I had friends who stood by me in my struggle to live, but there were friends who had chosen to judge me for my actions and end their friendship in a particularly painful way. This brought back to me the pain of every abandonment I had ever experienced, and reinforced my extremely negative self-view. I became convinced, for awhile, that they were right and that everyone would be better off without me. Including my own children.
I was so obsessed with their actions and beliefs about me that I couldn't fully take in the love my loyal friends were demonstrating for me. It was incredibly confusing to me that one group of friends could see me one way, and another in an entirely different light.
An important part of my recovery was seeing how I had always based a large part of my self-esteem on how people around me perceived me, and had a habit of seeing their opinion of me as more valid than my own.
This is yet another common symptom of the disordered thinking of depressed and suicidal people.
In his book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy Dr. David D. Burns explains that this tendency to take on others' opinions of ourselves probably originates in childhood:
As a small child you probably saw your parents as gods. They taught you how to speak and tie your shoes, and most of what they told you was valid. If Daddy said, "You will be killed if you walk out into traffic," this was literally true. Like most children, you might have assumed that nearly everything your parents said was true. So when you heard "You're no good" and "You'll never learn," you literally believed it and this hurt badly. You were too young to be able to reason, "Daddy is exaggerating and overgeneralizing." And you didn't have the emotional maturity to see that Daddy was irritable and tired that day, or perhaps had been drinking and wanted to be left alone...As I worked with this book and with my therapist, I gradually began to distance myself from the actions and words of my former friends and began to see that the different responses from the two groups had more to do with their own histories and perspectives than with me. I was neither worthless or worthy because they saw me that way. I had inherent worth of my own, whatever mistakes I had made.
I also began to work on becoming less judgemental myself. If I should not be judged on the basis of a set of behaviors that I knew to be uncharacteristic (and rooted in my own past), how could I make any assumptions about others? And who was I to judge someone else anyway?
The flip side of judging others is that you often turn the same harsh and critical eye towards yourself.
There were a number of things I did to help myself stay alive and recover, though it was very much a process of one step forward, two steps back.
I decorated a wall with the cards from my friends and my daughter (who, in spite of being one of the people I had hurt deeply, was very loving, forgiving, and supportive). I added affirmations and quotes that inspired me to live or just made me feel better in some way.
My friends had made a tape for me with music and words, either read or spoken, encouraging me to live and making me feel loved. I added some music to the end of the tape and played it when I was especially depressed.
I kept a journal, took walks in some of the beautiful areas of Santa Cruz, tried to eat nourishing healthy foods, read humorous novels and watched comedies--anything to lighten my mood.
I admit I've had a bias against medications from the years I watched my mother battle her depressions with a number of different chemicals. Her moods varied widely under these medications and I was wary of trying them myself. But given the seriousness of the state I was in I tried a couple.
The side effects of the first one, zoloft, made me so ill with nausea and so tired I became even more depressed. I received some bad news one day while on this one and made a second, more impulsive suicide attempt. I slashed an artery and bled for over twenty minutes. I'd taken a vicodin, which I had for gallbladder pain (yet another depressing factor, I'd been having very painful and frequent episodes of gallbladder trouble). I figured the vicodin would take the edge off whatever pain I might experience.
But dying was taking longer than I thought, even though I was losing a lot of blood. (Again, the movies make this seem quick and easy.) As I waited to lose consciousness, the vicodin kicked in and made me kind of dreamy and peaceful. I began to think, maybe I could live after all, and my children did need me. I was pretty weak but I got to a phone and called 911 as I collapsed.
After an evening in the hospital (part of which was spent shackled to a bed, bloody and wet and shivering) I was allowed to go home with a friend. The next day I contacted my doctor about a different medication, refusing to go back on that one.
The new one, desipramine, had less side effects and I believed it helped for the few months I took it.
Gradually, as I held on and worked on getting better, the various things in my life that made me suicidal improved, one by one. As each situation shifted (sometimes in ways I couldn't have imagined when I was suicidal and the worst seemed inevitable) I was that much lighter emotionally.
I worked hard to mend my relationship with my daughter and to make amends to others where possible.
Gradually my life shifted from something I was trying to simply endure, to something I began to enjoy again.