Prelude to a New Chapter
Trigger warning: this note discusses mental health, depression, and suicide.
A year has passed since I began a medical leave of absence from work after the depression and anxiety I’d always kept well managed spun out of control. When the familiar tools and coping strategies weren’t working, my urgent, panicked scramble to get better turned into a powerless slip into an unfamiliar, horrifying darkness. I slipped, and I kept slipping. I slipped until the idea of taking my own life made absolute, perfect sense.
I’d been working at a company I helped to build and thought I’d retire from. I was deeply in love; I’d found humor, passion, and a fierce friendship with the man of my dreams — and we were forming a blended family with our five incredible kids. We were traveling to bucket list destinations, and had just adopted a puppy. My relationship with my kids’ dad was transforming from heartbreaking and hostile to a warm, generous partnership.
How could I want to die?
Yet there I was — the swelling around my eyes and eyelids from hours of crying, competing with a horde of self inflicted bruises — writhing on the floor of my kitchen with a butcher knife in my hands, disconnected from any reality other than the one where I urgently needed to end my suffering.
These dissociative episodes continued, usually with untethered paranoid delusions, and always with the intense urge to die. I had no idea why they were happening or how to help myself, and everything my providers and I tried seemed to make it worse. The shame and confusion after an episode were unbearable, banking more and more self hate and reinforcing my problematic beliefs.
When not in crisis, I printed out studies about outcomes for children whose parents die by suicide and kept them under my mattress and in my glove box. I pulled them out and read them over and over many times per day until the pages tore.
Dr. Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT), describes the suicidal experience as being trapped in burning room, only able to find one door out. I might have thought that opening the door was a weak and selfish act; abandoning your loved ones and leaving them with lifelong grief. Now I know that this isn’t the entire picture. Paradoxically, and tragically, the strongest force driving me toward that door was love. Unable to explain my words or actions was more terrifying than experiencing them in the first place. I didn’t know what was coming next or how I was going to hurt the people I loved, and so I became consumed with the need to protect my partner and children at any cost. While trapped in a burning room, real or figurative, all sense of reason incinerates.
“The suicidal person is like someone trapped in a small room with high walls that are stark white. The room has no lights or windows. The room is hot and humid, and the boiling heat of the floor of hell is excruciatingly painful. The person searches for a door out to a life worth living, but cannot find it. Scratching and clawing on the walls do no good. Screaming and banging bring no help. Falling to the floor and trying to shut down and feel nothing gives no relief… The room is so painful that enduring it for even a moment longer appears impossible; any exit will do. The only door out the individual can find is the door of suicide. The urge to open it is great indeed.”
Dr. Marsha Linehan
It was a series of trauma-informed problematic beliefs that led to my unconscious vow to avoid unpleasant emotions. My drug was achievement - starting my first company as a teen and never stopping. When you’re always 10 steps ahead, you can justify deprioritizing the now. I was completely dependent on the drug, and I pushed the proverbial button harder the more the hurts accumulated. When no amount of button pressing gave the desired effect, I fell apart completely.
While we’ve come a long way in reducing stigma around mental health issues, that is not the same as increasing understanding. When a gregarious public figure dies by suicide, we are in shock. Conceptualizing that someone who had it all turned on themselves so tragically requires facing that money, adoration, success are not protective.
I intend to share more about the evidence-based therapies, resources, skills, and medicines that have helped me save my life. Right now, I’m focused on completing my intensive treatment and on being present and mindful with myself and my family. If you are struggling, tell someone. If you’re too afraid to tell someone, or have no one to tell, call 988. Calling 988 saved my life twice. Both times, licensed therapists helped me tolerate my distress long enough to think clearly. Rutgers University teaches DBT skills on YouTube, which include emotional regulation, interpersonal effectiveness, mindfulness, and distress tolerance - the last set of skills particularly helpful when surviving a crisis.
I also hope to use my experience to contribute to an important conversation about access to healthcare. It took me 5 months of wanting to die before finding the psychologist who accurately assessed my therapeutic needs and knew how to treat me. Considering that I had best in class insurance to support as many consultations as I needed, and disability coverage to supplement my pay while unable to work, this is an inarguable example of privilege and whiteness being critical factors in my survival, and that’s unacceptable. Full stop.
Thank you for taking the time to read and witness my experience. I’m grateful to say, with confidence, that there’s much more to come.
