While we may be able to debate whether “silence is golden;” we may
agree that “life is precious.”
Earnest H. and Isadora R. Rosenbaum describe the human will to live as
a fight for survival, especially when our lives feel threatened:
“Human beings have a fierce instinct
for survival. The will to live is a force within all of us to fight for
survival when our lives are threatened...”
Earnest H. Rosenbaum, M.D., Isadora R.
Rosenbaum, M.A.
However, when humans find their lives repeatedly placed in jeopardy by painful
or fearful experiences, Thomas Joiner explains that the result is a “higher tolerance
for pain and a sense of fearlessness in the face of death.”
“…the capability for suicide is
acquired largely through repeated exposure to painful or fearsome
experiences. This results in habituation and, in turn, a higher tolerance
for pain and a sense of fearlessness in the face of death.”
Thomas Joiner, Ph.D.
Believing that “life is too short,” The Hearthsides sing, “Live for today…
don’t spend the now waiting for another day:”
If you could live forever, what would
you live for?
If you could live forever, would you appreciate your time?
Life is too short so live for today
And don't spend the now waiting for another day
The Hearthsides, The Thin Line Between
Life and Death, from Live and Learn
We know we are not guaranteed our next breath. Our next second. Let
alone today. While we may attempt to seize the day in the palms of our hands, we
know, for certain, we are not guaranteed tomorrow.
From this realization I have developed this creed:
I live every night as if it is my last
and every morning as if it is my first.
Mark Gersmehl writes about how precious to him are the hours in a day:
Twenty-four coins are in my hands
Twenty-four coins for me to spend
And I will treasure them
Treasure them
Twenty-four hours you've given me
It's a world of possibilities
I will treasure them
Treasure them
Mark Gersmehl, Twenty-four Coins, from Awakening
Album
Life is precious. It is very costly. Yet so many moments we take for
granted. One moment after another, we spend our time – our greatest asset – with
reckless abandon, as if it is replenishable, until we realize how fragile our lives
are and how precious each moment in time really is.
The most expensive moment of my life to my soul was the second I lost my
daughter in a car accident, on January 13, 2007. One second, she was here, and
the next second, she was gone. With her passing, every aspect of my life
changed. How I defined myself – my identity – changed, completely. My goals, my
aspirations, even my fears – nothing remained the same. Everything I had fought
for in my life, to create a better life for her, was suddenly lost. I suddenly felt
worthless. My life felt worthless.
Prior to the birth of my daughter, I lived a very emotionally and
physically chaotic, tumultuous life. My childhood traumas had led me to
suicidality at an early age. Whether or not my many attempts to seize my own
life from the spiraling roller coaster that held me captive as a youth were
witnessed by others, I know not. On many occasions, however, I flirted with Death
so much, he seemed my best friend, who at the most opportune times became too busy
to have me for company. Though Death seemed to evade me, when he came for my daughter,
he left a mortal, gaping wound on my soul that has yet to close.
I am a natural born fighter. I am always up for a challenge. However, I
pick my battles well, determining, for myself, which battles are worth the
fight, and which are not. While my daughter lived, those five short years, I
fought for Life. I had someone to care for, to protect, to nurture, to love… Without
my daughter to fight for anymore, I dedicated my efforts to fight against Life,
instead of for it.
I know, from a statistical perspective, I am far from alone.
When I end up in a psychiatric hospital, one time out of ten, people accurately
guess my stay is related to my daughter’s passing. Some have started to
realize, over the past decade or so, that for me, my daughter’s death was merely
the last straw on a very huge load that would have broken a camel’s back long
ago. Two times out of ten, a recent crisis through me a loop; but seven times
out of ten, the contributing factors are post-traumatic stressors from my
childhood experiences. Although the experiences may have happened more than 30 years
ago, I wear their gaping wounds on my soul, as well.
When I re-experience these past stressors, I respond in different ways.
I always disassociate.
