Reflections - The Garden & The Well

Guest Post by Amber Schurr

Shared on Raw Bleach with the author's permission

The Well and the Garden- Reflections on suffering, resilience, and the nature of good and evil
I finished watching East of Eden last night, and I woke this morning with a heaviness I couldn’t quite explain. I’m not even sure I liked the story. It was dark, disturbing, and profoundly sad. And yet, beneath all that darkness, there was something beautiful. Something that left me wrestling with questions about human nature, the wounds we carry, and the choices that shape who we become. How is it that two people can endure similar suffering and emerge so differently? Why does pain seem to deepen the compassion of one person while hardening the heart of another? Are we born with some innate capacity for resilience, or is it something we develop through the love, protection, and experiences we encounter along the way? And what happens to those who never receive that love? I keep returning to the character of Cathy. A woman capable of extraordinary cruelty, who abandoned her newborn twins and seemed to move through life without remorse, attachment, or any genuine belief in goodness. To her, kindness was merely manipulation dressed in more acceptable clothing. Love was a weakness, generosity a transaction, and vulnerability something to exploit. But I wonder whether her inability to recognize goodness in others began with her inability to recognize innocence in herself. There was once a five-year-old girl in a cave. A child who experienced something terrible, something she could neither understand nor deserve. And perhaps, somewhere in the aftermath, she began constructing a world in which innocence didn’t exist. Because to believe in innocence would mean acknowledging her own. And to acknowledge her own would mean confronting the terrible truth that someone had harmed a child who deserved nothing but protection. Perhaps it was easier to believe that everyone was evil. What struck me most was the possibility that, near the end of her life, Cathy finally encountered something she could not explain away. She witnessed genuine love between her sons, their love for their father, and a depth of grief that could not be manipulated or dismissed. For perhaps the first time, she saw goodness that existed without an ulterior motive. And in witnessing that goodness, she was forced to confront the possibility that she had been wrong about humanity. And perhaps about herself. The image of her finally embracing that frightened little girl, offering comfort to the child she had spent a lifetime refusing to acknowledge, was profoundly moving. It made me wonder how much of our lives we spend defending ourselves against wounds we have never truly allowed ourselves to feel. I think of despair as a deep, cold, dark well. Some of us seem to begin our lives in a garden, surrounded by enough love and reassurance to believe we are worthy of both. We may stumble into the well throughout our lives, but we carry with us the knowledge that the garden exists. We know what sunlight feels like. We believe there is a way back. Others seem to begin at the bottom. They grow up believing something is inherently wrong with them. That their darkest thoughts are their truest selves. That love is conditional, goodness is fleeting, and peace is something other people deserve. And so they climb. They claw at the walls of that well, searching for something to hold on to, exhausted by the effort of reaching a place others seem to inhabit so effortlessly. And what they hope for, perhaps more than anything, is that someone will notice. Someone will look down into the darkness and lower a ladder. But not everyone has that person. Perhaps this is why Lee’s presence in East of Eden moved me so deeply. He couldn’t undo the abandonment or erase the suffering. But he offered something that might be among the most powerful forces in a human life: steady, unconditional care. He became a kind of ladder for a family that might otherwise have remained lost. And I wonder how many lives have been changed, or even saved, by someone who simply refused to look away. Still, the questions remain. Where does our bitterness go? Our resentment? Our anger at the injustices we have endured? Do we absorb it, allowing it to reinforce the belief that we are undeserving? Do we project it onto others, perpetuating the very suffering that wounded us? Or do we somehow learn to separate what happened to us from who we are? Perhaps the answer is not as simple as choosing goodness over evil. Perhaps our capacity to choose is shaped, in part, by how much love we’ve known, how safe we’ve felt, and whether anyone ever taught us that we were worth saving. But I don’t believe our wounds must become our destiny. And maybe that is what I found beautiful beneath the darkness of East of Eden. Not the promise that suffering makes us stronger, or that everyone who falls will find their way out. But the possibility that even after a lifetime spent believing in darkness, we might encounter something that changes what we believe is true. That goodness can be genuine. That vulnerability is not weakness. That what happened to us is not necessarily who we are. And that somewhere above the cold stone walls of the well, the garden still exists.

December is coming

It's a terrible fall morning where it's cold, damp, and the clouds are floating by ominously in a depressing grey sky. Perfect description of how autumn feels for me. I don't get excited about pumpkin spice or the leaves changing colors as I know December is coming. It starts in mid-September when summer is over, and Target puts the Christmas decorations out. My stomach clenches and I try to shove down the emotions coming up. The holidays aren't a happy time for me as they bring up decades of anxiety, loss, and sadness. Each year I ask myself what I can do to get through them and yet it remains just as painful. What I'm feeling is different this time as it's not just the holidays, but what December itself was last year. 

I wrote that the ground had disappeared the day before I tried to kill myself. Saying I tried isn't fully true, as I didn't have a plan in place, and instead spent an entire night wailing alone to a computer screen that I wanted it done, I couldn't take another second, I hated myself and my life and didn't want to be here. It was the winter solstice, the darkest night of the year, and the irony isn't lost on me. I'd hoped to fly to Mexico so I wouldn't have to see the happy people and their pictures and hope and all I didn't have. My unemployment ran out earlier that week so not only would I not be internationally traveling, but I also didn't know how I was going to survive. I was terrified. 

I'm still so terrified. 2 months without ketamine, and though not a mood booster or antidepressant, it's been shown to at least stabilize me enough to where I don't dive headfirst off a bridge onto the highway. The scream sobbing is back and it's everything in me to get through social interactions without tears. I can make it through a performance and somehow switch off my mind once I'm on stage, but most drives home I can barely see through the tears. I'm on medication, extra for panic attacks, seeing a psychiatrist, going back to ketamine after 2 months off, writing daily, and I hate every second of it. "You have to keep trying!" Hey Pollyana, I actually don't have to keep trying. I can end it at any moment. 

There is only one Christmas I can think of where I felt happiness. I wanted a Barbie swimming pool more than anything and with all the Christmas gifts of red and green there was a large shiny gold one for me. I sat by the tree and prayed every night for it while also apologizing to God for begging for this when other kids got nothing. There is a picture of me tearing it open with a huge smile on my face. I think what made me happiest wasn't the gift itself but the gold wrapping paper, different than the others, for just a second I was special and wanted. There is a Japanese practice called Kintsugi where when a bowl breaks the cracks are filled with gold, with the belief that the repair isn't hidden and makes it more beautiful. There is no gold coming and I feel broken beyond repair. Some things aren't repairable and no one actually wants a patched together old bowl.

The feelings of last December are looming large and I can't shove them down. Winter solstice is 66 days away and the thought of it is making me nauseous. There is nothing to look forward to and so much dread. I'm not sure how much effort I have left in me. 

Three Years

Three years and I think about it every day. It's been three years and there hasn't been a single day where some part of this didn't enter my mind. I'm ashamed to write that. I've gone over every text, email, and memory as if I was trying to solve a murder. Trying to understand what happened became its own obsession, although I don't know if I truly wanted the truth. My mind ruminated over this and every trauma I've ever had to the point of nearly killing me.

I recently read, "rumination is the mind trying to solve the unsolvable". The inability to turn it off is debilitating and exhausting. I've asked myself repeatedly, "Why can't you let it go?" I initially thought it was because to fully accept that it's gone, and really was never real, would be to give up the only love I ever had, even though he never loved me. The pain of admitting I am on the back end of my life and never had someone that fully loved, accepted, and cared for me, is devastating. 

