Mark frequently told me that I saved him. In the letter he left behind, he said it again and for the very last time, I was the light to his darkness. Mark was a gifted athlete, an innovative and passionate scientist, a fierce defender of his students and colleagues, a loved brother and friend, a father and husband who was cherished. What could I possibly save him from?
I recently was changing my closet over from my winter clothes to spring and summer. Neatly folded at the bottom of one of the plastic tubs, was the brown linen pants I was wearing the day Mark died. I haven’t worn them since but I keep them. I don’t know why. When I was putting them away that fall after his death, I remembered how focused I was on the pattern while I waited in the police station for a detective to come and get me. With it I wore a cream linen shirt, my watch and bracelet on my right hand. On my left hand, my wedding ring that I kept twisting round and round while my legs shook uncontrollably. Look at me, I remember thinking. I just drove here from work where I manage the finances of 200 student org accounts. I’ve got my shit together. Horrible things that land you in a police station in the middle of the afternoon don’t happen to people like me.
Except I couldn’t find my husband anywhere, they didn’t have the wrong person, and my vocabulary from that day forward would include suicide. When the funeral was over, when Mark’s bike was back in the garage, and I returned to work, I thought daily of my own death. Driving into a tree, falling and getting a fatal head injury, getting struck by lightning, and most often, to go to bed and not wake up. One night I got out of bed and grabbed a bottle of pills. I laid there and turned them up and down, listening to the pills rattle in the bottle while I thought of downing every one of them. I don’t know how long I was in that dark place, but it was scary and something I hope never happens again.
For months I told nobody until one day I talked about it with a friend. She was horrified and asked me how I could possibly think of doing that to my kids after what they’d been through. I wasn’t thinking of my kids, I told her, and from that moment on I knew that this was something I should not say out loud. It is unfathomable to most of us to think of being in such deep pain that death feels like the most logical solution until I saw it for myself. I also saw that talking about it means you may be met with judgement and shame.
I don’t know what the right answer is to someone who tells you they want to die. In the moment I had of wanting it all to end, it seemed easier to take a bunch of pills rather than get up and google the phone number for suicide prevention. Knowing Mark as I did, I am absolutely sure that never crossed his mind before his course was in motion. I do know that many people live with crippling depression, unbearable loss, trauma, loneliness, addiction, abuse, and unrelenting pain, and in those times making it end seems very logical. Maybe the better plan is to have a conversation from a young age about how that feels, how your brain is capable of telling you the most outrageous lies, that maybe if you find yourself in that place that screaming for help is what you most need to remember. That if you’re on the receiving end of that scream to stay calm, to listen, and to stay in that hard place with that person until you are certain that they are safe.
As I watched the interview this week with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, I did not expect to hear that she was in such despair that she wanted to end her life. I did recognize, though, the hopelessness she felt in her situation, the depression that slithers in and twists your thoughts into an unrecognizable distortion of your life. I recognized it because I’ve lived it.
At the end of the interview, Prince Harry was asked if it was his wife who saved him from a life he felt trapped in. “Yes,” he said, and I saw the same deep, piercing pain in his eyes that I’d seen many, many times in Mark’s eyes.
As I watched this couple who had so much thrown at them in their young marriage, whose lives were scrutinized by millions, I saw two people who firmly stood guard for each other, and for the first time I finally believed what Mark told me over and over. I was the gatekeeper to his hurt, I stepped in when he was triggered, I held his shaking hands when his memories tried to strangle him, I pulled him back when he drifted towards the shadows. I tried to meet the sorrow in his eyes with the hope in mine. I loved him, I could see what others couldn’t, that just below the surface he often felt like he wasn’t worthy of me, of our kids, of success, of happiness.
Walking into the house after driving home from the police station, when the pattern of my linen pants and the metal in my wedding ring weren’t a distraction from something I couldn’t believe or put words to, I prayed that better angels swooped Mark up and carried him away from all that pain he never deserved. Maybe they were the same ones who saw me with a bottle of pills in my hand and convinced me that my story wasn’t finished yet.
