Coping with suicidal ideation

The existence of this post is proof I got through it

Disclaimer: This post deals with the heavy topic of suicidal ideation. Kindly note that this post is about 10 days of sequence. Suicide is a very serious matter. Suicidal ideation is perhaps the first step. As a factual backdrop to this post, I will share the context. My divorce has led me down a path of what at times has been feelings of injustice, My ex has behaved very badly, spiriting away our business, breaking into my and my children’s home, lying to the court, disregarding judicial orders…and what makes it bad is that she has largely gotten away with it…and indeed, succeeded in using the judicial system as a way to punish me. I won’t say just how much money has been wasted on our divorce, other than to say it was more than we could afford…and was more than 6 figures. As one judge quipped, you have spent more on this process than either of you will get. And this upset me greatly as I have worked since I was a child to build what I have, what we had. But as my taxi driver said as I left court, “money, things, don’t mean much. You have you, your integrity, and you’re free.” She was right, but getting here has been hard.

In the run up to the final hearings, I spent a lot of time crying. Very emotional. When my children left for school or for long trips, they saw me choked with emotion. A perverse benefit of the divorce is how much closer we have become.

I was terrified of acting as a litigant in person (without lawyers) as I couldn’t afford it anymore–or rather, decided that not going further into debt to pay for it, in hopes that at least not spending money on legal fees would keep it in the family. It was the preparation that I went through to go from having no lawyers to being able to represent myself that transformed me from someone who felt like a victim to someone who had some control over their destiny.

Much of this post came about right at the beginning of that preparation process. It was the act of preparing which saved me. But as I headed into it, I turned to my therapist for support and a few key friends. During the trial I had therapy each day. I also contacted a therapist local to the town where the hearings were, in case of emergency. She connected me to trans support groups and to suicide help lines. My main therapist had me draw up a list of the people I could call if it became too much, and made me do it…and we talked about who was on the list and why and what would stop me from calling them. She wanted me to reach out to them to tell them I was vulnerable. I wouldn’t do it. I told her, “talking about suicide or even that it might be there, is too hard for me. I am not a talker. I am a doer. If I “decide” to do it, it will just happen, and there won’t be any discussion.

I’m writing a book right now about “becoming me”…this blog is a part of it. But the chapter in question is about how when I lived in Miami, there was a period that I wouldn’t go out onto my balcony, for fear of leaping. It was high enough to ensure instant success.

I publish this post aware of how triggering this topic might be, but also to show how we can be overwhelmed, stare into the abyss, yet still turn away.

I love to write. I live to write. Indeed, I’m even alive because I write.

But the muse is gone. She’s gone because of stress. Stress kills creativity.

Stress kills the muse. Stress makes it impossible to write. And yet, the action of writing is resistance.

I’m often astounded by how many blogging colleagues, and I do call you all colleagues, mention that life has taken over and that you have not been able to write and are apologising to us, your readers, about how you have not been able to keep us up to date. But in truth, the apology must be given to the self, for it is an act of betrayal to the self, at least for me, when I don’t put pen to paper, even just as a metaphor. My divorce has become all-consuming.

I have vacillated between bouts of tears, long, deep, profound funks, a feeling of suffocation, more than just a pounding in my chest, but a feeling that the cage itself would crush the beat from my heart and that I would no longer be able to breathe. I find myself out of breath, not exercising, not practising self-care, not sleeping as much, unable to sleep, going through a period which I would say may be the darkest period I’ve ever been through. I would be lying to say that I’ve not been suicidal, and suicide is not something one takes lightly.

It is a factor when one is overwhelmed, perhaps by self-pity or by the feelings of being a victim. But I refuse that feeling, and I am blessed with a network of people who wittingly and unwittingly sustain me, keep me alive. My therapist asked me to put together a list of people who I could call in case of overwhelm, who I could call in case things became too much and I was no longer able to fight the demons off on my own.

And I realised in the process of thinking, just thinking about what she asked, that I was unwilling to actually do it, that I would be unwilling to make those calls, that I would be unwilling to ask that of my friends. And yet, shouldn’t I be? But simply the act of asking felt like too much. And I said to my therapist, and this is what I believe to be true, that I’m not the kind of person who contemplates suicide.

I am not the kind of person who contemplates doing anything. I do. That is my way.

I have always just done. I don’t spend an awful lot of time cogitating, mulling things over, evaluating them. I’m confident in action because I believe that it is through action we learn, we live, we adapt, and new opportunities awaken.

By creating facts on the ground, life opportunities open before us. And so I said to my therapist, I’m not going to call somebody if I’m in trouble. If I want to kill myself, I’m just going to do it.

And of course, that admission and the depths of despair which has engulfed me to varying degrees over the past month, in these final days before my divorce hearing, have proved a kind of watershed moment for me. And some of you, dear readers, have engaged with me, and that is much appreciated. I have also developed a relationship with my own resistance to reaching out to friends for help.

And I have now contacted two people, organised a list of suicide helplines, and have specifically discussed with an emergency room friend of mine who has the ability to intervene on a medical level if necessary, to be my 3 a.m. friend. And she has risen to the challenge marvellously. But far more than any of these things in helping me navigate this period has been the necessity of preparing my own defence for court.

I elected, I should say, I call this a choice, a piece of free will, to represent myself in U.K. divorce court. This is what is known as being a litigant in person. And while the stats are not particularly favourable for those of us who defend ourselves when our opponent is armed to the teeth with a team of five who are clearly willing to stop at nothing, whether ethical or downright dishonest, in order to plead my ex’s case.

Nevertheless, this act of preparing myself, of having this enormous list of things that I agonised over, to be prepared to be able to defend myself, working through them one by one, has not just served to help me master the brief and know exactly what happened when and what is the truth and what isn’t, but has also given me a sense of mastery of what’s going to happen. And although I do not wish to possess hubris, I do possess a calm confidence that things are going to go my way. Soon enough, I’ll know if that’s true, but I enter into this process with a level of confidence that I couldn’t have imagined before.

And my despair is lifting. Adieu.