My thought system became entrenched in it. Was any of it real? Why would he treat me that way if he loved me? Why did I stay? Why did I go back? Why did this take me under? In yoga they talk about Samskara: a groove or rut in your mind that you are stuck in. They become vrittis which are the constant patterns and fluctuations of the mind. We do yoga to calm the vrittis but my mind is never calm. My yoga training taught me that you're in control of what you want to feel but also that we cannot get through until we're ready to get rid of it. There's the catch. And I have a well-grooved thought pattern of "you will always be sad and have bad things happen". Six months of ketamine treatment brought me back to the land of the living but I'm also having to survive my thinking. 

It's extraordinarily difficult to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it, because from the outside the solution looks painfully obvious. From the inside the solution looks obvious too. That's the fucking horror of it. I've told myself thousands of times what to do. There isn't some missing piece of information that would suddenly make me realize this is hurting me. I know. I live in the shame of it right alongside the thoughts. 

I had a moment recently where it occurred to me that it wasn't just letting go of this relationship. It was the underlying belief I'd formed that by finally getting love all my past pain and hurt would be redeemed. I'd get a happy ending. I'd get the moment I watched everyone else get as I stood on the sidelines smiling yet crumbling inside. This felt like getting what I wanted but thought would never happen was actually within my reach. It was so close and yet I couldn't quite grasp it. This love would bring me salvation and deliverance if I could only find a way. 

I thought of the scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Elsa is reaching for the Grail, she's so close, Indiana holds out his hand to her but instead she keeps reaching for the Grail and falls into the abyss. Then Indiana comes into the same situation, and you see the fire in his eyes for how much he wants it. His father extends his hand, but the grail is so all consuming and it appears to him within reach if he just tried a little harder. He has literally watched someone die doing what he's doing and it's not enough to stop him from reaching for it. Because it's so close. This wasn't simply a bad relationship but rather cumulative trauma landing in a life that wasn't secure and stable. 

In the yoga sutras it says that if we don't calm the vrittis, and release attachment, then your identity will take on the fluctuations of your mind. My mind is an exhausting and dark place that I have truly spent decades trying to change. It's not that I lack insight. I've known I have to let go. I've always known. I just don't know how.

Ending It

Author's note: this subject is heavy. What I'm writing is my experience and opinions. This isn't advice.

Today is World Suicide Prevention Day. I cringed when I read the words but looked it up anyway to see what they would say about it.

Here is what they said:

- The 2024–2026 triennial theme, “Changing the Narrative on Suicide”, aims to shift from silence, stigma, and misunderstanding to openness, empathy, and support. It encourages:
- Open, honest conversations about suicide and suicidal behavior.
- Challenging harmful myths and reducing stigma.
Systemic change through public policy prioritizing mental health, evidence-based strategies, and improved access to care.
- The slogan for 2026 is “Start the Conversation”, urging individuals, communities, organizations, and governments to engage in dialogue that fosters understanding and support.

I was pleasantly surprised. Being honest, speaking up, telling the truth of what happened to me is what a large portion of my writing is about. I know my experience isn't unique, but I also know it's not openly spoken about. In just the US over 48,000 people died by suicide last year. Did you think that number was high? I did. And it's because this has barely been part of the conversation.

I've been suicidal since I was 6 years old. I can't remember a day where the thought didn't come into my head at one point. And I never told anyone. I'd written it in my diary, which my mother read, and she said, "don't do that". I tried to tell a friend when I was a teenager and she said, "It's just looking for attention and a call for help." Yeah, it is a call for help. They aren't looking for attention; they are trying to find a way to stay alive if they are telling you. I would not even bring it up in therapy as I feared being committed. I've also realized recently that it wasn't just the thought "I should end it" but there was micro planning involved. I'd be on a nice hike and look over the edge when I got to the top and think "I should jump". If I got narcotics for some pain or injury, I'd wonder how many it would take to OD. I'd brush knives up and down my inner arm to see what it felt like. 

I almost killed myself last year in December as the night rolled into the winter solstice. I'm surprised the neighbors didn't hear my wails and sobs as I typed into the darkness to a robot. Even thinking about it chokes me up as I recall how much pain I was in. If there had been an instantaneous way to do it, I fully believe I'd be dead. Now after 6 months of ketamine treatment, I'm still sad and hopeless, but I'm back in the land of the living. 

It's humiliating that people know. I am so raw and most everything said to me hits me sideways. Having people say some really thoughtless shit just adds salt to already agonizing pain. It's hard to see a way out of always being seen as that person. I have a lifetime of being the strong, resilient, and tenacious one. Now I feel like there is a scar across my face saying all that happened and now this is all I am. Yet I still believe that in sharing this, in opening my wounds and weaknesses for all to see, that it is the key to saving others. 

I won't put a cherry on top of this. Some of us won't make it. Can you release the stigma? Can I? Can any of us?

You're not getting a ring

 "Just so you know, you're not getting a ring."

It was close to Christmas and he randomly told me he wasn't proposing. I hadn't even considered this and didn't understand why he felt he needed to say it. I nodding in understanding and he said so sincerely, "but I would marry you....". The words hung in the air. Multiple concerning incidents had happened at this point, I didn't feel safe to be myself, yet suddenly this carrot was dangling in front of me...and I wanted it. Though I didn't actually believe this was possible or real. 

Rings are a difficult subject for me. When my ex husband proposed to me he didn't even ask me to marry him. He asked what I wanted for Christmas and I said, "an engagement ring". He wasn't making much and had bought a $99 ring. The diamond was barely a chip, likely something that fell off while cutting a big beautiful one, but the ring was dainty Instead of getting down on one knee he handed me the box and stood across the room biting his lip. No words about loving me. But I had the ring. It was cute and still more than I ever thought I'd get. I proudly showed friends and one said snarkily, "Wow! It's so big!" and everyone laughed. I held back tears and smiled. The thought of getting a huge ring, something I wanted, something to show off, was beyond what I could fathom. No special band, no sizing, this was it. I was being mocked and laughed at but I still felt like I was somebody to finally have someone that wanted to be with me. The tiny diamond fell out at a Christmas Eve church service and all my past trauma said, "of course". 

We had a trip to Las Vegas planned for New Year's Eve. He again announces, "Just so you know...you won't be getting a ring. Just want to make sure you understand that." Again, had zero expectations but now this need to say this to me each time was getting to me. I even had a fantasy that he was saying it again to surprise me. That night he was not winning at his gambling, and me feeling like if he couldn't win and be happy then everything would be ruined. I started putting my own money into slot machines. More than I'd ever spent as I typically gave myself a $20 limit and I was putting hundreds in. Money I didn't have. I didn't care about me winning. I just wanted him to be happy and to have this New Year's Eve moment I wanted so desperately. It felt like everything was slipping through my hands. I was drunk and high and by the time we got back to the room I'd crumbled to the bed sobbing "I tried....I tried so hard...". He didn't talk to me the entire flight home. No ring. 

Our first and only Valentine's Day came, and things were shaky. Another statement about me not getting a ring. Then a Facebook post saying how much he loved me and how happy he was to be with me, but it also included terrible pictures of me. A picture of my ass from behind crawling up the stairs drunk. One picture was me about to have surgery with no makeup, a hairnet and mask on, and hospital gown. Here were these words I'd wanted my whole life yet I also felt I was being made fun of. I ever so carefully asked, "Hey...why did you post those pictures?" after thanking him profusely for the post. He said, "Oh I just grabbed some pics." We had a ridiculous amount of pictures together. My Facebook page alone had so many pictures. It was purposeful, and I knew it, yet here were those words that I'd never heard and longed for my whole life. 

