Five Minute Friday: Weary

This chapter of Psalms gets me every. single. time. It is SO true to the experience of despair and the weariness that comes from fighting a mental illness. It's one I have prayed many many times.

This isn't something that is easy for me to talk about and that's saying something. I talk about a lot of things on this blog that are universally considered hush-hush and things that are difficult at best to talk about with someone you trust -- much less publishing them for the entire world to see. The thing is though, if I don't talk about it, then the likelihood that someone else who is struggling with these things will start talking about it becomes less. Don't get me wrong. It's not that I like talking about depression, self-injury, PTSD, suicide, therapy, etc. It's that I need to talk about these things -- for myself and for the benefit of others who might need to hear it or find some solidarity in my words.

I have been kinda quiet with my writing of late and haven't participated in the Five Minute Friday community much at all in the last several weeks. Just haven't been able to summon the words to talk about bacon (gasp!) or dancing or anything else. This week's prompt though, just hit me where I live in a big way.

WEARY

There's a lot I could say about this word, but as I said, I need to say something that isn't easy for me to say, so here goes....

I struggle with suicide.

As I've said many times before, depression has been my off and on companion for most of my life. It comes and goes in episodes with brief periods of sorta normal moods in between. The usual pattern is an episode of severe depression (because severe is pretty much the only way mine rolls) that lasts between 6-8 months and then a respite of about 3-4 months before my mood starts to slide down again.

Suicidal thoughts are a part of depression for me. I've learned ways of managing them and talking myself through them, but there have been times when those thoughts have led to action and many more times when I've wanted to act, but have been saved from it by divine intervention, my rock star therapist's mad skills, and the love of my husband, family, and friends who have intervened.

So why talk about this in connection with today's prompt?

Because one of the biggest reasons that I think many people start to seriously consider taking their own life is that they are weary. Something that I think many people don't understand about mental illness is that it is absolutely and totally exhausting. One of the big reasons it's so exhausting is that it seems to go on and on and on. You can, as I have, observe certain patterns, but sometimes those patterns don't hold. Even when those patterns hold true, it can still be exhausting to think about the fact that with most mental illnesses, you're going to be dealing with them for the entirety of your life.

It's a management game where you try to figure out things like which medications are going to be helpful (if any), which therapist or doctors are the right ones for you, which kinds of therapy (interpersonal, CBT, DBT, etc) are the right ones, and which coping skills work best for you in those inevitable moments when your meds fail or your doctor retires or none of the usual therapeutic skills you've learned seem to be working.

This may seem like a lot on its own, but then amidst all this trying to manage your illness, you've got to continue to deal with the day-to-day stresses of life like paying bills, making meals, grocery shopping, going to work/school, taking kids to ballet and soccer, going to church, and washing clothes and dishes? Then there's the basic self-care that most people take for granted like eating, sleeping, bathing, brushing your teeth, and making appointments to care for your physical well being (doctor, dentist, GYN, opthamologist, etc). Next, throw in the ordinary stresses of relationships, work/school expectations, and things like getting pulled over because you forgot that your tag needed renewing three months ago (or you were too depressed to get out and deal with the hassle of standing in line at the DMV) or a phone call from your kid's teacher to discuss a behavioural or academic problem. Finally, add to all of these things the random and gut-wrenching stresses like news of a friend who has stage 4 cancer, a neighbour whose child ran away, or any of a number of distressing things that make the news (like the headlines from Paris right now) and you can see how tiring it could be to try to manage a chronic mental illness.

Somewhere in all of that management, sometimes, things happen and the illness gets out of control. When that happens, management is shunted to the side and the focus shifts to recovery, stabilisation, and figuring out what went wrong. This is, for me, what a depressive episode looks like. It's when my depression gets beyond my ability to employ management. As of the writing of this, I've been clawing tooth and nail to get to a place of recovery for just over 2.5 years.

