I was standing by an open window six stories up when the police took me away. I was forcibly hospitalized for eleven days. The first night I spent in the psychiatric ER next to people who were babbling to themselves. The second night my insurance enabled them to put me in the secure inpatient ward. That day they doubled all the medications I was taking, and added one.
And I snapped out of it. It was only at that moment that I even knew I was depressed.
Before that, I thought I was an evil person. Everyone else who had my symptoms was depressed. I was the exception. Look at all the worry I was putting my husband from, he couldn’t concentrate properly on his work, he had to take days off, while I didn’t even have a job. I was a cancer sucking all the joy out of his life. If only I didn’t exist any more, he would be free to find someone who would truly make him happy. I begged him to divorce me and leave, because I was not strong enough to leave.
To please him, I went to therapy and a psychiatrist. I loved my husband and I was willing to go along with anything to make him feel better. The first doctor I saw, for two months, was a quack, but he was the only doc who called me back after I went through the printout from my insurance of doctors. I probably called about forty doctors. After deciding that the quack wasn’t helping, my DH asked around at work and got a recommendation for a good therapist, though our insurance didn’t fully cover his charges. Same for my new psychiatrist. Everything they told me did not touch me. I went over my childhood blah blah blah.
The meds snapped me out of it. Anyone who doesn’t think that depression isn’t chemical has never felt that. Has never had a night of medication make you realize that your problems can be solved. Only then, after six months of severe suicidal depression, did I begin to heal. And that wasn’t even the end.
That was four years ago. Since then, I have attempted suicide twice, the most recent time being last year at this time. That was the most successful attempt, and I am very lucky to be alive. Only you guys reading this, my DH and my therapist know about this part of my history. There has never been a point in telling my family.
Overwhelmingly, survivors of jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco report that they only understand on the way down that their problems are all fixable, except that they’ve just jumped. Of those who attempt suicide and survive, if they make it through the next three months, 95 percent of them are alive in five years time.
Depression is a pervasive disease, and suicide attempts are much more common than you would suppose. Why don’t you know about this? Because we keep our pain to ourselves. We know that others won’t understand. And when we hear you talking about depression, we know that we are right. You don’t.
