LJ Idol - Week 16 - Open Topic

[invisionary]

WARNING: Personal discussion of suicide.








Fourth wall is down. This was the entry I wanted to write near the beginning of the season, for the "Elephant in the Room" topic. I wasn't ready to put this out to a totally unfamiliar audience in an unfamiliar format, but that's changed. I took a bye that week because I couldn't write it yet, and even then hoped for a chance to share it later. That chance is now and I am ready.

I didn't have an elephant in the room. I had a nuclear weapon in the room. I held the trigger. Life is different without it anymore, but only for the better.

No dancing with words here. Between cheshire23 and I the nuclear weapon was suicide. It was always there, so long as I had any thought that I could bring it out. I didn't consciously think of it in these terms, and I didn't actually try to use it to manipulate. But that didn't change the net effect. It would derail any conversation that got too uncomfortable. Even the threat that it could show up was enough of a risk. The rest of the time it remained unspoken, but there's no way to ignore it when someone has one of these in his or her life.

The reason it got the name was because suicide, as most people know, will destroy the lives of everyone around them. Sure, others live on (usually), but there's a piece missing, a piece that won't be forgotten. It might sound like hyperbole to call it the nuclear option. It's not. If you haven't had the experience of suicidal urges or knowing someone who has I'm grateful, but this is what it's like. It's a selfish act. It's not like a suicide bombing where one hopes, however fucked up it might be, to make a political or religious statement or fight a war. Generally when a person does that everyone they care about knows it, and they come to peace with it before the deed is done. In a way that's an act of unselfishness, for a lack of other options to remove what they see as oppression from their lives in the only way they think might work.

The nuclear weapon isn't that. It's an incredibly selfish act, done by someone who either lacks the capacity to understand or deliberately tries to use it to "make people be sorry" that they didn't do whatever it was the person with the trigger wanted. The warhead is a way to control people. After all, who would refuse to give in? No direct threat is even needed, making it all the more insidious. Who would listen if you called out for help? At least if the person with the bomb said it in so many words there's a chance you could get professionals involved. That doesn't work when the person with the weapon lies to others and says there is no such thing. You might in the USA get a 72 hour inpatient stay for observation. Might is the operative word. A few magic words - a contract for safety or the like - will often settle the matter in the minds of the clinicians. So the cycle continues as if those three days didn't happen for the person with the weapon. For everyone else the matter only escalated.

So why did I give it up? Well, it wasn't easy. It took a long time. It took trials of over a dozen medications. But those weren't what did it. The bomb had to be defused. The meds only granted the clarity and removed the impulsivity to have a chance. Without that, we might as well have been trying to disarm the bomb covered in smoke and with wires constantly changing around - good luck with that. Something clicked for me that opened the path to trying medications, and then to seeing the situation for what it was. I think with any form of mental illness the turning point is when a person realizes they love something more than their crazy. It has to be of free will and deeply felt. When someone finds that point you will usually see it, if not right away. It's the turning point. It doesn't have to be any specific thing; common ones include a religious faith, faith in a person, or some activity that they feel is greater than them. For me, it was Alex. I came to the realization that she was more important than my crazy. This didn't do any favors for cheshire23 - I believe it got the "What am I, chopped liver?" response. But it was good enough. It did the job. She accepted it because she knew she would have gone on, but Alex only got one Da. I knew it too. That changed everything.

Such a realization doesn't remove the bomb, but it makes it possible to. The actual removing takes work and lots of it. It takes talking about it. A lot. It takes painful conversations about what it did, and does, to everybody in the blast range - and just how many people that is. It means dealing with the temptation to bring the nuke back out when things get rough. It requires changing how you de-escalate situations and resolve conflicts. It's not easy, but it can be done. I can't say how it actually was disarmed for good. One day cheshire23 said she knew it was gone. I couldn't have come to that conclusion, but she was right. Eventually you realize the bomb isn't there, but because it was for so long you sort of get used to it in a way. It takes time for the other people around the person with the weapon to realize and get used to not having to worry that they might set it off.

I didn't have the nuclear option anymore. I managed to disarm and dispose of it, somehow. That's not to say it doesn't cross my mind every now and then. But I know it's not an option. I couldn't bring myself to act on it or to make threats based on it. The life I live precludes it and I simply could not do it to those around me.

Then I got to experience life on the other side, handling someone else's nuke. A dear friend of mine from Norway used the nuclear option - we think. It might as well have been, given that I had considerable question about her mental health and I have seen no trace of her for the last year and a half, nor have her local friends. She had a weapon. If she didn't had that weapon I might have wondered if she might have committed suicide anyway and I just missed every warning sign. But I knew she had it. It colored almost every interaction. It made me deal with my nuke in the only way remaining. I had to look at her, and in the situation and its aftermath, and see myself. A lot of guilt came from that. I think of her quite often and feel as though I or anyone else wasn't good enough to live for. If ever there was a case of shoe on the other foot, this was it.

So in closing, I urge you if you have a nuke in your possession to think about why you do. I'm not going to deny your pain. There's a reason you have it. It protects you; it makes people keep their distance. It's why militaries have them. If you know someone with a weapon - that's harder. I'm not sure even as a clinician-to-be I could get too close to a live nuke. If they know they have a nuke and refuse to give it up my best advice is to run, if possible. Someone with a nuke loves themselves, what little they may, more than anything else. Usually that's not possible though. Try to approach the denial as best you can. Protect yourself and those close to you in whatever ways you can, but don't think you can defuse it on your own. You can't. Even people with years of experience with this can't do it alone. I sometimes think providers deal with a weapon going off harder than others, even with all the training and compartmentalizing and such.

I would not leave you on such a negative note. Remember their weapon hasn't gone off. There's a chance it can be defused, slim as it might seem in the moment. Don't give up hope, and enjoy the time with someone that has a nuke regardless. I'm glad my family did, in fact that's probably a lot of what kept it from going off for long enough for me to be rid of it.

Ask me anything about my experiences with nuclear weapons and I'll do my best to answer.