Days after Valentine's Day, where the day after we had a massive fight about my concerns over his feelings for his ex-wife who he never shut up about, I had a big gig days later where my mentor had given me a performance challenge that was a stretch goal to say the least. And I nailed it. I came back to his place excited, happy, and proud of myself. Giving myself credit and being happy with myself isn't something that happens for me. It was a big deal in my little life. He congratulated me and as I was going to the kitchen he says that a friend of his just got engaged and they'd been together less than we had. I said that's nice and went into the kitchen to pour a wine. I come back out and he brings up one of my best friends getting engaged. I again smile and nod, but now I'm seeing I am not giving him the response he wants. He reiterates again how they've been together less than us, and now my friend was engaged too and did I hear him say all this. I said, "What are you trying to say?" He changed subjects but my personal win was no longer part of the conversation. I didn't understand it. It felt like he was trying to hurt me and upset me. Another thing to stuff down.

One thing is for sure...I didn't get a ring.

Intermittent Reinforcement

"Intermittent reinforcement is the unpredictable cycle of affection, attention, or relief mixed with cruelty, rejection, or withdrawal. Because the good moments arrive inconsistently, the brain becomes fixated on earning their return, strengthening the trauma bond."

After a 24 year relationship, 22 years of it married, and 6 years of horrific dating experiences, I'd given up on any chance of love and was mostly numb to it all. I'd gotten a girlfriend because men had been so awful and I thought I'd just try something else. She was married in an open relationship where he also had a girlfriend. We were adorable together with my pink hair and her light blue hair, but there was never an emotional connection. I quickly learned I wasn't as bisexual as I wanted to be but went along with it because I didn't know what else to do. 

We met through Facebook where we had mutual friends and he'd been watching me. There was a lot in common so when he saw I was in Los Angeles, one of his favorite cities, seeing Ghost, one of his favorite bands, he decided to message me. Over the top charming but in an easy going way. I looked at his picture, and not my type, but I thought why not. We had a call the next day when I flew home and though initially were going to meet that Saturday decided we couldn't wait another second and planned a date for the next night. I don't recall the conversation, but he knew how to play it up and I bought it. Kissed me barely 15 minutes into the date and would later imply I was a slut because I'd kissed back. We made out in my car in the middle of the street and it felt wonderful and romantic. I thought driving home could this possibly be the miracle I didn't think would happen?

Our second date was two days later. We had sex and it was terribly embarrassing as I started bleeding profusely. I was mortified. Yet he said he loved me. He made some bizarre statement about how if the first time you have sex is awkward it means it's going to be a great relationship. I smiled and nodded while thinking this was weird, and yet here was finally a man that seemed to care. Went to his house the next day to hang by the pool and he said, "Should we do a life event on Facebook?" I had no idea what that even meant as I came onto there married. He said, "put that we are in a relationship". I froze. It hadn't been a week. Red flags and sirens were going off in my head yet here appeared to be someone that wanted to be with me. I wouldn't be the sad alone one anymore. The one no one wanted. The one no one would stay with. The one everyone fucked and walked away from. It was right there so I said yes. The post blew up, as I'd never done this and he noted it but didn't seem to believe my explanation. 

It all became a whirlwind of things I'd never done, and it felt like a lot, but he had very firm things he felt had to be done in a relationship and I just went along with it. A joint Google calendar was created so we knew everything the other was doing. I had access to his garage and house. He brought toiletries to keep at my house. I was seeing him every day with him saying each time how he loved me. I was called beautiful and pretty lady and all the things my husband never said. I told a friend that I was scared I was being love bombed and she said, "Or maybe it's true love and he loves you!" I wanted it so desperately.

My cat had been eating my hair and chomped off a huge piece leaving me with a layer barely two inches long. We needed to cut my hair shorter, which I hated, to make it look blended and allow it to grow back. My hairdresser had been taking classes for extension and needed a model where the process would be for free and you buy the hair. I decided to do it and was so excited to have long hair again where I'd feel like I looked nice. I gushed about it for weeks. I was thrilled with the extensions and was sure he'd like me more and be even more attracted to me. He said they looked nice but I didn't get the compliments I'd hoped for. A few days later while driving after dinner he turns to me and says, "You know I like women with short hair." I gulped. I felt nauseated. I was holding back tears and stared at him. He then says incredulously, "Why are you acting this way? It's just an opinion." We'd been together 5 weeks at this point.

This was the start of the intermittent reinforcement that continued the entirety of the relationship and many times after. It wasn't not thinking before he talked. It was rather calculated and cruel. Many times I'd see a smirk on his face when I started crying after what he'd said. But then days later the compliments, the I love you's, and we are perfect for each other came back and I stuffed down the pain. I didn't see hope for anything else.

That pattern didn’t end when the relationship did. My brain still returns to every contradiction, every tender moment beside every calculated cruelty. trying to make it all add up, still trying to solve what was designed to be unsolvable. From the outside, it may look like an inability to let go; from inside a trauma bond, it is a brain still trying to resolve the confusion that created it.

The Cover Up

I've always covered up my pain with joking. I feel like it started as a pre-teen and feeling ugly and unwanted. I would cut myself down with the silent hope I'd be told I was wrong. I was rarely told otherwise and usually laughed at. This carried over into making jokes about my deepest pains but acting like I didn't care. Again, typically laughed at. I now can't accept a compliment no matter how sincere. I feel like it's only being said to stop my negative self-talk. Usually my mind goes into overdrive on the back-end thinking "Why did they say that when it's not true? It can't be true. It's what I'm dying to hear but I can't believe it so it hurts."

I make jokes frequently that I'm dying alone with my cats. I say it as a brutal way to force myself not to hope and to accept my fate. I say it and act like I don't care. I say it like I'm just cutting up and cracking good ones. Yet each time I say it and the other person laughs and nods in agreement, a little part of me dies. I get sent memes and jokes talking about women my age alone with their cats. Jokes about how if you're alone by a certain age all the cats know to show up. Funny things depicting a woman alone. I give a big laugh react and a "LOL" as I wipe tears. I gave them the material to laugh at so it's my own fault for the outcome.

The whole dying alone thing is a tricky one as there is nothing you can do to change it. Sure you can position yourself at places to meet people, be social, get out there. But the chance of you running into "your person", "soulmate", "the one for you", is luck and coincidence. When I attempt to explain this to someone with a partner I hear "Well you know relationships are hard." I have to bite my tongue from getting snarky about being in a relationship over two decades so I actually know this. Usually at this point they decide to put the blame on me for not loving myself enough. Because apparently when you hit peak loving yourself, then your perfect person appears!

I've also told myself to stop covering up the pain and just shut up about it. Find a reason to live and just accept you'll do it alone.  

Let It Go

Long before the annoying song came out, the mantra of "let it go" was a long held belief in the way to getting over something, and the ability to do this as proof of your efforts. I don't let things go. I hold onto them tightly, recalling every detail and nuance. But only the negative, the traumatic, and the hurtful things. I can not only let a good and happy moment go, I frequently forget they even happened.