The person who I become when I disassociate varies between who I call, “4-year-old
Cari,” and “Dragon Cari.” A friend and pastor of mine, last year, had the pleasure
to meet “4-year-old Cari.” He, assuming I was schizophrenic, asked me if I had
any other “alters.” I was like, “Huh?” Then I realized that someone from a less
than clinical background might legitimately presume that my paranoia,
disorganized thoughts, speech, movements, and withdrawal from society were related
to delusions or hallucinations, that I do often have; however, these symptoms
are more closely related to the dissociative identities I seem to develop when,
in crisis, my borderline personality disorder leaves me feeling abandoned and instable,
alone and unloved.
Feeling isolated, I isolate more. I wait for help to come. To pull me
outside of myself. It does not.
Feeling rejected, I wonder if anyone really cares. Will anyone notice I’m
gone? They seem to have not noticed my absence from the activities I habitually
kept, my withdrawal from my circles of friends. Do real they care? They do not
seem to…
I know my triggers. I tend to ask for help three times. I let at least
three people know my disposition.
Then I attempt suicide.
I overdose on medications, attempting to find the right combination of psychotropic
medications in combination with alcohol that would allow Death to prevail against
Life on my behalf; yet Life consistently wins the battle.
After at least seven of my suicide attempts, I was unconscious for seven
days. After some of those seven, I would awake in the ICU and count the number
of Coumadin shots I was given in my belly to confirm how long I had been “gone.”
Each time I attempt suicide, I do so as if to demonstrate what I feel: I
am a zombie… walking dead. Two people did die in a car accident; it is just that
I walked away.
“Why am I here?” has become my question for Life to explain to me, some
day.
“Because He’s got a plan for your life…” and “Because he’s not done with
you yet…” became the answers I loathed the most, when, other feel that my great
faith in God should be enough to keep me from attempting suicide.
Although for years, I wondered what his plan or purpose was for me, I
deliberately refused to ask. I did honestly not want to know. The plan or
purpose that was important enough to have separated me from my daughter was not
up for discussion. What new purpose could my life possibly now have, broken,
torn asunder, and scattered? And how can I ever dream of fulfilling this purpose
when I so quickly progress through Mark Goulston’s ten steps to suicide, as
quickly as I can.
For a decade after my daughter’s passing, I continued in my Zombie Death
Walk. My first thought… my impulse… when confronted with the slightest difficult
was if I had enough medication at home to overdose with and if I needed to stop
by the liquor store on the way.
My failed suicide attempts became so much more frequent, people started
believing I was attempting for attention. I began to feel more at home in psychiatric
hospitals than in my apartments. I considered my clinicians my greatest support
system, over my friends. My mother and brother, who I had not seen since my
daughter’s funeral, have since been nonexistent in my life.
After each suicide attempt, when friends would agree they were glad I
was still here, I would ask them why that was a good thing. Again, and again, I would ask… “Why did a five-year-old
have to die, and why did I have to live?” After all, the accident investigators’
calculations and simulations showed both driver and passenger died. So, why did
my life have to defy those odds?
The answer was always, “God has a purpose for your life.” Followed by, as
if I were about to ask why he did not have a purpose for hers, too… “She may have
accomplished her purpose in just 5 years…”
This concept never ceased to anger me. I was very quick to let them and
God know exactly how much it angered me.
“So, what is my purpose?” I would retort.
“Well, ask him…” was the typical response from those who understood I
had an open dialogue with God, someone I had learned to talk to throughout my
years; someone who always talked back.
Yet, this one question I refused to ask of him for the longest time.
With reason: Any rights he had previously to my life, I had revoked after Carissa’s
death. It was my life… he had not seemed to make good by the gifts I had given
him… the gift of my life and my daughter’s; therefore, why? I took back the
rights to my life. And then, in so many attempts, I took my life into my own
hands, as if to say, “Oh… that purpose you had for me… whatever it was… is
gone.”
At least with a cocktail of meds in one hand and a bottle of rum in
another, his purpose seemed very gone. Each time, I’d perfect my art enough to
see if I could outwit Life and end up face to face with my Maker. Each time I
lost consciousness, I would wake up, again, with him seeming to remind me that
since I gave my life to him, he held the power over my death in his hands, as
well. And, after each attempt, I would typically wake up in a better mood.
Once, however, I did not awake in a better mood.
