How it feels

Every day, someone, at least one person, often several, asks, ‘How are you?’ The stock answer is, ‘Yeah, I’m okay.’ Or, ‘Good, thanks.’ Or, ‘So so.’ Or, ‘A bit tired.’ It depends who’s asking. The real answer is – I am really, really not okay. And I don’t know if I ever will be again. I am the survivor of three suicide attempts. One impetuous and doomed to failure; two planned and intentional; the third carefully calculated to be successful. Only it wasn’t. I don’t know how I am ever going to come back from that. I know I have only myself to blame for the trauma of A&E, of probing questions, on-call psychiatrists, 21 hours on a drip, being told that I might need surgery, hearing the night staff laughing and chatting while I lay there wondering if/wishing I was dying. My husband, my best friend, my vicar all seeing me in the worst state of my life, sweating and shivering, with a line in my arm and electrodes on my chest and a bowl of my own sick at the end of the bed. But I still feel shell-shocked. I spent three days in hospital after the second attempt; four after the third. Then back into the world. ‘How are you?’ I am different. Changed. Scarred physically and mentally. I can’t ever be the same person that I was before. No matter how much time passes, no matter what healing (please God) takes place, I’ve been through a life-changing experience. I will have days when I wish I had died. And days when I will be thankful that I didn’t. But I will always be a suicide survivor. I know a lot of people do what I did. I am a statistic (and one of the ‘lucky ones’). But that statistic doesn’t take into account how it feels. It’s hard to put into words the loneliness, shame, guilt, isolation, desperation, fear, shock of having tried (and failed) to end your own life. Yet life goes on. I take the kids to school, I work, I go to church, and everywhere I go, people want to know how I am. Some people ask just because it’s what we do; others because they know what happened. I am not alright. It’s all my own fault, but the world is a totally different place for me post-suicide attempt. It’s scary, alien, hostile. I feel completely raw, as if every nerve ending is exposed. I can’t see joy in anything at the moment. Not in a sunny day or in a bunch of flowers or a nice meal. I just want to sleep and sleep and sleep and sleep. I want to be numb, I want to not feel, I want to rewind and erase. Hope is something I don’t have much of at the moment, but I do hope and pray that I won’t feel like this forever. I know I shouldn’t pray for healing, but I do, because living like this at the moment is just so hard, and not just for me but for everyone around me. I have a feeling, though, that even if things do get better, I am never going to be ‘the same’ again. I am always going to be the person who tried and failed to kill herself. It feels so lonely.