away from my trusty computer

just a note....i'm working on a laptop and i don't like it....i will have my desktop back in a couple of days and i will check in then....thanks

What's Missing...

I decided to finally crack that first journal open and start reading it from the beginning, which starts right after I got home from the mental ward of the hospital, which was January 25, 2011.  I will share some of my experiences from that time in a few....because first I have to say that I am perplexed....there is a huge gap of empty space, with the carefully torn-off stubs in the notebook, which is a gap from an entry on 3-9-11 to an entry on 11-30-11, so someone took a whole bunch of pages out of this notebook.  I don't know who or why, even racking my brain to think if I did it for some reason.  very weird and unsettling.  i can't find the missing pages anywhere.  more than a little freaky, that's for sure.  well, i will say that there were good things and bad things...the stronger i got physically the more i realized that things were very, very bad...my marriage was dead, my children, mother, all lived through me or did things because of me or to spite me, you name it. i spent all of my time trying to make everyone happy before my attempt.  and at first, after my attempt, i spent a good bit of my very limited energy trying to reassure everyone that i was okay, that i didn't need to be watched, that it was all just a little bump in the road.  ridiculous....then it hit me what i was doing, falling right back into the life i had done my best to leave - and my family, they were happily letting me do just that.
When i started going to therapy, which was, in journal time, shortly before the gap of missing pages, or the middle of march, 2011, it didn't take long for me to realize that i was not crazy, they were crazy.  They had sucked the life right out of me, each in their own way.  and i had to tell them that, and i did, eventually.  of course the blameless denied, the passive aggressive said it was all their fault, in an effort to get me to disagree and take the responsibility.  it was so strange, as i learned to step outside of my world enough to see my former life and my new life and the timeline of it all  laid out for me to review.  I could see why my childhood had started haunting me....i was never good enough, or jewish enough, or christian enough, or short enough, or pretty enough, or dumb enough.....i never fit into the world that i had to live in.  i tried to fit, and i was berated, and  i tried to be my own person, and i was ostracized.  it didn't end with school, either.  my work life was the same, most of the time.  my relationships as well.  it all makes sense from this side of the timeline.  
but there was a definite pattern and a simple explanation why i spent almost 30 years trying to be a perfect wife, mother, friend, daughter, person. why i was determined that everything could be okay...i could be both parents to my sons and a mother to my mother and my husband.  i was stretched a wee bit thin.  when i started group therapy i was totally unprepared for the people that i would encounter and feel a great camaraderie with.  i think i really felt like i belonged for the first time ever.  considering the very different existences that we all had, we had great commonalities as well.  I was amazed mostly at the power that the mothers had over almost every one of these people, all who had been in therapy a long time.  I was feeling rather normal...don't worry, that didn't last!
I will search for my missing pages....they tell the real story, from what i recall.  that may be why someone absconded with them.  but they have to be somewhere, and i will ferret them out if they still exist.  they must be pretty damning to someone...or someone's proof that i'm crazy or something....we'll see!

Well, Not Yet...

I think that I know too much about what I thought when I first started writing my thoughts down, and how that my first journal contains some huge shifts in my universe.  I guess I'm not ready to look at that quite yet.  I will get there.  I have learned many lessons, sometimes been bludgeoned with them, repeatedly.  There is a long range ripple effect caused by a suicide, even a failed attempt.  I think maybe the failed attempt is so different from someone actually ending their mortal life, in how it ripples out to others close to you.  I am still seeing the damage incurred by others.  I see my oldest son, and adult, at least in physical years, and I know that the problems he is having now, didn't start now, but started after my suicide.  It has changed his relationships with other people, and not in a good way.  He has, in some way that I'm not privy to, alienated and hurt people, caused them to push him away.  I have tried hard to understand him and this huge 'thing that can't be named' that has come about in his life.  He is not going to let me in, at least not any time soon.  One of the many things I have to live with, carry around with myself.  Now he is leaving behind his worldly possessions, cutting ties, and hitting the road with a backpack to find himself out there.  It terrifies me, but I know he has to do this.  I will likely see him for the last time in a long time today.  It doesn't seem real, but it is and I have to support him, even as I ache inside at the thought of something bad happening to him.  I was raised on fear and I did not do that to my children, but there is still a little of it left inside me, even after suicide.  I am not afraid of death, I'm afraid of loss.  Afraid that the universe isn't finished exacting payment for what I did.  Well, I will be strong for myself today...I will cry later.

Journal #1: Not Just Yet....

