Fragility

There's an odd dichotomy -- or at least there was for me -- in waking up alive. I think I've been clear that I wasn't happy about it. I remember watching a TV show in which one of the co-stars had attempted suicide and been found, revived, and was now alive and well. No one even talked about it, which seemed to match my life, but then there was a passing mention and the character kinda laughed it off. As if to say, yeah, what an idiot I was, right? Hah hah.

Real funny.

And I dunno, maybe there are people who're glad they were stopped when they're only a few months into their new lives. But I don't think there are many. It might be hubris of a sorts, but I think most survivors are like me. It's not a yay sort of thing. It's a somber look back, a realization that whatever happened you're still alive and you have to go on. Good times, bad times, future happiness and past pain. It's all still with you.

I've been reading some of the stories of other survivors. Some of 'em are bitter, angry people still. I was. I'm over that part now, but I remember it. Mostly I remember something else. I remember the fragility of those first few days. Weeks. Months. There was a feeling that I was a glass sculpture held together by a thin line of glue. It was like being suspended in that moment where you take your hands off something you've repaired and hold your breath, waiting to see if your repairs are going to take.

Every step, every word, every moment had the power to shatter me apart again. The worst part, though, wasn't feeling like I could break into a million pieces at any moment. It was not knowing what it would look like when I did. If I did. I was being watched, both in the hospital and when I got out. It's not like something would happen, one bad word, and I'd try to jump off a building. Would I just crumple and sob? Would I start screaming and not be able to stop? I didn't know, and I couldn't choose what would happen. I just knew I could break and then... Then something awful.

But I was still alive, so I had to go on. Fragile, ready to poof into an expanding ball of Jessa-shards that might never come back together, and I had to go on. I couldn't stay someplace safe and sheltered and wrapped in tissue paper. It took courage, that did. Being alive again took nothing on my part. I had nothing to do with it. Stepping outside of my room? God, that took every drop of guts I had. Sitting on the couch and watching TV, or having dinner with the family, talking with them, all of it was monumental. I was a soap bubble floating around a room of razor blades.

I don't feel like that anymore, at least. That did fade. It took time, and it took being able to trust myself again. Therapy, medication, mindfulness, hard but honest talks with my family and friends, all of it taught me to see my suicide attempt not as a singular event but as an almost inevitable outcome of the way I'd lived the last decade or so of my life. There was a hindsight-clear path to it, a path of choices I'd made out of fear and a desire to be safe from harm. An isolated path that simply could not be sustained.

The problem with seeing this path at the time, fresh out of the looney bin, was that I wasn't yet strong enough to confront my own past. I didn't gain insight from it. I gained distrust. I couldn't trust myself, I felt. It was like a giant Acme anvil of irony crashing down on me. I didn't trust other people not to harm me, so I had withdrawn from people until they couldn't harm me and in doing so, I had harmed myself more than anyone else ever could. The one person I always thought I could rely on -- myself -- had betrayed me and tried to kill me.

I couldn't retreat from myself. I couldn't escape myself. I couldn't trust myself. What choices was I making right then, at the time I realized this, that could be hurting me all over again? I had to let other people make my choices for me, and trust them to make good ones. I could barely dress myself. I didn't even like to go for a walk without someone to tell me it was a good idea. I didn't frame it that way, of course. I'd decide to go for a walk, then I'd go put my shoes on where my sister could see me doing it.

"You going for a walk?" she'd say. "Good, you should. It's nice out, the fresh air will do you good."

Whew. Good. Ok, so going for a walk was a good thing to do. Check. And then I'd walk often. I'd do things to gain her approbation. I'd clean up after breakfast, do the dishes, tidy the kitchen. She appreciated that. My choices, approved of by someone else.

In December, I decided to move out and get my own apartment. She did not approve of that. But in the two months of being there, I had regained enough of myself to long for privacy. My own things. And I really, really wanted to get my dog back. She was in foster care, and I was feeling horrible about it. She wasn't doing well, she missed me and acted out a lot, behaving in ways that were just so unlike her. So I wanted my own place.

Eventually, with the support of my therapist, I got my own place. I bought things for my place. I wanted my sister to like the things I got, I double-checked them with her without making it seem like I was, ready to take them back if she didn't like them. I had a bed. I had some furniture. And eventually, I had my dog.

That was my moment, I think. That first night I spent sleeping cuddled up to the dog my sister hadn't thought I should get back in an apartment she didn't think I was ready for.

I slept soundly.

I got up and took my dog for a walk.

I made breakfast.

I was happy.