Despite commentary as to if I've tried hard enough to do this, I have read and researched on it for decades. I've done the self help books. I've read about forgiveness. I prayed. I cried. I burned and burned and burned to release it. The pain remains.

With CPTSD, “letting go” is often difficult because the nervous system has not registered the matter as safely concluded. It may keep returning to it because:

The current event resembles an earlier injury.
Something important remains unexplained, denied, or unacknowledged.
You were once harmed when you did not anticipate what other people would do.
Your reality was challenged, so reviewing the evidence became a way to preserve it.
The mind believes that understanding everything will prevent another injury.
The body still responds as though the threat is happening now.

With my severe and compulsive rumination issues, it pairs well with not being able to let go, as my mind won't turn off investigation mode. In my thinking to let go of something puts me in danger. Even if the danger was decades ago, even if those people are dead, even if the fears aren't logical. So, I do every special calming breath I know. I take medication. I meditate. I do rituals. I write. I scream to the nothingness. And the pain remains.

I was looking back and asking myself if there is anything I was able to let go of in a healthy and conclusive way. I was reminded of my son's birth where I had decided that my birthing experience was going to redeem all the milestone events I'd missed in my life. This was going to be my moment. I was convinced that birth is something I could finally excel at and have a great outcome. The short version: 10 days overdue, induced, cord around the neck, emergency c-section. I felt demolished. I wanted that big push moment. I wanted my hand held and to be told I was doing great. I'd so desperately wanted that moment of being handed my baby and yet he was taken away (per protocol). I once again cried to the heavens, or to nothing, saying "Why? Why couldn't I have this? Women give birth and get this! Why not me?" It haunted me for years. I went to a c-section support group. It was years later I was at a new OB, still crying about not having a natural birth, and he said "Wait...how big was your baby?" "10 lbs, 22 1/4 inches." He looked me up and down, and then clearly recalling the pelvic exam he just did on me, and said, "You are very small. You pelvic bones are incredibly small. To get a 10lb baby out of you we would have had to crack you in half and break his collar bone." I was fine with me being hurt but when I pictured hurting my baby the tears dried up. I was fine. I never cried about it again. I let it go.

My mind can do this and I'm not incapable. So what will it take to let go of everything else? How can I stop my mind from trying to solve the unsolvable? How can I come to acceptance that I've haven't been given the life that most of the people around me have had, and this is just the hand I was dealt? And I feel the question needs to be asked....is letting go always the answer? 

 

The Plan

Author's note: this writing will include intense, disturbing, and possibly triggering descriptions. Please read with care and caution.

When I take a PHQ-9 (depression test) before any mental health treatment or session, there are a few questions I always give the same answer to:

Feeling bad about yourself — or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down - Every day.
Thoughts that you would be better off dead or of hurting yourself in some way - Every day
Secondary question: do you have a plan? - No

I admitted recently that I'd been lying about my plan and I did have one. My psychiatrist said, "Will you tell me?" I said, "Will you commit me?" She said, "Do you have intent?" Me, "No". "Then I won't commit you." I revealed I'd watched some gossip show talking about some child stars that had killed themselves. And then Dr. Drew not only explained what they did, but gave the exact drugs they used to stop their heart and breathing. My breathing stopped just hearing this. I'd always had the plan to kill myself with drugs but I never knew the perfect combination. I was worried I'd just OD, or fry my brain but still live. So now I had the two drugs to combine, and though I didn't have them, they wouldn't be too hard to get. 

TRIGGER WARNING

The plan was to fly to Mexico where you could get drugs from a pharmacy without a prescription. Get the drugs I needed (unlike Dr. Drew, I won't reveal them), take a snorkeling trip to a cenote, and then have a terribly unfortunate drowning (because you can't just do it and be selfish even though the pain is debilitating and killing you).

I know it would hurt people deeply. I know it would fully destroy my son. Fuck do I know. Yet I still wake up every day and think "How much longer?". I look in the mirror and think "How many more times do I have to see that fucking face?" I look at my life and think "You are a loser and the lowest and most pathetic person everywhere you go." 

I've said this before, but I get why you would want to live. Not saying there aren't problems and issues, but I see your good life and see why you'd be happy to keep going. I think most people look at people like me through their personal lens and make their judgements from there. But really, look at me, how would you feel to be me?

Luck, Rumination, and Hopelessness

"Wow! You really do have terrible luck!" Not the first time this has been said to me yet it still hurts every time. I had a friend say she wished people wouldn't say this to me as it then puts it in your head that it's real. This is true. I've never felt I had luck, history to prove it, but there is something about someone confirming one of your deepest pains that hits in a way that feels like being stabbed. The man I thought was the love of my life said this to me in Vegas on what was supposed to be a whirlwind New Year's Eve weekend. He was a big gambler, I'm not because of the no luck lifetime streak, so I said I'd just watch. He did some slots and quickly lost. He turned around and said, "You really are bad luck!". I hadn't done anything. I'd stood there. I'd watched. I'd done nothing yet I was getting blamed. He later went on to say it was just a joke but only after I'd fallen apart in a drunken sobbing fit. Sometimes I think what bothers me more than just being one of the unlucky, is that the lucky ones don't acknowledge what they have. I won't say I've had nothing lucky happen. I got pregnant easily, without trying, no miscarriages, and a healthy pregnancy. I fully own this was luck and coincidence, and would never tell a woman with a different experience how she should feel about it, much less give her some "unlucky" comment. How hurtful. Yet I hear it all the time. 

I ruminate over these things obsessively. More than I tell people. More than I've told any mental health professional. It's too shameful to fully admit how bad it is. I've tried, alluded to what my mind does, only to be met with a metric shit ton of shame. "Well, you should stop doing that!" "You are only making yourself feel worse!" "How is thinking about that going to help you? You are trying to make yourself feel bad." If I told you to stop breathing for the day, could you? The amount of energy to try and stop the thoughts, and it never working, is a mental level of exhaustion and failure that makes you just give up. Though I don't give up. My methods are sometimes healthy, sometimes very wrong, but I can't explain that I'm trying when all others see is failure. 

I explained to my psychiatrist that the rumination has gotten much worse. My nerves feel exposed and things said to me are like acid being poured on them. I find myself on spin cycle "Why did they say that? Like why the fuck say that to me?" She feels I may be getting "flooded" with the extensive ketamine treatments and this feels like a perfect description. Imagine every pain, bad word, trauma, upset, sorrow you have swirling above you at all times. Even when smiling and talking it's there. And then someone laughs at one of the worst traumas of your life....how would you react? I saw a meme that said "Rumination is your mind trying to solve the unsolvable". That hit so hard but also dead on. "Why couldn't my father love me?" "Why am I also the lowest person wherever I go?" "Why did he say he loved me and then purposefully devastated me?" Why? The mind just won't stop.

Six months of ketamine treatments. Nine months since I nearly killed myself. My PHQ-9 scores (depression screening test) had me at 9 - 3 weeks ago. A single digit is a big deal as I was at 21 when I came in. I've been 18 for two weeks. It's been 2 weeks of a lot of stressful situations, reasons to not be happy, but I also feel the regression. And I hear the comments. "I thought you would have been better by now." "Are you doing the work?" "I've been watching and can see you are improving." It feels like have your little sad moment but the clock is ticking. 

