Dating : The Dark Madness of Suicide. (Part 1)

And the insanity that accompanies it.

The cat is out of the bag. I’ve told my friends — I don’t want to live anymore. There is noise around me, the clinks of glasses in the bar, people chatting and laughing in the distance behind me. Such is the paradox of life. I mutter dark words in a place that is teaming full of happy people, unencumbered by woe. I sit motionless, my friends are worried; conversations about what to do are being had, I am devoid, of anything at all. The soft hisses that accompany quiet whispering make me nervous, and there are voices in both my ears. Voices from my friends, earnestly, sharing encouraging words of wisdom and love. But I am empty, finished, enough. Kind words hover around my ear drums meaningfully, with purpose, before trickling down both sides of my face, my body, and onto the floor where they slowly dissolve into the earth. Nothing goes in — I just want out. My best friend, visiting from the UK asks me what I would do if the shoe was on the other foot. I said, just admit defeat — it’s time, I am ready to go to hospital. So we did, except I don’t remember this bit. So we will have to fast forward.

I don’t recall waking, I don’t know what day it was or time, when I first have a recollection. But I was back in hospital, surrounded by dying elderly ladies and their families; relatives in deep agony, awaiting the final breaths of life belonging to their mother, sister, grandmother. My beautiful friends come and go. And all I can do is sit with the guilt of involving them, burdening them, in my shame of not wanting to live this life anymore. This should be a private and solitary place of darkness that doesn’t impact another. But it does, heavily — and I feel this weight like a ton of fucking ugly bricks on my head.

I see wires literally everywhere. They stick out like they are in multi-colour, but they’re not. They’re mostly grey, or translucent — at least the ones poking out of my foot and arm are. And then wires on machines that are wheeled about the place. Wires coming from my chest. Wires dangling from machines on the walls. The wires become a fixation, as they make for quite the perfect suicide weapon. In between the comings and goings, I spend time assessing the ceiling. There is solid piping lining each square foot, and then there are the curtail rails — not sturdy enough for sure. The piping is strong enough, at least it is worth a try. Given my suicide-risk status, I am relegated to my bed; no toilet trips, or stretching of the legs allowed. So bed pans it is. Timing wise, it would be literally impossible to detach the IV in my foot, arms, the many ECG wires that are stuck to my chest with Schwarzenegger-grade stickers, then get myself up on the table, loop a noose around a pipe and hang myself with success (i.e. hang up there for long enough for the job to be ticketyboo), all without the notice of the multiple and busy nurses tottering about the place doing their thing. Oh and I forgot to mention, that I actually need a wire to make the noose to begin with. So all of the above will have to be during bed-pan time, when the curtains come round, and I cannot be seen.

I’m not sure how many hours I devote to hatching my plan, but I suspect it’s many, as I was in hospital from Saturday night until Thursday afternoon, and I thought about my plan for the vast majority of my waking hours. The problem I had, was that I could barely keep my eyes open — and I couldn’t remember one minute from the next (sedatives etc). I would be writing a message to a friend, and fall asleep, awaken to find my phone in my hand and read the nonsensical drivel that I had attempted to scribe moments earlier. Try again I say to myself. So I delete the characters in the message box and start tapping again, but my fingers and eyes totally disobey the clear instructions from my brain — more drivel. For f**ks sake. It isn’t until a week later when I read some of these messages and emails that I find myself aghast and embarrassed, at the utter gibberish that I was pinging out to the universe from my phone. The sort of shit I expect Robert Hawking would utter if he hadn’t have had that gizmo thingy to translate his hyper-intelligent mutterings. Anyway, so yes. I was heavily sedated — floating around Planet ZOG, you may have already guessed.

JB, my therapist made two visits. My patchy memory has merged them into one — I am incapable of distinguishing one from the other. I remember his face — with a big smile put on just for my benefit, his lovely lashes and sore knees. But I don’t remember the content of our conversation(s). I do remember however, that he put his hand on mine at one point and held it there. And this felt like possibly the biggest and best hug I have ever received. Days after, when I reflect on the Dark Madness, I realise for the first time, that JB does actually care. I’m not just paying for a service, he has a heart — and somewhere in it, is a very small corner that is devoted to our therapy. That’s a nice feeling. And reassures me that the recent decision I made to trust him, albeit hesitantly, was a good one.

