't want to wear flowers or yellow or any other colour. I have always dressed in colours that are reflective of my mood and as my mood is rarely brighter than perhaps a dark midnight blue and is usually rather black, I don't feel like dressing in anything else. I have tried to wear other colours in an effort to lift my mood, but they just wind up irritating me and pulling me down further. The only other time outside of Sunday that I wear anything except my black is when I absolutely must in order to pretend that I am feeling happy or at the very least, normal. I even have a black cotton nightgown that I wear a lot of the time. The black not only fits my mood, but it is, in an odd sort of way, comforting. Lately I feel so on edge and irritable that the least little thing seems to overstimulate me and makes me want to run away and hide. I am normally very comfortable in crowds and around strangers, but all of that has changed too. My normal extroverted nature has been swallowed up by the darkness of depression and the black that I wear seems to help insulate me a little when I must endure those situations that have a tendency to overstimulate me.

It is coming up on Thanksgiving soon and this year we will not be celebrating it with my family because we are not really on speaking terms with them. Gray and I have been seeing Pendragon weekly for a couple of months now and although the first few sessions were really difficult for me, I have to admit that it's helped foster better communication between us and has helped us stay on the same page with regard to my treatment. We've also set some goals to improve the health of our marriage too. It isn't that our marriage is in trouble or that we have any huge issues, but there are definitely things we could do better. Finally, it's given us a place to talk about issues that affect our family -- like our relationship with my parents -- and come up with solutions to the problems those issues present. That is one reason we are not currently speaking with my parents. The issue at hand is one of improper boundaries on their part. They need to learn what is appropriate and what is not with regard to relating to their adult daughter and her family. We are trying to teach them proper boundaries. So far, given the response we've received from them, I don't know that they have learned much. There's more to what we're doing other than just not talking or having contact with them, but that is a long story. Suffice to say that having no contact with them right now is the best thing for me and my mental health and the health of our future relationship with them.

As of the turn of the calendar from October into November, it has now been a journey of ten months through this current episode of depression. I would like to say that it is getting better, but if the past month is any indicator, it is just getting worse. I barely sleep these days because I cannot seem to make myself go to bed at a reasonable hour as I do not want to close my eyes and be transported back to that horrible place. I barely eat these days but usually manage to eat dinner. Sometimes though, when my mood takes a really dark turn, I go a day or two without eating. I have had more than a few moments where I have thought seriously of attempting suicide and have even gone as far as to make a plan and leave home. The last few times this has happened I have wound up sitting in the parking lot of our local McDonald's, immobilized and trying to summon the energy to go through with it and alternately knowing that it's the wrong thing and fighting with myself about it. I have had at least a couple of crisis phone calls to Pendragon in these moments and he has talked me through my feelings and helped me find the courage to put one foot in front of the other and go home again. 

The most recent time that I found myself standing at the edge is so recent and fresh that I can remember it as if it were happening in the present. The heavy black blanket of depression that smothers the life out of me has returned and I cannot bear it anymore. In my drunkenly depressed stupor I go as far as to write Chez to tell him goodbye via email as I sit in my car at McDonald's away from home and safety. I have decided that I will not go back this time. I will end this tonight. Not long after I send the email, my phone rings as I am sitting there, trying to decide what to do next. It is Chez. His opening salvo to me is, "You have no right to do this." I think perhaps he is genuinely a bit frustrated with me, but also very concerned and that this has come out of a place of both worry and trying to get me to see sense. What it winds up doing is making me a little bit grumpy with him. In retrospect, I think he might have been trying to provoke me a little bit just to shake me out of my fog. Whatever his motive it isn't entirely effective, but it does at least get me thinking. He keeps me on the phone and keeps trying to convince me that killing myself isn't an acceptable option.

I wish I could say that it helps and I that I feel instantly less suicidal, but it doesn't. He must sensed that his tactics are not working because after about thirty minutes of talking, he tells me that his wife wants to talk to me. She and I stay on the phone for over an hour. While we talk, Chez gets on the computer and sends a message to Gray to tell him to please call me. He also gets on his blog and posts an urgent prayer request asking for all of his readers to pray for me. I have no idea about any of this flurry of activity going on behind the scenes until Gray calls while I am talking to Chez's wife. I wind up my conversation with her, still intent on acting on my plan and call Gray back.

We talk and he convinces me to call Pendragon. I know it is the right thing to do, but the pain I am feeling is so deeply intense that I resist the suggestion initially. What finally convinces me is hearing the barely checked emotion in Gray's voice as he says, "I love you, hon. Please call Pendragon and talk to him. We need you..." It takes me a few minutes to summon my courage to text Pendragon and ask if he is free to talk and that this is an emergency (have I mentioned that I hate calling it a crisis?). He doesn't text me back but then my phone rings and it is him. We talk for a good thirty minutes before he finally convinces me to go home instead of going through with my plan. It isn't that I feel so much better but he somehow manages to pierce through some of the fog and touch a nerve that persuades me to go home. As we wrap up our conversation, he says he will call me the next day to check on me. 

After talking to Pendragon, I call Gray and tell him I am coming home. I am still deep in a fog and still very much of a mind to end my life. I honestly don't feel much relief and don't really want to go home. I struggle the entirety of the short distance back to our house with the urge to forget my agreement to go home and just end things once and for all. There are two sets of train tracks I must cross to get back into our neighbourhood and there is a part of me that genuinely hopes that a train might be coming so that I can do something about all of this pain. There is no train and I fight, although with a lot of anger, through the urges and finally wind up in our driveway.

When I come into the house, Gray is sitting in the rocking chair in our living room, waiting for me. A sudden wave of intense exhaustion hits me and I collapse onto the sofa and close my eyes. I am both tired and very angry and do not want to be home. I want to be dead and out of my misery and I am angry that I have allowed Chez, his wife, Gray, and Pendragon to collectively talk me into abandoning my plan. The pain that has driven me to the edge is not lessened and the thoughts of suicide are still coming fast and furious, but although I am angry, my exhaustion wins out and I fall asleep within a minute or two of closing my eyes. It is a short lived and not very deep sleep as Gray comes over and kneels down beside the sofa, wanting to talk to me and hold me.

I cry as he holds me and I tell him I don't want to live like this anymore, that I am exhausted and just completely done with all of it. We don't really do much constructive talking as I am so tired and eventually go up to bed. As I get undressed to go to bed, Chez suddenly comes into my head. I send him a message on Facebook, "I'm home. I don't want to be home and I don't want to be alive, but I am home and alive." When I finish that, I drop into bed and fall asleep almost instantly with Gray's arm draped about my waist, holding me close in a gesture of support and love.

(Click here for part two: Day Twenty-eight: Adrenaline)