Those episodes when your illness is flaring doesn't mean that you're in the darkest depths every single moment. In addition to those darker days, you will have days when things are kinda okay, but you're still struggling. Of course when you're trying to get to a place of recovery, nothing feels totally right even on the kinda-okay days. Most people don't see the kinda-okay-but-not-totally-right days because of the stigma that surrounds mental illness. This is because people who struggle with mental illness often hide how bad their illness is on those kinda-okay days.  They don't feel like they can be honest about it without the people around them trying downplay how they feel simply because they happen to be having a kinda-okay day. The pressure to hide how you really feel adds another layer of weariness to an already exhausting situation and makes it all the harder to want to fight when the days are darker.

But when suicidal thoughts creep in and especially when they're intense, this internal struggle wears you down and gets the better of you. The weariness wears you down to a place where you find that you just don't care anymore. You just want it all to stop. You don't want to have to play the management game. You don't want to have to hide your pain. You don't want to feel so damn miserable all the time. Maybe you tell a friend how you feel or you call a hotline, but the relief doesn't quite last long enough. So eventually, you convince yourself that it's time to end the weariness.

For me, the first time I ever had a thought of killing myself, I was 14 years old. It was a fleeting thought that was pretty easily banished, but it was there all the same. By age 16, I'd had several more of those thoughts and just before Christmas of that year, my weariness grew to a point that I couldn't manage alone and I began to do more than just think about it. I began to contemplate and plan ways to make it happen. I got help from a beloved teacher and now dear friend, who was able to ease the pain enough for me to keep moving forward for a while longer, but eventually, the weariness returned and with it, the thoughts that the world would be better off without me in it.

Since those days of high school, I've stood at the edge many times. I've tried to jump off on three different occasions and I've had more than that where I've had one foot over the edge with the other close behind. Most recently, in the past 2.5 years, I've been struggling through the most severe depressive episode I've ever had and have come very close to actually making a fatal attempt on quite a number of occasions. In fact, that struggle with suicide is part of what has made this depressive episode so different and so much more difficult for me.

That struggle with suicide is why there's a gap between September 13, 2015 to October 20, 2015 in this very blog. You see, I came within a hairsbreadth of killing myself on September 29th. My mood began to crash hard during the week before and by the evening of that day, it sank lower than it has in many months. It's a long story, but suffice it to say that I was in such a dark place and was so bone weary from the near constant fighting this disease that although I spent 3 hours w/Pendragon (the aforementioned rock star therapist), I did something I've never done before. I lied to him that I was going home and instead left his office absolutely intent on ending my life. Had my dear big brother Chez not gotten concerned and called me when he did, I wouldn't likely be here. Chez stayed on the phone with me for another 3.5 hours as I tried to resist his efforts to get me to go home. Eventually though, he managed to break through some of the darkness (with the help of the Holy Spirit and likely the combined efforts of both our guardian angels) and numbness and convinced me to go home. It took another four or five days before the struggle with suicidal thoughts subsided to the point that I could manage to be alone and not feel like I wanted to end my life. After that week, it was another three weeks before my mood got to a place where I was at what Pendragon calls my "baseline normal for depression." That is to say, depressed, but functioning on at least some level.

Since my return to that level, I've still had the odd thoughts. In all truthfulness, this week has seen my mood dip to a much lower place and I'm fighting those thoughts, although not as intensely. The trick is to try and manage things so that I can keep from falling into such deep darkness. I know myself well enough to know that how I've been feeling this week is often a harbinger of a much worse week to come, but for the moment, I am trying my best to keep fighting the weariness. It's hard though. I need rest and I've needed it for a very long time.

I know what the Psalms and the rest of scripture say about weariness and how God will sustain you, but when you're in that weary dark valley of suicidal thinking, it's hard to remember that. More to the point, even if you remember it or someone reminds you, it's hard to make yourself believe it. So what do you do?

Honestly, I don't know. I do the best I can not to get to that bone weary place (and I've gotten better at it, I think). When it happens, I cry a lot, sleep a lot, eat far too much chocolate, see my therapist for longer crisis sessions or more frequent sessions, meet with my spiritual director Fr. B for prayer and reception of the Sacraments, stick close to my husband and reach out to friends for support and prayers. Basically, I've just learned to white knuckle it until I can breathe and rest easier again.

It's not easy and sometimes, like on September 29th, it doesn't matter what I do and I need God's divine intervention. I try not to think about those moments too much, but instead, focus on what I need to do to keep from becoming so very weary again.