I went to group yesterday and today with a bag of clothes to go to the hospital. Yesterday, I could not bring myself to talk to the therapist. I have been on my phone every night with two and three different crises lines. But I always say that I will be safe even with the racing thoughts and plans to attempt suicide.
Today, I asked the therapist how do you push across the point of knowing you need help to actually taking it. She told me that the only person who could answer that question was the one asking it. She thanked me for coming to group and escorted me to the lobby. Seven bottles of medications sitting in my trunk.
I drove next door to the parking lot of the public psych hospital and dialed the crises line for my counseling center that I just left. I told them that I had seven bottles of psych meds and half a bottle of vodka. I knew that when the night time came around, I would not succeed in killing myself, but might just take them tonight instead of calling a crises line. She urged me to go into the hospital. I said I couldn’t. If I had to look someone in the face, I’d lie and say I was okay. I hate the hospital and my desire to stay out is stronger than my desire to get help. She let me go home and said she would check in later.
When she called, I told her I was fine. I said that I would call if I needed them and sure, they could check in tomorrow. Now it is dark and the meds are calling my name. Thinking about going to a motel so as not to puke all over my floors. Fuck them. I told them I would lose my resolve really soon. I have been calling crises lines for several evenings in a row – including the one that is connected to my counseling center – and have told them I was thinking of ODing in their own fucking lobby and they have let me off the phone as soon as I agreed to be safe – whatever that means.
In-fucking-credible!! I sit here shaking in my bed trying not to reach over for the vodka and get this party started. I am tired. But once I OD and someone finds me… lying won’t work anymore. I will be in the psych ward for the nineteenth time in 25 years. Ugh!! I told them I would do it.
3 comments
Crisis lines are useless. There purpose is to have someone to chat to until you feel better, but they never do anything.
To be honest, I’ve never heard of anyone truly being helped by a crisis line. I’m sure there must be /some/ people that have been, but they’re likely few and far between.
However, the fact that you’re trying to reach out and get help, and had the courage to speak up today is admirable, I think you should be proud of that. I just wish the resources you had available were better ones – people who actually knew what they were doing instead of preaching “the power is inside you!”
Truly, it is, but nobody can do everything on their own, especially not when your own mind is working against you :/
Your letter reads like you’re asking people for something they can’t give you. Do you know what it is? Do you want to be praised for the long struggle you have put up? (You should be.) Do you want permission to die? (I’d have to talk more with you to give that.) Do you want the shrinks and such around you to admit that you’re beyond their power to help? What do you want?
I can’t help you. All I can do is feel the pain behind your words, and use that pain to create my answering words. Is that what you truly hunger for – to be heard, to know you’ve touched someone deeply? That, I can give you, but it hurts. As a crisis line volunteer, I took it for a few hours a week, but I can’t imagine bearing the kind of suffering that working a line every day would require – not without somebody to hold me when my shift was over. Please forgive the weakness and errors of people who are trying to help you.