In my great frustration with being alive, again, I inquired, in a injurious
and sarcastic tone of voice, “So… What is your purpose for my life?”
For the first time, in a long time, there was silence.
I admit, looking back, my attitude could have used a bit of work. I
could have been a bit more grateful for my breath.
Maybe that was why he was silent.
A month or so went by, with another suicide attempt.
The same dialogue with friends was followed by the same suggestion of the
purpose God has for me.
The same question I asked of God, now with a slightly different, angry
and demanding attitude… “Why am I still here?! What purpose do you have for my life!?!”
Again, there was silence.
More months brought more attempts.
Still here.
Still wondering, “Why?”
When my heart was in a better space, though still hurt and still
grieving, but with a little less anger and less sarcasm, I asked God a third
time… “What is your purpose for my life?”
Jesus, as if to have God’s back, this time, replied, out loud, with two
words, so simple, yet so profound:
“To live.”
Those two words were accompanied by a mental paraphrase of John 10:10, “I
have died that you might have life and have it more abundantly.”
He did not say: “To run for President.”
He did not say: “To win 10 billion souls.”
He said, simply: “To live.”
After my shock wore off a bit, I decided I was up for the challenge.
I was going to do my best to stop trying to die, and to start trying to
live.
But how?
How will I reroute so many synapses so well trained on habitually overriding
my will to live?
It is not easy.
Nearly every year since, either on the anniversary of Carissa’s death,
in January, or her birthday, in February, I have ended up in the hospital after
a suicide attempt.
Though my suicide attempts have decreased in number each year, I have
spent February through May, two years in a row, disassociating, in and out of
hospitals, with very little memory come June of what I experienced the first half
of the year.
This year, like clockwork, I attempted suicide, again, on my daughter’s
birthday: February 25.
Last year, I came out of the hospital with goals to better not just my
life but Life in general, for others, as well as for myself; but, I had only 6
months, if that, to do so in before I re-entered this phase of my life.
Two years in a row, I have had to move from my apartment soon after
discharging from the hospital, causing me to experience homelessness; though
thankfully these last two times I was able to stay in a motel.
I remember, in the motel, this past May, reminding God that I have been
homeless now, eight times, and that, “Eight is enough, right?!”
This was on my radar, this year. I warned my friends I was decomposing.
Regressing. My suicide attempt and subsequent hospital trips were expected.
What was not expected was that this year, was for my new friends from
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to which I converted last September,
to care for my animals while I was in the hospital and to clean up the mess and
damage I made to warrant a relocation following my hospital stay; but, they
also took it upon themselves to move my belongings to a storage facility, put
me up in a motel, help me find a new apartment, and move me into it, with less than
two weeks of homelessness experienced.
My new church knew I was struggling around the anniversary of my
daughter’s death; but they did not ask for any major justification as to why I “lost
it” on her birthday. I did not feel judged. I did not feel isolated. I did not
feel rejected. I felt loved, and unconditionally at that.
Nearly everyone agrees with William Shakespeare: “All the world’s a
stage.”
Rascal Flatts sings:
Oh, I had no clue you were maskin’ a
troubled soul
Oh, God only knows what went wrong
And why you would leave the stage in the
middle of a song
Rascal Flatts, Why from Unstoppable
Many of us struggling with suicidality know the triggers that were squeezed
to get us to that point, the point of no return. I do not know why I am able to
speak from this vantage point, past the post of no return, having experienced
it as much as I have.
To those struggling with suicidality, it may seem foreign that there would
be no clue to anyone else about what you are going through. However, often, people
get caught up in their own lives enough to simply hope you are okay. If you are
not okay, let others know. Be bold. Be specific. Be safe. Reach out.
Nationally, help is just a phone call away:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
1-800-273-8255
In Colorado, we have the Colorado Crisis Services Hotline, staffed with
people ready and willing to talk you through this:
Colorado Crisis Services Hotline
1-844-493-8255
Or
1-844-493-TALK
In Denver, I have found MHCD’s Adult Recovery Services and Trauma
Informed Services to be of most help. You can reach their main number at:
Mental Health Center of Denver
Adult Recovery Services and Trauma
Informed Services
303 504 7700