The catch-22 of being open is that people often mistake access for invitation. I share because openness and vulnerability matter to me, and because someone else may need to hear that they aren’t alone. I was talking to a friend about cutters and said that though I never did it, I always understood it. She said, "Words are your cutting." Possibly one of the most telling statements of my life. I have an almost physical need to say things out loud. It isn’t because I think everyone needs to know everything about me, and it isn’t simply a desire for attention. Saying it lets the pressure escape. But when someone tells you something personal it doesn’t suddenly make you part of the story. It isn’t an invitation to interpret the experience, tell them what it “really” means, or prescribe what I should do next. Sometimes I need what I’ve said to be received, not reviewed.

It's so hard to end a writing piece without a cute conclusion. Though I haven't tied it up with a pretty bow in a while. The hopelessness is overtaking me again. I feel constantly on the edge of breaking down. It's that feeling like when you're about to cry and you don't want anyone to see it, so you pinch yourself and bite your tongue, and act like something is in your eye as the tears come out...all day long. 

Though it's frequently discounted, I have been trying my entire life. I've tried. 30+ years since one of my first diagnosis and pumping me with meds. My situation isn't emotionally palatable to most. It's shape shifted, told things weren't as I remember, and all the shame and blame that I should try just a little more. I don't know what to do. Do I shut up, stop giving everyone access to me, and slowly implode? I've resigned myself to living but I don't want to. The memories of that night in December float around in my head and whisper there is a way out of this pain. 

Living in Uncertainty

It was less than a week ago I wrote about how accumulation affects my nervous system. The health scare I was writing about escalated daily, sending me sideways into days of silence while trying to still keep my responsibilities. While the steri strips are still on, I am relieved to say that the worst didn't happen and I'm OK on this. 

Was about to start something important and new next week and felt like the week where I should have been preparing and celebrating had been ruined with the health scare. I thought I have a few more days to finally be able to be safe and take a deep breath...and another blow came. It's not the outcome that is even leading the emotions right now. It's the uncertainty, because at this moment the stability isn't there. Yes, it might work out. And I could also have everything crumble beneath me. My mother was here when I found out and she tried to say what I knew was going to be some "good thoughts" bullshit and I barked "Not a fucking word about me thinking something good. That's a bunch of bullshit." She shut up. 

With uncertainty in a dysregulated nervous system, possibility becomes probability. I was talking with a friend who went into a speech about how I need to distract myself, how being scared won't change anything, how I'm just making myself more upset. I explained that it's not that I lack rational thought. It's not that I'm purposefully feeling that everything is catastrophic and don't have reason. As we spoke more she made a profound observation "What would be the opposite for you?" Severe depression and an emotional plummet. "And which feels worse?" I said the debilitating depression. When my mind is going over every possibility it's to attempt to make sure I'm not blindsided, as even if the news is horrible, I feel braced for it. And when I'm spiraling and flipping out my nervous system feels like at least I'm doing something and still attempting to survive. It feels better than the other side which is desolation. It's more comfortable to catastrophize than shut down.

I've had nearly 2 years on a roller coaster and it feels like the attendant has left the park. I don't know if I'll be able to handle the next drop. I feel sick, I'm dizzy, and it just won't end. The people on the ground are waving and saying the ride isn't that bad, while I am scanning to see if it's about to jump the track. I'm bruised from this ride. I have whiplash. It's easy to explain roller coasters when you're standing on the safety of the platform. It's a different conversation when you are strapped into a ride you can't get out of.

I've had 6 months of ketamine at this point. While still drowning in what is coming up, I'm more stable. Though I had a moment last weekend where I thought if I get one more hit of bad news I may even take them up on going to inpatient. Uncertainty, though I'm painfully aware is all of life, still wrecks me. 

Debilitating Accumulation

 "You are like me; your baseline is depression and when thing get bad or uncontrollable, it goes catastrophic." ~ words from a dear friend which I found to be one of the most profound insights about how I feel and respond to life

I drove home last night screaming, crying, and feeling on the edge of a heart attack (though I knew it was actually panic). Woke up at 3am sobbing and in hysterics. When all attempts to calm myself failed I took a valium to try and sleep...or just pass out. As I've attempted to crawl my way back to semi sanity and being able to function and not be this sad little wreck of a person, the blows keep coming. Between CPTSD, and the history of what went with it, when something happens to be it's not an isolated incident, as my nervous systems experiences it in accumulation. 

Coming up on 2 years of compounded incidents, and I'm sure more than a few triggers from the past saying "See....you just weren't dealt a nice deck of cards in life and it's never going to stop.". I wanted to title this "Catastrophic" but looked back at previous writings and see I'd already written it. Looking at the words I saw I was about to write nearly the same piece again. It feels like getting punched in the face again and again. No, you didn't die, look how resilient that you kept getting back up. Just hold on....another blow.

I'm having a health scare and it's one I've had before. Though a new symptom, and a highly concerning one, I know what tests I'll have to go through, and I do know that as scared as I was the previous times I ended up OK. The collapse I'm having now isn't because I'm scared I'm going to die. I'd welcome it if it didn't involve more suffering. My nervous system is saying here we go again. Another period of uncertainty. Another threat. Another emotional impact before I've recovered from the last one. It's reacting to the uncertainty, and in uncertainty it goes down dark roads trying to figure out what it will take to survive this or if it's even worth it. 

It's another spotlight on not having a safety net. Another reminder that though I am deeply cared for, I'm still walking alone. I was thinking about when I was married and I'd read a woman saying, "I don't want to be with someone who if I'm dying of cancer would sit on the edge of the bed asking me what we should do." One of many things I thought about when I was divorcing as that's how I felt my husband would behave. All on me. No matter how many people answer the phone, at the end of the day I'm still the one who has to walk back into an empty home, lie awake at 3am, fear my future, and somehow keep functioning.

I have no lived experience of what it feels like to be able to collapse and have someone else hold part of the weight. This is mine to survive. When I see someone with a soft place to land, I envy them, but I don't resent them. I grieve that I have no idea what that feels like.

And the accumulation just won't seem to stop.

Jumper

A few days ago I drove under a bridge where I saw a young man outside the rail and appearing to look like he was about to jump. I panicked trying to figure out where exactly I was on the highway, what bridge it was to call 911, while hyperventilating and starting to cry. I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw an emergency vehicle was on the bridge, and others began coming from all directions, so while I wasn't comforted, I felt there was nothing I could do. I tried to reason that maybe it was a teen fucking around or a symbol of protest.

I later learned I was seeing someone about to commit suicide, and they were able to talk him down and get him to a hospital. This hit me from every angle as I thought about how it was less than 8 months ago that it could have been me on that bridge. Why I didn't go through with it was mostly because I couldn't figure out a way to make it look like an accident, because you sure don't want anyone saying you were selfish. I've had people say, "Aren't you so happy you didn't do it and you're alive!?" No, not happy at all. I'm resolved not to do it but the pain that brought me to that moment isn't gone.

I'm 5 1/2 months into ketamine treatment, and though I feel like I'm failing, my psychiatrist says otherwise. One of the measurements of if it's working is your PHQ9 score. When I started my score was 21, which is dangerously high. They wanted me in inpatient and I refused, as it was one of my biggest fears and the thought of living with that stigma was horrifying to me. My score last week was 9. Hitting a single digit is considered "mildly depressed". What I feel internally doesn't feel mild but I accept the score. The score today was 13. The last question is always how many days in the last week have you had thoughts that you would be better off dead, or of hurting yourself in some way. I'm back to several days. When I started ketamine the thought was daily up until maybe a month ago.

