#2. Sunday and Monday’s suicide attempts.

Someone please help… I am stuck and in distress and running out of options.  This is me, and I am breaking down. Since I last wrote, I decided to kill myself.

Spent days thinking about it, that it was the right thing to do.  Decided on a method that I could actually realistically do.  There are many places I could jump from, but none were as reliable and surefire as the place I had in mind, because it’s a ridiculously fatal cliff and a place of outstanding beauty.  On the morning of the attempt, I text a friend who I had met in psych hospital a few months earlier.  She was saying how she hates being in hospital, I replied telling her it was no better on the outside and that I was headed up to the cliffs.  We were both in hospital for suicide-related stuff so we’ve always talked pretty honestly about anything to do with that area of our lives with each other, and she had never broken my confidence before.  She showed the text I sent her to staff at the psychiatric hospital.  They called the police.

I had just finished printing off directions to get to the cliffs, packing my car up, and was just rolling a joint when I heard banging on the windows.  It turned out to be a lovely policewoman – she was expecting a suicidal person slumped on the floor being a wreck, and was greeted by me (after she broke in through the back door) looking normal, sane and dressed.  I feigned ignorance – “Me? Suicidal? No! Never!” – and assured her that it was a misunderstanding.  I didn’t want to be sectioned by the police again – it only ever makes me worse.  She brought my story – after an hour she said that she would leave if someone else could turn up and take responsibility for caring for me.  She rang my housemates, one of them came back and vouched for me.  When she left, we both rolled up and I spent a while trying to explain to my housemate, who also believed I was fine.  I snuck out of the house, 2 hours late, and drove up to the clifftop.

Got up there.  Brought an ice-cream from a nearby van to get change to park my car in the car park.  Rolled up and smoked a spliff whilst walking to the cliff edge, sat down for two seconds to finish smoking before jumping.  It was such a beautiful view – you could see across the entire coast, and the sea looked glittery and inviting.  It was perfect.  I heard someone shout my name – and a guy in a bright yellow safety vest came running towards me.  He explained that he was part of a patrol team who deal with suicides around this particular clifftop, and that the police were on their way.  He asked me general questions, to which I provided general answers.  He knew my medical history and everything about me.  This made me suspicious, so I asked him questions – how do you know, why do you care?  Apparantly, when the police were contacted earlier in the day, both the police in the town I am living in, and the town which I had intended to die in were notified, as well as the suicide patrol team for this area.  The patrol team recognised my car registration in the car park hours later, and started a search for me.

Me and the patrol person talked for a bit, he was saying how he didn’t want to physically see another suicide and another body, and positioned himself between me and the edge so I couldn’t jump.  I couldn’t jump anyway, I would just feel bad to make him witness that – I couldn’t make anyone witness that.  He suggested we walk back to my car – as we got there, the police pulled up, and patrol and police explained that they ‘just wanted a word with me’.  I refused to get into the back of their car – because then you don’t have control over when you get out.  Two police officers physically put me in the car, saying that I was being detained by them and if I didn’t co-operate, they could make this very hard for me.

The police have sectioned me under the mental health act before – I knew it goes a lot quicker if you’re as silent and least fuss as possible.  I was in a custody cell for 8 hours before I saw a nurse who did a mini-assessment.  An hour later, they say they’re transferring me to the custody suite at the hospital.  I wait for 3 hours at the hospital – the assessment took an hour and then it took 2 hours for them to decide where to go from there.  Of course, I lied through the psych interview.  Yes, I do see hope and a future.  No, I am not suicidal currently.  Yes, I want to go back home.  No, I won’t hurt myself.  A social worker gave me a lift 25 miles to home – my car had been moved from the cliffs to the police station and they wouldn’t let me drive it home as they deemed me to be semi-suicidal.  I got home at 5am, with my car in an entirely different city, 25 miles away.  This was not amusing – I have a pain disorder and it hurts to walk, much less use public transport for a mammoth journey like that.

The next morning, I collected my car.  Started to drive home.  Saw a road sign directing me to the clifftops – the same place I had been the day before.  This is the only place where I know for certain that if I jump, I will die.  There are other, closer clifftops but they aren’t as high and I have found no research into fatality statistics from those.  The place I chose and drove to was certain.  I figured that the same patrol team wouldn’t be working two days in a row, that they wouldn’t remember my car registration, that I’d sneak up there and be quick about it.  I parked up and it was broad daylight, started to make my way to the edge again.  I looked over the side, dangled my legs over the edge, was building up the nerves to leap into the sea.  Then, a fucking bunch of tourists come along, parading cameras, admiring the views… So I had to walk back, away from the edge and away from the people.  I lingered until they moved on, got up to make my way to the edge again – and the same man turns up from the previous days patrol team.  They spotted my car again, after a call was made to them about someone acting suspiciously suicidal around the cliff edge.  As soon as I saw them, I burst into tears.  I wanted desperately to jump – even considered running to the edge but the pain doesn’t allow me to move in that way, much less outrun two fairly fit men.

The conversation lasted for two minutes.  They said I had to leave or else they’d have to get the police out to section me again.  I’d rather delay dying than endure more sectioning.  I went back to my car, alongside which the patrol team had parked up.  Sat in my car awhile, hoping they would leave, until they came over, tapped on my window and told me to leave ASAP because they would have to call the police soon.  They followed me for two miles down the road, out of the country park and away from the clifftops.

I drove home.  I’ve been a wreck since – chain smoking, popping valium, and having to speak to a duty psychiatrist every day until my worker gets back from holiday – which should be tomorrow.  The duty psychs all concluded they could not help, to wait for my (useless) worker to get back, to hang on.  I feel trapped.  I wanted to die from an overdose, but the doctors stopped prescribing pills of these medications, and now pain relief is administered via a patch, just because I came ‘too close’ to dying.  Now, I can’t go to these clifftops because of the damn patrol team.

If I can’t die, and I can’t see a way to live anymore, what the fuck am I supposed to do?  I want a reliable and certain method, something relatively painless and something which I could realistically carry out.  I can’t cope and I am scared of myself… I am scared of what I could do to myself, but equally I am scared that I won’t hurt myself.  I want someone to know how bad I’m doing, how much this is affecting me.  I’m sick of putting on a face to the world.  I’m sick of always holding on, always being strong and always having to cope with myself.  This is me, and I am breaking down. Please help, someone.