And now I'm reading David Sedaris' new memoir in which he describes the death of his youngest sister, Tiffany. I'm not sure he has any greater insight into her death than the average sibling. His remembrance struck a chord in me because Tiffany's #toxicology report revealed that Klonopin was the drug of choice with a plastic bag tied over her head. Death by asphyxiation. #Death by Self. I too (only a few years back) took too many Klonopin one desperate night, but my husband called 9-1-1 and I was detoxified. It wasn't funny then, but much later when I thought about it, it was surrealism with a comedic twist. From the point that the EMTs loaded me onto a stretcher it was like I was riding one of those #stationary horses on a merry-go-round. I was so filled with #tranquilizer that I slipped in and out of sleep most of the time, and when I spoke to people I said cranky things like, "The food is so bad" and "Get me out of here."
I think I was in a large auditorium surrounded by what appeared to be a lot of teenagers and a few health aides. I know that in the process of diving for the phone to speak to my husband I fell over one of the million #barcoloungers (instead of beds) placed in rows--that's how uncoordinated and unbalanced I was--in more ways than one. My wacked-up colleagues laughed, and I felt embarrassed. Imagine that--even with all those pills and whatever chemical mixture IVed into me, I was still able to feel shame. I made nothing of the fall but I was bleeding. If anyone rushed to clean the wound or apply a bandage, I wasn't aware of it. Later only after my release did I notice a gash on my knee. By then I could laugh it off as a war wound.
There was a TV going 24 hours a day and I swear it was mainly sports, so it became white noise for me. Once I wandered over to a regular chair near the wall. When I spied someone taking out the garbage through a side door, I almost made a break for it. But I couldn't figure out where the door led to and what the repercussions might be. So I just looked longingly and said to no one in particular, "I almost ran." Then I met someone in a private area, and he told me I would soon speak to a woman--a decisionmaker. He cautioned me to say, "I wasn't committing suicide--I just wanted to sleep. And I have my own psychiatrist to assist me in my therapy."To this day I still don't know if my overdosing was a suicide attempt or a cry for help, but either one definitely defines me as a person with chronic depression.
I know now that dysfunction is not an all or nothing thing or a life sentence. It varies in intensity and can respond to chemicals--the right combinations.
Looking back, I was way more dysfunctional in college. Lectures, exams, reference assignments--all these activities fed my #OCD, and it was a miracle that I was able to finish my courses and graduate. It sometimes took me twice as long to complete a project. The #OCD slowed me down drastically because it was like an internal critic. It was always censoring me, scolding me for not doing things perfectly. It was a little like having another personality inhabiting my brain, and I would #joke to my husband (the only one besides my shrinks who knew about the #OCD) that I needed a #vacation from myself. I believed then that my "suicide attempts" conveyed a need for attention and respite.
The first time I sought "respite" was when I was driving to my parents' house. The combined effect of dealing with the #OCD and running home to daddy and mommy upset me so much that I purposely crashed my Chevy Nova into a snow bank. I didn't total the car but I banged it up pretty well. Then I had to continue on foot to my childhood home and try to explain my "accident" to my father. I must have looked terrible because instead of his usual angry and #critical responses, he just told me to go upstairs and lie down.
The second time I reached critical mass I was sitting in a cab on the way to my job. Since I had previously crashed my vehicle, my parents and spouse decided I was not trustworthy as a driver. Duh. So the cabbie got the surprise of his life when I decided to open the back door where I was seated, indicating I was prepared to jump. I don't know if I really would have followed through (lack of bravery has saved my life several times), but it was plain to me and the poor cabbie that I was not in any shape to go to work. He returned me to my parents' house where I took a second "vacation."
About now I suppose you're #disappointed that my suicide attempts weren't a little more humorous. You would have to go back farther in my life to see the humor. For instance, my panic attacks in seventh grade. I was overwhelmed with everything in junior high--changing classes six times a day, eating lunch in a cafeteria, joining clubs, looking through microscopes, everything. At least twice a week I would fake illness at home to try to escape school. I combined creativity with clumsy, which ended up being less than convincing. Did I really think my parents would buy into the complaints of stomach aches, glum demeanor, stumbling walk, tears?
Once I even feigned fainting in the middle of the kitchen floor. But my father still insisted I get into the car. He would drop me off at school, and I would wait (inside in the cold weather) for the bell to ring. Then my miserable day commenced.