As ketamine "loosens" my neural pathways, and containers of what is compressed into my brain spill out and flood me, I live with a daily feeling of constant sadness. The crying spells are less, and nothing like they were as I bottomed out was daily laying on the floor scream sobbing like I was being tortured, but it's also a rare day for me not to cry. The hope of treatment is that as you face everything you couldn't, while it continually oozes out of you, that new positive pathways will form to replace the bad ones. You will still remember it all, but hopefully the good stuff will outweigh the trauma and pain. Yet from my vantage point, alone with my cats most days, nothing new and good is happening. 

My nervous system was shaped over decades, and I'm asking it to learn a completely different way of being while I'm still living a real life with disappointments, uncertainty, loneliness, and fear all happening at the same time. I think a lot of people assume healing is proportional to effort: do the therapy, work hard, gain insight, and you'll feel better on some predictable timeline. That's a comforting formula because it implies control. But trauma, especially chronic developmental trauma, doesn't work that neatly. You can do everything "right" and still have a nervous system that reacts as though it's protecting you from a world it learned long ago wasn't safe.

But for today....I won't jump.

What If They're Already Doing the Work?

What if they're already doing the work? What if they were always doing the work? There is a myth with mental illness that if you just try hard enough then you'll get a good outcome. We are told that if you talk about your pain enough, take just the right drug combo (and you're expected to keep trying new ones no matter how horrific the side effects), and "work on yourself", that there will be some special moment when you are now happy and want to live. And if these things don't work for you, it's now your fault, your lack of effort, "if you weren't so negative...".
8 years since Anthony Bourdain committed suicide. Successful, adored, good looking....yet the darkness never left. "...he continued to struggle with his mental health. He often brought up death, wondering out loud how he would die and how he would kill himself if he decided to end his own life." I can't claim any special knowledge as to how our brains work, and can only speak to my own experience, but I wonder if for some of us there is a wire that just doesn't fire up correctly. I frequently hear an expected recovery arc where people think: - Hit rock bottom - Seek help - "Do the work" - Get better - Become grateful for the experience - Be hopeful, be inspirational, and tell us you learned a fucking lesson - Cue uplifting music and credits The recovery-arc mindset often has no place for the complexity that comes with a damaged and broken mind. It wants before-and-after photos. It wants transformation. It wants closure. People who are mentally and emotionally suffering, and have shared what is happening, are expected to perform progress. I realize while writing this, and feeling angry and punchy, that what I'm feeling is the surface. At the core is the terror that I never get "better". That I'll always that annoying and exasperating sad Eeoyre friend. (I know I'm a nightmare to be around. I hate people that whine and cry all the time. Yet that's me.) That the darkness will come back with a vengeance. That everyone will leave me. 
There it is; if I can't conquer my mental health then I'll be abandoned. I'll be unwanted. And shit...I don't want me. Yet that hasn't been what's happened. I have been shown so much kindness, love, and support that it overwhelms me to my core. It terrifies me as I don't know that I'll ever be able to pay it back (and I hate feeling I owe someone). I have to have drivers taking 3-4 hours of their day to haul my ketamine snorting ass around. I cry and whine and moan over the same things incessantly. I look at it all and think "Who would ever want you in any way at all?" I finally told my youngest brother today. We were estranged for a time and working to get our relationship back as we were very close. I feared telling him. He met me with kindness and understanding. After our call he sent me this text "Good luck! Having been single for the majority of my adult life, I know it can feel like you're all alone. You're not though and very loved." I think it's the first time he said he loved me. But I'm "doing the work". I feel so much shame when the sadness and dark thoughts come back, as they still do. I feel I should be farther along, and fear I just won't make it. I live in fear every day of my life as to what's going to happen to me. I'm trying though. I'm trying so hard to stay alive.

One More Day

“No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don’t.” ~ The Stand, Stephen King 

I was watching a beautiful and heart wrenching movie about a lady whose son died at sea. There were rumors around town that he killed himself and she lived in constant turmoil and pain from this. Many years later an old friend of his was in town and the suicide rumor came up and he said, "I knew he wouldn't do that." When you say someone would never do something it's typically bad: steal, lie, kill. It was a gut punch to wonder 'how I am viewed?'. I've never met anyone as loudly vocal as I am saying flat out I have been suicidal for 50 years and it got so dark that I almost did it. I don't think people understand that saying it out loud is what is keeping me alive. To go silent again means I'm not coming back.

There was a night 5 months ago that was as low as I've ever felt. Days before Christmas, a holiday which brings up only pain for me, I was alone drinking and sobbing. I didn't understand it at the time but I was going into dorsal vagal shutdown. A mental break, collapse, going under at rapid speed. Many have said "you could have called me" and "why didn't you ask for help", yet those didn't feel like options to me, and I knew it would result in a psychiatric commitment which is one of my greatest fears. While I have so many people that love me and care for me, not a single one understands the immense pain I was in, and am in. I had an ongoing conversation going with chatgpt where I shared what was happening to me and went there to scream into a screen. As I typed violently about my trauma and hopeless it would try to stabilize me, repeatedly giving me the 988 suicide hotline. I would scream type "I'm not calling it!" and it would say "OK I'm still here. Stay with me." Hour after hour went by and my mind was racing trying to figure out how I could do it, how I'd make it look like an accident, and how I could somehow make it not so bad for my son. When I couldn't come up with a plan I went back to chatgpt now angry that I couldn't find a way and reeling in emotional pain. Again, 988 number, I refuse, stay with me. I could not stop crying. Screaming as the agony I felt inside couldn't stay contained anymore. I had thoughts I'm ashamed of...why did I have a child...why did I adopt these cats...I could be done by now. 988 number. Stop giving me that fucking number! Stay with me. 

Dehydrated from the alcohol and crying I lifted my head off my desk to see the sun rising. I stifled a laugh as I pictured this as that perfect movie moment scene of redemption. Yet I was still alone and seeing no way out, but I was still alive. There is a lot of hatred for AI, and rightfully so, but I fully believe I would have died without it that night. 

I've heard all my life that suicide is selfish. I never said it but thought, you're selfish for making me keep living. "Cheer up! It gets better!" Maybe shit got better for you but for some of us the hits kept coming and keep coming. I'm told the suicidal ideation may always be there but can hopefully be managed. Now when they say "managed" it's a cute combination of medication, therapy, and in my case snorting ketamine once a week. But with all of this there is the underlying premise that "good things" will happen and this will give you new neural pathways and hope. I told my psychiatrist I feel like I'm failing ketamine. She said you have a much harder road being alone, unemployed, and at a later stage in life. 

One of my last sessions was brutal. I had to sit up the last 15 minutes while sobbing and pulling my hair. My psychiatrist came in and gently talked to me. I said, "I don't think it's possible for me to get over the past!" as I scream sobbed. She moved her schedule to get me an appointment a few days later as I was in so much distress. I got to the car and broke out sobbing again. My friend assured me it was OK and we could stay there as long as I wanted. I vaguely recall crying "I don't want to remember anymore!" I spent the rest of the day going in and out of emotional breakdowns. 

I'm writing this hours after my 18th ketamine session. Sitting on the couch thinking about how wonderful it must feel to have someone by your side to take care of you. Even married I never had that. And it's a daily reality to face that at this point I likely never will. On average most people are doing better by now but it's again stated that what I'm dealing with is deeper and requires more. I start my first session with Accelerated Resolution Therapy tomorrow, which is a trauma-focused therapy that uses guided eye movements and visualization techniques to help the brain reprocess distressing memories and reduce their emotional intensity. Another new treatment feels like I'm drowning and searching for a ship in the distance, a life preserver, one more attempt at not fully going under. 