In between hatching my plan, and the comings and goings from my dear friends, I watch the tired and sad faces of loved ones waiting for the departure of the person that they love from this planet called Earth. The faces of relatives become familiar to me, as they wander in and out several times each day — exempt from the visiting hour rules given the expectation of imminent death. Male faces are strained from suppressing grief, female faces are plump and red with the heavy emotion and tears that come from deep inside bellies aching with sadness and pre-emptive loss. One gentleman is endlessly contemplative over the course of what feels like days; I wonder what it is that he is ruminating. Is it regret, that he hasn’t looked after his mother better, or is he replaying dark secrets of the family’s past again and again in his mind’s eye? I see pain behind his glasses. His body is rigid, taut with the repression of all that he feels. I wish someone would massage his shoulders, and tell him to let it all out while stroking his back and reassuring him, that everything will be just fine. His children stand idly by, shoulders slumped — as if bored by the tedium of it all; apparently indifferent to the dying body that lays before them. Maybe they are just too young I ponder. Occasionally there is a cough and a splutter from the lifeless body, and I can see her oxygen levels on the screen slowly dwindle over the course of many hours; layers and layers of a life spent — just slowly rising in quiet secret from her bed and making their way up to somewhere unknown. I hope that the family don’t understand what the numbers on the screen mean. I hope that they are still clutching on to hope, for just a few more hours. Certainly I wish this for the strained and tired gentleman. For what is there at all, if there isn’t any hope?

There is a sweet nurse that strokes my arm when I wake at one point. She tells me that everything will be OK, and that I am safe, she is there. These are words I have needed to hear for so long and I think how perverse and sad that they come from the mouth of somebody that I will likely never meet again. And then I cry, I sit up in the bed to sob and heave deeply, into the blanket — so that the roaring pain from deep inside my body cannot be heard by dying ladies and grieving families. Endless streams of salty water expend themselves from my eyes, the blanket is drenched in seconds. The sharp paradox between those wishing someone would live, and me wishing I would die hits me like a bullet-train. I sleep.

I need to wee, so I press the button. A nurse appears with an ugly, stained blue bed pan. Don’t worry — not yet, I don’t have the energy. Without speaking, her face asks me if I know what I am doing. I nod and she pulls the curtain round. If only she knew I think. Lifting my body from the bed to lump it on this ugly plastic ablution utensil, it feels so heavy, and in pain. Every single part of my body is in torrid, unending pain. I wonder if is real, or imagined. The indignity of this, sitting on this bed pan, as I piss hot, bloody urine into it and take in the smell of alcohol, salt, blood, other stuff. Whatever. It is unbearably undignified and I wish the earth would just swallow me whole and leave no trace of my existence so as not to hurt anybody I love. Nothing has meaning, it all just is. And it’s all utterly shit. Ten days or thereabouts, after this day, I meet with my psychiatrist. And she attempts to muster some CBT on me by asking what do I feel has been positive this week. I say to the air in front of me “I put on a brave face”. “To whom?” she asks. “Everybody” I respond. What’s the f**king point of it all, I am so tired.

One day, I don’t know which, somebody comes with a restraint and attaches it to the bed, securing my middle. It takes me several days after I have left the hospital, to figure out, this is not to protect my body or soul from my seizures (I have epilepsy), but to entirely scupper my brilliant plan — i.e. because I am suicidal. How the fuck did they get inside my brain? My childhood fear, that my minds thoughts are visible to all humanity returns, and I think I am a few bonks short, of entirely, fucking bonkers.

A challenge emerges on day 5 in the death-ward: the imbalance of bed-to-dying-patient ratio. They need my bed. Still strapped to it like a raving f**king psycho-lunatic, the ward psychiatrist visits to explain that they think it prudent and wise to transfer me to the mental health ward. I am thinking what a splendid idea — given that my well-conceived plan is certainly not going to unfold as hoped in this ward. He is a nice man, kind eyes I can see, even though 60% of his face is hidden behind his green mask that only Chinese people wear for reasons generally unknown to me. It’s the eyes that tell us the truth of somebody’s soul, don’t you think? That old cliché, windows and all that, it’s true. So I trust him, and I trust my psychiatrist — who has written me an email saying this is a good decision, and that the mental health ward will be nicer, I can even walk around. Oh f**king yay I muse sarcastically inside my Dark Madness. I sign the form without taking any of it in. Just sign right there, on the dotted line, there’s a good girl I tell myself, in my driest voice.