I admit it...I'm a little bit chicken about cracking open that first journal.  I will, and soon, just not today!  In the meantime....let me tell you more about the hospital...more about how I got there...
I wasn't supposed to live.  I took an incredible amount of drugs and if my husband hadn't arrived home uncharacteristically on time, my suicide would have been a success.  Just a few more minutes would have made all the difference.  I don't remember the actual drugging...I remember little bits and pieces....I have a vivid picture of mixing up the drugs with water and vodka, a white mixture, trying to get all of the pills to melt.
I kind of remember that I wrote out a will and notes to everyone in my family....I don't remember doing it so much as just know that I did...I remember that I made sure everything was done: all of the animals were fed, the house was straight, etc.  I remember that I had decided to lay down to die in the spare bedroom, so as not to make it uncomfortable for my husband to sleep in our bed.  I was very accommodating right to the end.  I tried to make what was to be my death as simple and comfortable for everyone as I could.  Isn't that crazy?  I had lived that way for so long, so many years, that I wouldn't think of inconveniencing anyone with my death.  I just wanted to be gone.  I did not want to live the life I was 'living' any longer.  And I had completely convinced myself that the ONLY way to fix my problem was suicide.  I felt that I didn't have the money or any place to go where I wouldn't be 'inconveniencing' someone.  I made myself believe...and I also felt that some of the things I would be facing soon I would just rather be dead than have to go through.  There is a huge amount of irony regarding that, and I will get to it a little later.
Its funny, it seems like some crazy story now, I have no physical scars or real memories to make me believe it happened.  I do know what happened to all of my family and friends, however.  Believe me, they let me know.  When I woke up, I thought I was upside down, laying upside down, but they say this isn't so.  My family and friends came in two by two to say hello to me....at this time I was still tied to the bed and intubated (?), so I couldn't move really or speak.  It all seemed like it happened in a couple of minutes, but I'm told that this went on for hours, because I went in and out of consciousness.  I do remember two young psychiatrists-to-be that came in and started yelling at me...things like 'why did you do this?' ' what is wrong with you?' ' don't you know what a horrible thing you did?'   They totally scared the hell out of me....I didn't know what they were talking about, so they freaked me out.  They were later reported to the head of their department for their 'bedside manners' or lack thereof.  I don't really know how long I was in there once I woke up.  I know at some point they took the tube out from down my throat, and took my catheter out as well so that I could go to the bathroom in a chair thing in the ICU while being watched and helped (I was extremely weak)  It was only the beginning of the indignities that I had to suffer in these early days of my re-birthing.
I'm tired now....I'll try to add another installment soon....thanks for your patience and understanding.

Journal #1: Not Just Yet....

I admit it...I'm a little bit chicken about cracking open that first journal.  I will, and soon, just not today!  In the meantime....let me tell you more about the hospital...more about how I got there...
I wasn't supposed to live.  I took an incredible amount of drugs and if my husband hadn't arrived home uncharacteristically on time, my suicide would have been a success.  Just a few more minutes would have made all the difference.  I don't remember the actual drugging...I remember little bits and pieces....I have a vivid picture of mixing up the drugs with water and vodka, a white mixture, trying to get all of the pills to melt.
I kind of remember that I wrote out a will and notes to everyone in my family....I don't remember doing it so much as just know that I did...I remember that I made sure everything was done: all of the animals were fed, the house was straight, etc.  I remember that I had decided to lay down to die in the spare bedroom, so as not to make it uncomfortable for my husband to sleep in our bed.  I was very accommodating right to the end.  I tried to make what was to be my death as simple and comfortable for everyone as I could.  Isn't that crazy?  I had lived that way for so long, so many years, that I wouldn't think of inconveniencing anyone with my death.  I just wanted to be gone.  I did not want to live the life I was 'living' any longer.  And I had completely convinced myself that the ONLY way to fix my problem was suicide.  I felt that I didn't have the money or any place to go where I wouldn't be 'inconveniencing' someone.  I made myself believe...and I also felt that some of the things I would be facing soon I would just rather be dead than have to go through.  There is a huge amount of irony regarding that, and I will get to it a little later.
Its funny, it seems like some crazy story now, I have no physical scars or real memories to make me believe it happened.  I do know what happened to all of my family and friends, however.  Believe me, they let me know.  When I woke up, I thought I was upside down, laying upside down, but they say this isn't so.  My family and friends came in two by two to say hello to me....at this time I was still tied to the bed and intubated (?), so I couldn't move really or speak.  It all seemed like it happened in a couple of minutes, but I'm told that this went on for hours, because I went in and out of consciousness.  I do remember two young psychiatrists-to-be that came in and started yelling at me...things like 'why did you do this?' ' what is wrong with you?' ' don't you know what a horrible thing you did?'   They totally scared the hell out of me....I didn't know what they were talking about, so they freaked me out.  They were later reported to the head of their department for their 'bedside manners' or lack thereof.  I don't really know how long I was in there once I woke up.  I know at some point they took the tube out from down my throat, and took my catheter out as well so that I could go to the bathroom in a chair thing in the ICU while being watched and helped (I was extremely weak)  It was only the beginning of the indignities that I had to suffer in these early days of my re-birthing.  
I'm tired now....I'll try to add another installment soon....thanks for your patience and understanding.

Let Me Introduce Myself

I committed suicide on January 14th, 2011.  Trouble was, i woke up in the Trauma ICU three days later (give or take a few hours) completely confused about where i was and why i was there.  I have been writing a journal since i allowed myself to be committed to the Psych ward on January 18th, 2011.  I will be using the journals, as well as information given me by family and friends, to reconstruct the death of one life, the birth of another, growing up at hyperspeed, and all of the ironic events along the way.
I would love to hear from anyone who has had a similar experience.  I know i'm not the only one out there in the world to whom the universe granted a 'do-over'.