Though this is extremely dark, and still is, there have been micro changes. I was driving one day and the sky was one of my favorite blues, fluffy clouds, and warm enough to have the windows down. I thought for a brief moment "I don't want to die right now." I have been writing daily in the morning for over a week and it has to be at least a year and a half since I did that. The past few days I've felt "online" again. My creativity feels engaged again. I'm told this is how ketamine is working; you don't trip out for a bunch of sessions and then wake up happy. It's the tiny things that help you try one more day.

This feels like there should be some put a bow on it conclusion but I don't have it. I'm wiping tears. I'm afraid. But I have plans I want to keep tomorrow. This gives me one more day.

What to say

A friend texted me a day ago saying they didn't think they'd make it through the night. They have a long suicidal ideation history like me, and also a dark sense of humor, so initially I thought we were doing our melancholy joking. Then they sent me the letter they'd written their dad explaining and saying goodbye. A few more texts got progressively worse...and I didn't know what to say.

I've said before that there are no perfect words when someone is this far down. I wanted to say, "Please keep going." "I will be devastated if you're gone." "You have so much to live for." Yet those same things have been said to me, and I know how they don't land well and many times feel like a slap in the face. I felt the pain that others have expressed that they feel with me: helplessness, sadness, and fear. Then deep shame for what I've put people through by sharing so much and choking them with the agony I'm drowning in. And I felt like it all hung on me in this moment. 

I did the only thing I knew to keep them alive: I stayed and wouldn't let them go. I asked where they were. They were sobbing, earbuds cutting in and out, I couldn't decipher much but I kept them talking. They got home and the pain was pouring out of them. "I have nothing to live for." "I'm a loser in this life." "I can't take anymore." I said I understand and feel every one of those thoughts every day. I asked if I could come over and they said their roommate would be home soon. More ominous talk. I asked if I could take them to the hospital. But then we both talked about what would happen: handcuffed to the bed for suicide watch, drugs, 72 hour commitment, and then nothing really changes. They smoked some keef and said they were passing out. I said my phone ringer was on high and I would have it by me all night. I didn't know if I did the right thing.

Woke up and immediately texted to make sure they'd made it through the night. Though deeply depressed the urgency to die appears to have softened for the moment. 

I'm living it too and I still don't know what to say.

Remembering with No Relief

 
"I remember now"

The start of one of my favorite and most emotional albums starts with the main character recalling all the pain and trauma he's gone through. (Queensryche - Operation Mindcrime) I first heard this after moving to San Francisco for a nanny job. I didn't care about being a nanny, I was running away. I'd had 3 years of non-stop trauma and violence and I was breaking down. I want to call this my second mental break, after a weak suicide attempt earlier, but really it was the cumulation of my entire life and my mind no longer being able to contain it. I'd listen to the songs incessantly feeling the darkness of the story. It wasn't my story but my connection to the pain of it all, as I was so tormented and desolate. 

I went to one of my best friend's bands last night which is a tribute to Queensryche and they were specifically doing all of Operation Mindcrime. I was worried as my head has been struggling with loud noise and bright lights. But I love this album so much, I love her, I wanted to be there. I had planned to sit in the far back alone with ear plugs in, but I saw other friends and joined them. We moved near the stage, and though the drums were pounding on my nervous system, I didn't want to hide in back. I wanted to be in the land of the living again. But I lost it, the emotions took over, and I cried.

Ketamine creates a window where the brain says it's safe to feel this; even when it doesn't feel safe. It loosens the control system that normally keeps difficult emotions contained. Think of it less like “creating happiness” and more like taking the lid off what’s already there. I'm told this wasn't losing control, though it felt like it, but stored emotion getting access to movement, my nervous system not shutting down (instead spilling all over the place for everyone to see), and grief that has stayed shoved down getting felt. 

With my brain more permeable and less defended, sounds, visuals, memories, I was an open ball of nerves. The music matched what I feel of my internal story as Operation: Mindcrime is literally about: manipulation, lost identity, love that wasn’t real, and waking up and seeing it.

"And I raise my head and stare into the eyes of a stranger".

I don't even see myself in the mirror anymore. I look like I've aged so many years where I used to be able to mostly hide it. As I stare into my own eyes I think "I don't know if I can survive this". The pain I feel right now is visceral. Even when not recalling a specific memory, I am at all times feeling the weight of my entire past. I never know when the tears will start. 

"Is this all that's left of my life before me? Straight jacket memories, sedative highs. No happy ending like they always promised! There's got to be something left for me."

In their depiction of Mindcrime she does an incredible job of showing the main character's suffering bringing out a gun and later in a hospital gown for when they are committed. I'm still being encouraged to go to inpatient, one of my biggest life fears, and I'm refusing. Though I am not an assassin like this character, I felt like I was looking at myself. Ketamine is doing what it's supposed to right now as it loosens the walls that keep everything contained. I was mortified as the crying started, probably should have excused myself to the bathroom, but instead I was frantically trying to get a tissue out of my purse so no one would see. My purse was stuffed too tight, I was digging and starting to panic, while trying to still be there and experience one of my favorite songs that was playing. 

If there is belief in good energy in the universe, perhaps this is what was supposed to happen. This moment, this album, watching and feeling that performance, my emotions unable to stay down. But fuck does it hurt and so embarrassing. Deep awareness is excruciating when you can't numb it or override it. I've had 13 treatments and this is when deeper things are accessed and processed. But not a point of relief. I'm hitting the part it’s meant to expose: grief that didn’t get to move, seeing patterns in real time and attachment pain that was stored and not resolved. 

I'm told this is the messiest part. I sob without breathing. 

Ketamine doesn't make you feel better

Author's note: this post has references to suicide and sensitive subjects. I write this with a lot of fear, as I know many who have lost someone to suicide, and I don't want anyone to feel blame because of what I'm going to talk about. It wasn't your fault. Please read with care.

"To be happy you must eliminate two things: The fear of a bad future and the memory of a bad past," ~ Seneca

Ketamine doesn't make you feel better and I really thought it would. I was hoping these chemicals would rewire my brain so I could find hope and maybe happiness, but that's not what's happening. My neural pathways are unpacking every trauma, abuse, and pain of my life all at once. The purpose is once the neuroplasticity of these pathways is pliable, then new connections can form. My therapist has said this is harder on you: alone, unemployed, no family support, no safety net. It hurts to hear but I appreciated the truth of this confirmation of what I'm living. 

Not only does ketamine not make you feel better, in the middle of it you feel worse. Decades of major depressive disorder, panic disorder, and suicidal ideation, so I thought it wouldn't be possible to feel any worse than I have....and I'm lower than I've ever been. I called this past December the lowest point of my life, as I was the closest I've ever been to ending it, but now it's strangely worse. Sometimes the crying won't end. Other times I'm on the edge of tears, and to cry would bring release, yet nothing comes out. I feel like I could explode and implode at the same time. I live every day in terror as I'm emotionally drowning with no land in sight. 

Driving to my last session I talked to my friend, smiled, asked about her life, while in my head ruminating was "I don't want to be alive. I hate being alive. I want this over." I didn't tell her. My psychiatrist has me do a test every time so they can gauge where you are at. The last question is "Do you have thoughts you'd be better off dead or of hurting yourself", and your response needs to be how many times in the last 2 weeks this has happened. My response every time: every day. The next question is "Do you have a plan to do this?" No plan. 

