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.