This is beautiful. Your story is so important and I feel you sharing it is such a gift. I have been there too. I remember being in an incredible training recently and suicide came up. The facilitator asked if there was anyone there who had never thought about wanting to die. Not a single person rose their hand. I believe it is so much more common than we realize. When we as a society can’t talk about it, it gets stronger. When we do talk about it, it hurts, but it also brings light to it. Maybe it’s like waking up and stepping into a really bright day, the light feels too strong and makes us blink hard because we had spent the night in the dark and have to reacclimate ourselves to the light revealing everything. It reveals the pain, which is hard, but it also reveals the joy. I don’t think we can only have it one way. <3
I have been on that end, too, the one of telling someone that I did understand my father and my nephew. These are things you find out from the looks on others’ faces, that you don’t say these things out loud. But you need to say them, and tell someone, and I understand, when the abyss appears bottomless to them. I understand, the belief that there is another end, a way out, a light there, doesn’t happen without someone there to promise you, and no one knows where to begin. I wish they would have had commercials for 1 800 suicide prevention on during the interview. I kept wishing that over and over.
I said this out loud when I read this post and I thought of editing myself but decided that the truth is the truth, no matter how raw.
“Fuuuuuucccckkkk, that’s some good and powerful writing right there.”
❤️
Never edit an ef bomb. They are frequently necessary 🙂
Profoundly true. Profoundly touching. Thank you.
I read the entire thing, nodding my head through it all. Having suffered terribly with post partum depression, I too felt the blackness creep in.
I am so happy that you didn’t open that bottle of pills. Your gifts are not all opened yet. There will be many more happy times. Happy your sweet husband had you in his life. ❤️
You were right. It was difficult to read. But I read it three times.
I do believe there are many of us who hide their pain as long as they can.
Everyone has a different secret and a way of managing the bottomless pit
In their stomach when something triggers it.
Bless you for your honest expression of pain that you have been dealing with.
Don’t ever stop writing . Please never stop writing.
You have no idea that you affect the pain in someone else’s heart and allow
Them to continue to live another day. ❤️Judy ❤️
Thank you for writing this.
Your writing is powerful because you are courageous and brave enough to write the truth about what life looks and feels like for you under your own personal microscope and you do not shy away when the microscope comes down low to show the really hard truths and intricacies of your life intricacies. Mark knew you had this ability in you. Not everyone does. It is not a sign of weakness to want to not live in this hard world anymore. But it an act of sheer strength to feel suicidal and still be alive to write and talk about it. I do not know you. But I am glad you are still here in this beautiful yet deeply broken world we all have trouble navigating as humans. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being brave enough to share your pain. Perhaps one day your blogs will become a book. I hope so. Sending an energy hug to you.
Kath, so many of your readers have said beautifully that you are keenly addressing a pain that is well known to people who have experienced this loss. I want to say that you have also set a new high bar for yourself in your writing. The more you explore your pain, the better a writer you are becoming. You don’t need me to tell you that, but I do need to tell you to keep protecting yourself, also. I see that you are vulnerable but wise. You have retrieved your life. I hope to be an old lady friend at your side for many years to come.
This is one of the most heart-wrenching and beautiful pieces I’ve read. Thank you for normalizing these feelings. I’ve been a therapist for years and clients are always shocked when I ask if they want to kill themselves and to tell me more if they do. It can’t be so taboo that someone can’t say the words. We are living in deeply challenging times and it is not crazy for your brain to tell you some wild things. That’s just a thought. You could have the thought that you want to rob a bank but again it’s a thought. That’s a huge difference. Sending you love and peace during these times.
No truer words were spoken.
Thank you for being such a strong voice for the people like myself who can not find the words.
❤️
Your story definitely isn’t finished yet. And by sharing your story, and by opening peoples’ eyes, by shedding bits of light on this very dark subject, you are making the right kind of difference.
I’m mortified about the way I used to talk about suicide. I was an uninformed idiot. Before I knew better. When I didn’t understand any of it. Before it touched my circle of acquaintances again, and again, and then again. And again!
Now I know more, I have a better understanding about depression, despair, and mental health struggles, and hopefully I never speak like the fool I was ever again.