The psychologist I saw called it school phobia and left it at that. A psychiatrist later on traced some of my angst to sibling rivalry. My standing joke over the years was that I couldn't commit suicide because I never could come up with a fail-safe plan I could master. #Guns? Too messy. Too hard to carry out. I'd have to first buy a gun (where do you get one--do you go to Lord & Taylor's, a hardware store, Sears--where do teen pacifists buy guns?) I'd also have to get lessons since I'd never even held a toy gun, much less a Gunsmoke-Paladin special. How would I arrange for practice shoots? Oh, this was too complicated. So I put guns on the bottom of the List of Possible Death Modes.
Strangulation also always seemed too complicated--I'd need a rope, a chair and knot-making expertise to succeed, and I was manually challenged as it was.I could just about knot my Girl Scout scarf. The only things I was good at with my hands was eating and typing so at least I had the suicide note covered, but I had little confidence in the rest.
Mostly I figured that pills were my only logical route, but then I worried about the dosage and whether I could physically swallow so many. My sister's college friend had attempted suicide with pills, but she vomited a portion before someone found her #semiconscious. I had never liked Ellie, but oddly enough I respected her even less now that she had survived despite her efforts. If Ellie couldn't get the job done--and she was four years older and a student at the prestigious University of Pennsylvania--I had little hope for myself. Although I reasoned that this strategy might be my only recourse, I knew it was a poor choice all around. Too many variables, too much could go wrong.
So in my case, lack of courage and confidence prevented me from doing anything but thinking about suicide. Perhaps the strongest reason that derailed me was its association with failure. I already knew my family considered me a loser--suicide would be the frosting on their cake. I knew how #disappointed my parents would be if I were to die and #leave them without a smart, successful daughter with a six-figure salary who had a husband and, of course, a child. Sure my sister satisfied the desire for grandchildren, but my folks were greedy--they wanted a second child to flaunt as a trophy. Since I realized early on that I wasn't going to be fabulously wealthy or become a mother, I figured the least I could do was to stay alive and act as normal as possible.
Of course it's not that easy to run from suicide even if you are determined not to give in. The subject comes up over and over again in TV, movies, songs, and books. You pick up a magazine or surf the Internet and suicide may flash in your eyes like a neon sign. Celebrities are favorite #publicity targets, and what's better news than the death of an icon. In the 1970s to the present, reports of luminaries like photographer Diane Arbus, #psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, musician Kurt Cobain, activist Abbie Hoffman, Joan Rivers' husband, Edgar Rosenberg, and authors Hunter Thompson and John Kennedy Toole flooded the media. Also bidding sayonara were actresses Elizabeth Hartman, Cheyenne Brando, and Margaux Hemingway.
Of course it's not just celebrities who commit suicide. #Veterans of Vietnam, the Gulf War and more recently Mideastern combatants from Iraq and Afghanistan surrender to #PTSD and end up as statistics. Many so-called accidents in newspaper obituaries are thinly disguised suicides. In fact suicide has become so common that it probably should have its own cable channel with interventions and rehabilitation being awarded to likely candidates. Or how about a cooking channel for those who want to exit in a gourmet-ish way? And the crowning touch should be a reality show--it could be titled "American Suiciders" or "Keeping Up with the Self-Killers."
These are morbid ideas, but who's to say that they might actually act as deterrents to suicide. If nothing else, a steady diet of "entertainment" about #suicide might reduce its romantic allure (a la Romeo and Juliet, Virginia Wolff, and Sylvia Plath). It's a cinch that the current media coverage of school wackos running amok isn't curbing the number of suicides. The irony is that suicide is a growth industry for #mental health professionals, scientists, and geneticists while being one of the top causes of death. But what's good for business is not necessarily good for society. Unless you live in a shoe box, you are truly surrounded by suicide, and no one knows it better than a depressed, hopeless person.
Suicide attempts can give way to humor years later when your perspective has changed, the good drugs have kicked in and you're once again rational, but completed suicides #NEVER are funny. I am one of the lucky ones with a short string of bollixed attempts and a twisted sense of irony. For us, tragedy plus time equals comedy. And that's why I can laugh now about almost tumbling out of a cab 20 years ago and scaring the #bejeesus out of a cabbie, who didn't even bother collecting his hard-earned fee; and carrying out my #Klonopin debacle in which I ended up in a Mesa hospital ward surrounded by a noisy non-stop TV, teeny boppers, bad food and a hospital attendant who told me to take a shower--"you smell bad." I took his advice, and I'm still here.
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