I Had A Plan

I woke up this morning with a semblance of a plan. It wasn’t a good plan – not the kind where you plan for a holiday/vacation. Not the kind where you plan to conquer the day. It wasn’t the kind where you were hopeful and happy. Not at all. Far from it.

I woke up this morning with a half-formed plan to end my life today.

As I lay in bed, groggy from the 4-hour sleep that I’d had, I thought about the Calculus final exam that I had to do at 3.30pm today. I felt more hopelessness heap onto my already full plate.

I thought to myself, “Maybe I’ll do it today. I’ll write an email to everyone who matter. Tell them I’m sorry. Tell them I love them and that I hope they’ll forget about me” – even as I type these words, tears spring to my eyes. I know I can’t do this to people, yet I also can’t stop this despair that I’m enveloped in. I don’t really want to leave the people I love – yet going through each day is getting more and more difficult. More and more painful.

I thought to myself, “I’ll go up to that parking garage that’s across from CAPS after Calculus. Then maybe I’ll just end this suffering…”. It all seemed logical, in my grogginess. It wasn’t a plan backed with real intention because if it was, I’d have gotten up then and written the email. Yet, instead of doing that, I fell back asleep – my mind and body exhausted.

The shift I had from 3.45pm to 4.15am the day before had taxed me mentally and physically. At the end of the day, the restaurant I worked in had been filled with drunken “amateurs” as the bartender put it. Right before we closed, someone had decided to puke all over the door of the women’s bathroom, the floor and even the toilet. It turned out that since I was one of the closing servers, it was my job to clean the disgusting mess. I don’t think I’d ever felt so defeated and broken until that moment.

I thought about how pointless everything is in my life, how painful my memories are, and how triggering everything I am experiencing is lately. Something even more drastic than just cutting off 10 inches of my hair had just happened on Monday and though it’s already Saturday, I have yet had a chance to process the event. I don’t think it’s even really sunk in yet. However, throughout the day, I’ve had brief moments that triggered a landslide of negative emotions.

SH, someone I met over the Internet because of our mutual struggle with suicide, had recently volunteered to be my “human” – someone he says, who listens without judgment, who provides what a therapist/psychologist provides but instead of only an hour a week, every day as needed, someone who is just there to help and support. He checks in on me almost every day, usually with a simple, “You ok?”. He keeps me accountable lately.

He tells me that what I’m feeling is normal. That it’s to be expected. It is a fresh wound. A wound that I haven’t even acknowledge is there yet, let alone treat. S had been helping me talk about some of the things that this wound entails but I haven’t yet allowed myself to look at it. If I don’t move too suddenly, I won’t even notice the wound there but sometimes I forget that it’s there so I accidentally jostle it and blood gushes from it, hence the triggering moments throughout my day.

Tonight, I accidentally found some photos of a time when things were a little simpler – times when I was momentarily happy – and I jostle the wound again. It reminded me of the plan I had this morning. It makes me cry to think about it. It makes me cry when I back myself into a corner and convince myself that I’m better off disappearing from people’s lives. I don’t really know why I cry. I just know that I hurt so much that I can’t stop the tears.

As I sit here with my tears, heaviness in my chest and pain in my broken heart, I remember what S said to me on Thursday as I sat in his office; at that time, I was also telling him how meaningless everything seems to be for me. I told him how afraid I was to lose him, to lose the attention I get from him every week. If I can lose this one thing that I thought I’d have for many more years to come, what more him? I remember now what he said to me.

He said, in his gentle, kind voice, “Jules, I don’t know if this makes a difference but whether you’re sitting here or whether you’re out there, I do care about you. I do feel connected to you, you matter to me. And even when you’ve graduated, even when we don’t see each other anymore, you’re still going to matter to me…”

When I heard that on Thursday, I couldn’t stop the tears that came. I can’t stop it now as I remember his words. As I think about this anchor in my life, I realize that there is the slightest glimmer of light in all this darkness. Even if I have to rely on him to get back up, I think I’m going to do it. I have to.

Although S has said that he cares for me many times now, I still don’t take his words to heart. There’s always some kind of doubt attached to it; part of it has to do with my own critical voice who tells me that I’m pathetic for relying on my psychologist and not someone closer (like a family member or a friend for example) and part of it has to do with my own fears of putting trust in someone who might/could leave. After all, things happen. At any moment, anyone can leave. I’ve experienced this at least a dozen times over now – people I thought I could trust, people I did trust, just up and leave. Now, the latest tear in my heart has left me with a gaping wound – a wound I can’t fill back up.

Anyway… I had a plan this morning. I didn’t go through with it. I don’t know if I’m thankful or not at this moment that I didn’t make that drastic and permanent decision to end my life. At this time, I just know that hearing S’ voice in my head telling me that he cares for me is helping just that little to calm me down.

If only hearing his voice helps lessen the pain and suffering I’m experiencing.