It All Matters

aww ~ september 19, 2012
non-subject: where nothing matters
*************

September, 2012.
I feel depressed today, but not suicidal depressed.
I feel just at the start of a down cycle.
I seldom continue on the down cycle anymore.
I know this feeling will cease; it always ceases.

August, 1999.
I lay curled in a fetal position on the floor in the corner of my bedroom.
My middle-school-aged daughter was at camp; I don't recall now where my son was.

I was a despicable hunk of flesh, good for nothing.
I was a burden; a moron.
I was a terrible human being; a wart on the Body of Christ.
I was a horrible mother, a horrible wife.

I alternated laying curled and then sitting and rocking.
The berating and whipping my soul were continuous.
I couldn't stop the tears.

I lay contemplating my method of suicide.
My method involved drowning.

In this condo where we now lived in August, 1999, we had a garden tub.
The water would be plenty deep in the garden tub.
In my mind I saw myself floating, dead in the garden tub.
I saw my children finding my dead body floating in the garden tub.

My gut and heart churned at the image.
My gut and heart contorted in pain.

"No, I can't do that to my children."
"Other children survive worse Carol."
"No, I will not do that to my children."

My children were my stop gap.

Somehow I managed to pick up the phone and call my doctor's office.
My doctor was summoned to his end of the receiver.
"It's Carol." My voice was low and guttural. "I want to kill myself. I'm such a piece of garbage."
The tears poured.
I told my self to breathe.

I was afraid.

I don't recall now what all my doctor said, but it must have helped.
He talked me into a prescription for Xanax; it'd be a low dose.
I wouldn't take it all the time; it's addictive.
But we could try it as a stop gap.
It would maybe help me.
I was already taking Zoloft at the time.

The doctor called my husband who worked an hour away.
My husband drove home, in route picking up the Xanax.

I took the Xanax and fell asleep.