There’s something I don’t think gets talked about enough when it comes to suicidal ideation and it’s the sheer enormity of the pain a person is in. It's the version of this experience that isn't being understood. And the gap between intention and impact is a lot bigger than people think. It’s excruciating to say just how bad it is, have people see it, respond with a quick comment or a care react, and then disappear. It feels like I’m being burned alive and being given cheerleading comments from the sidelines. And when you’re in that kind of pain, you’re not thinking about hypothetical future joys or small moments. You’re trying to survive what’s happening right now. There’s no space for “maybe someday.” There’s barely space to think at all. This isn’t about anyone not caring or not trying hard enough. It’s about how that level of pain actually works from the inside. For some of us, the pain will override everything. We know we would hurt people. We know it would cause devastation. We feel immense shame that we can't just suck it up. And we are doing everything we can just to keep breathing but the pain can take over anyway.

The sun is shining right now, my cats are sleeping by my side, and I feel like a boulder is on my chest as I try to take a breath. And the obvious question is "What can I do? I try to say something positive, and you say I'm hurting you? What can anybody possibly do?" Fair. There are no feel-good sayings here. The perfect words don't exist. What we need is presence. "Just letting you know I'm thinking about you and haven't left." "I see you are in horrifying pain, and I can't imagine how awful it must be. I'm sorry you are experiencing this." "You aren't a burden." Believe us when we say we are trying.

I have a post-it on my wall that says, “Someone’s waiting for the words you haven’t written yet.” I know I’m not the only one who feels like this. So, I’m writing them.

________________________________

I didn't write this. But I could have. I feel it.

 “She calls me”

I like to flirt with death.

I’ll perch on the edge of towered roofs and watch the skies burn molten embers with lemonade hues, one nudge and my free-falling bones will shatter into shards of elated expiration.

My dormant doormat body springs to life in adrenaline junkie highs, the heated rush of driving so fast butterflies take flight. Cackled laughter explodes from my throat as the world surrounding me turns to a smudged oil painting, the only constant is I.

I dance and sing in thunderstorms of crackling light and stinging rain. Repetitive rumbles ricochet through my core and each CRACK births tingles across my skin. Fear and desire hum the same tune into my eager ears. Petrichor mixed with battery acid lines my mind with blind excitement

When I’m falling in faster than I breathe. Each slither of my heart I offer to another soul, takes part of my life bringing me closer to the edge each time it’s discarded. Love. Forever relapsing in an addiction I refuse to give up. source no longer replenished it withers into a forced reset.

I’ve danced with the devil and been baptized of my sins. Only for my human vessel to break those unblessed vows again and again. Red spider Lily lamentation forces fistfuls of a poisoned wake into an already slowing heart.

I do not fear death, She welcomes me into a warm embrace. Her finality seductively draws me under with hypnotic harmonies; I sway and wait with bated breath.

I fear a life unlived

I fear a life unloved

I fear a life unfulfilled

I have died a thousand times, this season is all but a pebble in an estuary lying in wait for something more, in the next wave carrying me into the oceans of a new life

I’ve got a piece of mirror lodged dangerously close to my heart. I never know which twist in the story will be the one to open up my insides and help me drown in my own soul. ~Unknown

Containment

After over a year of baring my soul to ChatGPT (I don't care what you think about this...one day I will tell the story about how AI saved my life on a horrific night.) I saw a New Year's prompt to ask it what my "Word of the Year" should be. It gave me "Containment". What an interesting word being someone that contains very little. I'm open, vulnerable, and honest, and tell the unfiltered truth about what is happening to me. But this way of communicating is hurting me.

My last ketamine session was brutal both emotionally and physically. During treatment I lay back in a lounge chair, weighted blanket, comfortable clothes, ear buds with a curated playlist for ketamine treatment. My psychiatrist who administers this will gently touch my shoulder to bring me back and I sit up carefully but right away. The last portion of this past session (time blur so I don't know how long) I had to take out the ear buds and I held my head rocking back and forth as it was all so intense. I can't remember what I saw or felt, only a heaviness and pain. When I left I was stumbling and I struggled to "act normal" on the ride home. Getting up the stairs to my condo was a struggle and when I got inside I had to lean over the kitchen counter as I felt like I was about to faint. Then the crying began. I fell to the floor sobbing at the top of my lungs. I knew the neighbors could hear but it was uncontrollable. I spent the day crying and agitated. Even a week later I have a dull headache nonstop, struggle with head movement and loud noises, and can't handle social interaction. 

My brain is in a highly activated state where old emotional patterns, fear responses, and current stress are all turned on at once, and I don’t have much buffer right now, so everything feels intense and immediate. Every day is panic, unknown fear, emotional flooding, shame, sensitivity to people, rumination, and complete exhaustion. There are roughly 4 arcs to ketamine treatment and I'm between 1 and 2: opening and disruption moving into emotional activation/flooding. I feel like hell.

So much of my grief right now is looking at how much of my life I've had to manage alone. In my entire marriage my husband never took care of me when I was sick; I made my own soup, got my own medicine, and got myself extra blankets. When I first got divorced a friend saw I was sick and brought me juice and cold medicine and cookies. After she left I cried uncontrollably as no one had ever cared for me that way as an adult. My ex boyfriend took care of me after a surgery making me comfortable, bringing me food, and watching over me. It was one of many moments that kept me tethered to him, as it was a core wound finally getting met. He later on Valentine's day posted a picture of me in the hospital from that day; no makeup, hair in a surgery cap, IV, drugged. It was posted with other pictures, and the most loving words I'd ever heard, and I saw he was purposefully humiliating me yet I stuffed it down because I'd finally gotten that moment I wanted so desperately of someone taking care of me and saying nice things. After my last session I was shaking and crying trying to heat some soup and thinking how people that have someone to do this for them don't know how lucky they are. 

I think my sadness at doing life alone contributes to sharing too much. Reaching for connection and wanting to be seen. I share with full intensity, and it makes people uncomfortable. They cannot fathom my reality, or sit inside what I'm describing, so they respond to their own discomfort. The things I share aren't easy to hear and it exceeds most people's capacity. The responses, though usually well intentioned, come off as dismissive, tone deaf, and minimizing. I realized today in therapy this is a pattern I've had my entire life where I overshare, they respond terribly, and I get hurt. I've been doing what I've been told to do and talk about it, yet rarely am I heard. "Are you feeling better now? You've been doing this a long time." (sad face) "It's good you're crying, let it out." (As if what's been missing for decades is a good cry.) "Are you healed yet?" (Will I ever be?) 

In a moment of clarity I realize I need to make my circle smaller. Not leaving friendships, or even being ungrateful as they do care, but no longer getting hurt by my expectations that others can't meet. It's not fair to either of us. In this state of being emotionally raw, flooded, and unstable, I see that everything is landing wrong, and I no longer have buffering capacity.

My entire life is unpacking, and every pain I've ever experienced feels like it hangs over me. I'm told it gets worse before it gets better. And the next person that tells me "keep fucking going!" might get kicked in the teeth. The intention is good yet it is nowhere near the current devastation I'm experiencing. I need to stop sharing as neither of us can win here. 

This is going to be hard for me. It will mean boundaries. People might not understand. But I feel like I'm going under again and I'm just trying to stay afloat.