Journey after Suicide: Writing from hospital
Standing up after falling down: Living after trying to die.
I am sharing this to raise awareness of what many like me struggle with everyday and to help those who feel alone.
Yes, I am in hospital again.
No, I did not try to off myself again.
Believe it or not, I saw the signs, and I checked myself in.
I repeat I checked myself in.
This was not the post or the place I had hoped to be writing from almost 2 months after my attempted suicide.
Plans do help, but you definitely need to adapt to survive.
I did, briefly, end up in a really good space that ended last week.
That version of me was planning on writing you a story a little more inspirational, but this is real, and I hope it helps.
I am currently writing this from my hospital bed. Under better circumstances since my previous hospital visit, which was not voluntary.
For those who have read my story in this line entitled “Suicide, I tried it”, and for those that haven’t let me give you a quick update and/context. Before I get to the meat of the issue.
It had been a few days after my suicide attempt when I had written that. My meds were working, I reached a comfortable baseline, I was sleeping well.
Slowly, yet suddenly, it all changed.
I flew to Cape Town to go back to the life that I had spent 2.5 years building.
I went straight to the office to say “Hi, I’m back and alive.”. The response from some were great, some not so much. Something had changed.
The colleague I was supposed to stay with, bailed.
It was 3pm, I was standing outside next to my car, which had everything that I owned in it.
I arrived full of hope.
I arrived to become homeless.
I arrived to losing the hope I gained.
I was too broke for a Cape Town hotel or AirBnB, and so another colleague who I owe so much to, took me in and gave me a comfortable couch to sleep on in Somerset West. There is no way I can repay him back for that and for just being there for me.
My first day back at the office was greeted with an HR meeting where one of the founders repeated a phrase he knows can be highly influential but in my case it was not.
The phrase:
“Leo, I need you to empathize with us, put yourself in our shoes, what would you do?”
Empathize with them?!?
In my opinion it felt, from the body language and the avenues chosen, that dinner was no longer being served at this table.
The next day, I left the table.
I resigned, it was civil.
That night I booked my flight back home, left in 3 days.
Cape Town, in all her beauty and majesty, was not treating me well.
I said my goodbyes, though more to places than people.
When it all changed.
In a space of 5 days, for the first time in my life, I had resigned without a full back up plan, moved cities and I was now a Web Development “Freelancer”. But, with all of this, I managed, I coped, and I was ok. This I owe to the colleague who’s couch I needed, and for my best friend (now Girlfriend, yay!) to get my ‘shit together’. I did. I coped. I was ok.
I started gaining anxiety, gaining depression, losing sleep, losing focus, losing hope, simply losing.
One night, I started feeling as I had before my first and second attempts that I seriously considered a third.
This time, I knew, I would be successful if I did it.
There are so many platitudes I could use for this:
- “Third time lucky”,
- “Third times the charm”,
- “all things come in threes”
you get the picture.
The fact that I wanted to die but also wanted to live was a clear and strong enough cognitive dissonance for me to keep some level of rational thought. Instead of taking the blade to my heart or throat to end things, I took it several shallow times to my waist.
Physical pain being my displacement for emotional/mental agony.
Hospital
I waited for the morning hoping she would pop by first since she popped in a few minutes away at her moms. I called her and asked her to help me get into a hospital. She asked if she could come over, she did. She sat with me as I explained to my parents that what I am doing is something good for me, and she was there when Hospital.
I checked myself in, the best thing I could do to make sure I can be okay again. It was not longer just me that I wanted to be ok for.
St. Augustines Hospital, Med Ward 1, Floor -3, Room 12, Bed B.
This was the first time I had a physical branding on me of why I was there, a yellow band on my right wrist that says ‘depression’ also, one ‘p’ and two ‘s’.
A Boy like me
I sat next to a boy of African heritage, he was like a reminder of where I was a few months ago. He is also 26, but a student with a part time job and one of his homes breadwinners.
His name was ‘Gift’, part of me smirked at him being a gifted reminder to me.
My other room mate was an elderly man of Indian descent with lung trouble — most of which did not function. His features were skeletal, as if skin were merely wrapped around bone.
Gift, although my age, felt like a kid as he had a lot to learn about this cruel sometimes kind world, a lot of which he has not seen.
26 years old, bipolar, in here due to an non-researched impulsive overdose who was fighting for a discharge as I had done not too long ago rather than getting the assistance I needed through the psychiatric rehab facility.
I opened up, I told him my story, he told me his and what truly stuck with me was that he kept saying:
“I thought it was just me, that I was crazy and alone, I’m so glad I’m not alone.”
I know what being alone feels like, I guess thats why that resonated with me so much. I dosed off after lunch to wake up to find that he had gone. A place was available for him at the facility and with me talking to him, he told the nurses, he was convinced to go. I felt a moment of good.
The Mask
As I entered the room to find a new patient already in his place, we introduced ourselves and he gave me the top to bottom look and asked curiously:
“Him: What are you in for?
Me: Major Depression, F32.2 on paper and tag.
Him: You do not look depressed at all.
Me: Yes, I wear this mask often.”
How do you answer someone when all you want to say is that you’re here just so that you don’t kill yourself?
Instead, we smile or we don’t and say we are not feeling well.
Currently we are adjusting my medicine and inducing sleep to make sure I get something closer to what I should be on whilst also dealing with a Clinical Psychologist too. It seems to be promising so far — we shall see.
If raising awareness of Mental Health is close to your heart, please click the heart to recommend, or share.
Here is my first post:
And here is a follow up post from the one you have just read:
