21: Death and the dying, part two

It was such a beautiful day, the day I died. Everything seemed to glow with a light from inside. It was so peaceful. I was at peace. Everything felt right. I was ready. And I have never been so relieved in my entire life: 

Finally, I could stop fighting. I didn’t have to fight anymore. I was done. It was over. Finally, the fighting was over. I could lean back. I could breathe.

I was so happy: I was going home. This life had been a rough one. And now it was finally over. Curtain call, bow, smile, done.

I sat there on the bench at the harbor front of my little town watching the sun set. It was so peaceful. The jazz band was playing in the back ground. I wasn’t afraid. Not at all. I was ready. 

When nothing happened I eventually got up. I started walking around the little town for hours. Suddenly I got afraid I hadn’t taken enough. What if just one pill would do the difference? What if I could have found just one more, and then it would be for sure? I started asking around if people had any medicine for head ache. I asked random people on the streets. I went into hotels with all night open receptions. I went into gaz stations. Most had a few pills for me, they were even so sweet to offer me a glass of water to take them with. I thanked them, and went out to ask the next person. In the end I found out I did have enough before even starting my quest for more. It was just the wrong kind.

Somewhere along the way the thought struck me that I would be a horrible guest on this planet if I didn’t give it one last chance to show me that kindness existed. One last chance, I thought. I would contact a women’s shelter, I decided. They could help, if they wanted to. 

This was exactly where the very common misconception that suicide has a look became dangerous.

They didn’t believe me. 

When I told them what had happened, they laughed. I’m dead serious. They really did. I was so shocked. These women. They were trained to help. One look at me, and they had judged me: I was just a girl from the party on the harbor who had quarreled with her boyfriend, they decided. They even shamed me; this was a serious establishment, I should have some respect. 

I reached out. I got laughed at. Please tell me again how people who die from suicide just should have reached out.

Utterly shattered, I stumbled back out. I fell asleep somewhere. Then I think I called my now ex-boyfriend to come and get me. He did. We didn’t talk. 

When I woke up the next morning the world had taken on a tinge of general grey. It was like someone had turned off a lamp inside of me and that now it was the time of eternal twilight.

I wasn’t even disappointed, that doesn’t even come close to describe the complete loss I felt. How could this have happened? I have done everything in my power to not have to open my eyes again.

And yet here I was, eyes open. 

I asked my ex:

- Imagine someone takes say a lot of pills. Should they be around still, you think?

Not because I was looking for a reaction. Definitely not because I wanted him to stay with me, and thought I might rope him in if he felt sorry for me. No. I genuinely didn’t understand. He reacted with sheer panic. Stuffed me in his car and drove me to the hospital. I had checked completely out at that point. 

I remember a doctor. He had asked my boyfriend to step out of the room. Probably thinking I might not feel at liberty to speak freely with him in the room. I’m not sure I was in a state of mind where I would have registered the difference. 

The doctor really wanted me to say I regretted what I had done. I remember his eyes. They were so sad. And his gaze so adamant at the same time. But I didn’t regret. Not at all. 

In the end I realized he just wanted to know whether or not I would do it again right now.

- I don’t regret, but I am not going to try again right this minute, my final compromise was. I was not going to lie. I did not regret. 

It was not the rosy colored Hollywood ending where the girl wakes up, regrets, and bursts out into hallelujahs that she was still alive.

No. I had meant it. I was deeply depressed, now, that it didn’t take. And having to lie about that to please a stranger or even anyone close to me was out of my reach. I couldn't. I needed the world to stop wanting everything to be what it was not. No matter how uncomfortable the actual reality made them. I wanted real. 

Oh, and yes, that’s right. NOW I was depressed. Not before. Now. Yes, that is possible, no, I’m not delusional. Please have the decency to actually realize I just might know what I’m talking about, since I was the one actually living through this. And also the one who has had 11 years since it happened to gather research and knowledge on the mechanisms behind. And who has done a great deal of public speaking on the subject, and also talked to a lot of other people who committed suicide themselves. One of them went on to create my country’s first around the clock help line. He is amazing, and still alive. Others do not dare speak about it publicly because they are afraid of being shamed. With good reason, too. 

So yes, I do actually know what I’m talking about. I lived it. I live it still. And now I am talking. For me. And for all the others who are silenced every day. 

*

I count my years in 30 + however many years have passed since I died. Yes, I say died. Because this was no attempt. I don’t believe that it only ‘counts’ if you never wakes up again. I was gone. I went. I departed this planet. I had zero plans of return. And yet I did. That was not what I wanted. And it is frankly not a help that people tell me how grateful I should be about that. It’s just another way to shame me, and let me sit with all that happened alone.

Growing up in abuse where you can never trust that what you are told is also the actual reality, I became allergic to anything but the real very early on. Telling someone who just realized their suicide didn’t take that they should be happy they’re alive is departing from what is real in order to focus on what is comfortable. For you. Not them. If they are actually not happy about being alive. Some are. Which is wonderful. But let the person this just happened to decide which one it is. If they’re not happy to wake up, you telling them to be elicits one thing only: It tells them you think they should be happy. It tells them you don’t want to hear they are not. It tells them you can’t deal with the reality that is theirs. It tells them they better be quiet with their reality, because it is unwanted. It leaves them alone. While you burry yourself in denial. So really it leaves everybody alone. Instead take a moment and be actually present. Sit down. And listen. Be ready to hear what you hope you wouldn’t hear. Be ready not to try and make it something different to ligthen the mood. Because it’s not lightening the mood. Again, it just leave the other person alone, while you hide in your denial of what is real and right in front of you. It’s not a help. Not even to you. 

Actual, this is a chance. It is such a great chance. Especially for families who does not usually actually talk to each other. It is a chace to really listen. To be there. To let the other one know that you see their pain, you can handle it, you can stand in that place right now with them. They are not alone.

In my case my family didn’t talk to me. Those first days I remember one thing, and that was silence. I had a sense that even the nurses on the unit didn’t know what to say. I think I heard someone mumble something about it being too bad and I was so young. I don’t remember the doctor coming back, he probably just needed to know whether or not I would jump out the window. I was so depressed I could hardly move. The only thing I wanted was for none of this to be. I wanted to be gone. I wanted to be back in that peace I had felt, when I was walking out of this world. I wanted to be home, and home to be was always ultimately not here at all. 

I later learned it wasn’t my boyfriend who called my parents. It was the girl I had thought was my best friend. It wasn’t until I began speaking about it publicly that she and I spoke about the suicide again. My boyfriend had called her back then as the only one. He knew better than to call my parents. He knew that was a very, very bad idea. But the girl decided that I shouldn’t be his responsibility. I never got that. All it told me then and now is that she actually never believed me. She must have decided a long time ago that I was exaggerating when I told her about my family. Or she would have never called them.. Mind you, that is an extremely common reaction from anyone who hears about any life happening in abuse. That is why the first question most women hear is ‘why didn’t she just leave him’? As if it is on her, really. The responsibility is hers. The question is never ‘why didn’t he just stop’. It goes to show both the incredible amount of sexism seeping through all parts of our society: Even being beaten is not the responsibility of he who beats, it is the fault of her who gets the fist. So my friend hadn’t believed me all those years. There I was the most vulnerable I had ever been, and you call the people who broke me? No. To have left me completely alone would have been better. I know she believed she did the reasonable thing. She just wanted to help. But sometimes help is not actually a help, it’s the exact opposite. Then I thought my boyfriend called them. When I saw them, I went into survival mode, my protective walls went up immediately.

I had just turned 30. He had called them then as well. I have no idea why. My birthday was eating out with him and my parents. It was awkward to say the least. They were angry with me for not being grateful enough. I was incapable of dealing with the lack of honesty. It was not a good idea. I never thought he would call them again at a time like this. But then, he never did.

The hospital had wanted me to go to a psych evaluation. I had never been admitted to a psych ward in my life, although I could maybe have benefitted a few time, especially if psych wards were better funded and in a place to really help. But I never had, and being in one was freaking me out. I did not like it there one bit. Especially not once they had let me and my ex in through their double locked doors, and they slammed shut behind us. I knew that he could leave anytime he wanted. I couldn’t, they wanted to evaluate me first. The stigma hit me plain in the face and it hurt. As if a place can say anything about your worth as a human being. 

It was a building made sometime in the 70’s. All yellow varnished wood and oddly colored red brick. No light. An orderly came along, opened a door into a room where the bed and the table were bolted to the floor, and looked at me:

- This is your room, he said with a fake cheer.

I just stared at him. That was definitely not my room. Staying here would be over my dead body. That was not happening. 

He invited us to sit in the hallway while we waited for the therapist to come evaluate me. I think maybe my face gave away my thoughts on the room.

That was when I saw my parents. I feel so bad about it. But it made my heart drop. They were standing outside the double locked doors. Maybe I asked if they could please stay out there. They looked so lost. Like they actually wanted something else than this for me. I do believe they did. They never said, though. They never addressed it at all. And I knew they wouldn’t. I knew that this did not spell help for me. And everything in me geared up into pulling resources. I needed to get out of here, quick. They could not see me in a place like this. However much they really wanted to help right now, it would at some point soon spell everything they had ever constructed about me, every tale they had spun about me being crazy and unstable (and so unreliable and a liar – so no one would believe should I ever talk about what was happening at home behind closed doors. The weapon of choice to silence victims of abuse everywhere. It’s so common its almost cliché. Except for the fact that those silenced – and those who speak up anyway - tends to be the ones who are left bearing the burdens).

It also made the heart breaking reality of paradox so clear. That you love your parents no matter what. And that they love you. And they hurt you, too. And that you probably hurt them back. It is an uneven power struggle though, the child always the looser for obvious reasons. Placing responsibility for abusive homes on the children is role reversal at its worst. I’m sorry. But the child can be a devil from hell. But it is not at fault. It is not on the child to turn an abusive home around. It just isn’t. That is the job of a parent. Parents who do not take that seriously, but shove it away, and so often onto their children, are refusing to accept that this is a point in their lives where they are not the child anymore. Making it right is nobody’s job but theirs.

I still wish my parents would have taken the opportunity to do that now, at the time where I as a child needed them the most. That this would have been the moment where we could finally talk openly about just how destructive their house had been. How we needed to change. How this was an opportunity to finally talk and grow as human beings. Together.

Instead there was silence. 

When the therapist finally came, she had brought a student along. My death was a great learning moment apparently. That was my first clue to how they didn’t exactly see this as a big deal at all. The next clue was the cheeriness of the therapist. She was all: ‘Heeeeeeey, so you're Johanne, good to meet you, let’s sit down, shall we?’ big smiles, sitting at ‘my’ table in that horrible room where not an army of wild animals could make me stay. I was ready. It was game time.

Here’s another thing you learn real quick growing up in abuse. You learn to give the world what it wants to hear. I learned early on that no grown ups around me wanted to hear anything about how horrible I felt living where I did. They would have been obligated to do something if they had heard. So they made sure they heard nothing. Abuse is always aided by the bystanders. The ones who have an idea but pretends they know nothing. Don’t hear, don’t see, don’t act. Easy. 

So now I knew exactly wat to do. I was well trained. I knew exactly what they wanted me to say. So I said it: ‘Oh, no that was a terrible mistake, I didn’t mean any of it, I’m all better now, hahaha, what a day, so sorry to have taken your time with this.’

It took ten minutes.

You would have thought maybe one of them would have taken the time to ask me how I was. How I really was. That they maybe were tought to see through bull like that. That just maybe they could have picked up on my fear of my parents reaction outside the door. That maybe also what had happened hadn’t sunk in yet. That I didn’t know what exactly had happened at all. What it meant. What would happen now. Where would I go, what were my options.

Nothing.

They handed me a card, and said they would call after a few days, and then follow up every other month.

Of course they never called. I never expected them to.

I’m so thankful to my ex that he was with me in that place.

We were out in no time. Only to open the doors to my parents. My mother spoke first. 

- It’s such a beautiful day. Let’s go out and get a great lunch, she said.

That was it. 

So we did. It was like nothing had ever happened. That they had simply driven a few hours to have lunch with us. Except I was no longer with the man across the table from me. And the other man had beaten me and abused me until I had nothing left. And the last person at the table had let him. 

It was not a great day. 


But the weather was indeed wonderful.

It’s hard for me to write, because I don’t want to say anything that might hurt my parents. I love them so much. I know they did everything as best they could. I know they don’t think they are parents of the year, of any year. I also know they still deny anything out of the ordinary ever happened in our home. And as long as that is the case, it all lies with me. I don’t want to carry centuries of harm form neither of their lineages. It is not on me. As long as it is the abuse continues. 

*

Back then I had one wish. I so wished that just one person would see me. That I had just one person in my life that loved me enough to know what I needed. What I needed was for someone else to take over. I really wished I had someone who would just scoop me up, wrap me in blankets, stuff me into a car and drive me to the south of France. All I wanted was to be put on a chair in a ray of sun in some backwater French country side town with wobbly tables on a sidewalk café with a glass of red wine and some great food. Not expecting me to speak. Not expecting me to do anything, but just sit there, in the gentle sun, and come to terms with what had happened to me. Who would love me enough to give me the gift of just a little time, love and red wine. 

My friend got annoyed at me when I told her this once. She had work. She really couldn’t just take time off like that. It was my first clue to how maybe she was and I were never as close as I had thought. I didn’t know yet that she had been the one to get my parents there. I knew, though, that I would have quit any job on the spot to be there for her, had the tables been turned. She did one amazing thing. She yelled at my family. She told me years later. They had a habit of talking right over my head like I wasn’t even there. Like I was clinically insane now, so they wouldn’t even have to include me in conversations – about me. 

- Talk to HER, she yelled. She is right there!

Didn’t help of course. 

I remember my brother taking time to talk to me in his car one time. It was a great conversation. I remember it as if we finally talked to each other instead of him getting angry with me. I was so depressed I couldn’t do anything but just be painfully real then. I told him how our parents being there was taking the rest of all I got. I feel like we were on the same page. That talk will always stay with me, it meant the world that he was there in that moment. It’s the only time in our lives it happened. One week later I was sleeping on his couch in Copenhagen. He had a spare room, but didn’t feel like emptying it so I could be there. I moved in there anyway, his puppy wasn’t letting me sleep, when I was on the couch. So I was on the bare floor in his spare room. A day later my aunt called me at yelled at me for half an hour. Nothing related to the suicide, she didn't mention that at all. She just wanted to let me know that I single handedly had ruined their relationship to their best friends. I never understood how she could arrive at that conclusion. Something about me lying about … I don’t even know. It was so meaningless. A few days later my brother kicked me out. I was now on the streets. Incredible friends let me stay in their places when they went on holiday. I had a few things that I lugged around in plastic bags. Once I asked my brother to help drive me from one place to the next. He spent the time yelling at me until I cried, then he just kept going.

Then I landed a great job. Everybody were happy. 

-       That’s what I did when I lost my last girl friend, my brother said:

-       Work, work, work.

Somehow completely missing the point about me not being where I was because I had lost my boyfriend. This was never about just heart break. It was about my life. My death. And our family was a very big part of that. He didn’t want to see. We don’t talk anymore. Not because of that as much as because of all it came of, because to him, like to the rest of them, there is only one problem: me. Easy. 

*

Six months later I collapsed with stress. I hit my head on the window sill going down and got a concussion. It’s chronic now. It’s been 11 years. I lost everything after that. My health, my job, my home. My love was already gone. My family now finally followed suit for good, with their insistance that even my illness (confirmed be several different medical doctors the best in their field) was made up, and then that my loss of government support wasn't real. Um. I gave up trying to convey a reality I had no escape from to people who wanted to stay in a dream world where things they didn't want to or know how to deal with just didn't exist. Finally realizing it is actually better for my health to rely on myself than on people who aren't actually there. I was so sick, poor, and living in random places again. I kept fighting. That I am still standing at all, however wobbly and granted most days I'm not, is one of the best proofs to me that miracles are incredibly real. 

*

Consider this: That I happened to have the wrong kind of pills on the shelf at home. That I didn't die despite very serious efforts to achieve a different outcome. That I then survived those first months on the street after moving out of the home I thought I would be in for years to come with husband and children. That I then survived diving straight into work without having processed what had happened to me at all, the silence around me a strong signal to shut up. Then the extreme illness following an untreated concussion. The years and years of medical interventions that followed. The loss of everything. In the years of my life where everybody else were securing great careers, getting married, having children - all the things I wanted, but that were out of my reach (dating is frankly not a priority when your trying to make ends meet to get food). And now 11 years of horrible chronical illness with no help (I’m still ill, I'm still broke, I still have no 'team' for support not by choice, but by the obvious lack of anything that could make up something even ressembling a team - this is 'lady doing it for herself because she damn well has to' start to finish). 

That I am even here at all. I have had close brushes with death so many times – not just suicide, but random things that put me on the brink of death. I was never allowed to go. And now this? Being not just alive, not just breathing, but finally beginning to live the truth I have carried with me always. Now a perpetual pilgrim, wandering the roads of the world with no end date. Just being with the Light I always knew was the only thing that made any sense to me. The only reality I ever knew was real. Now I walk with that. Oh, and you know being able to eat most days. Taking a shower. Sleeping in a bed. Miracles. You guys. They are everywhere. We just need to open our eyes and see.