Monday
I’m not gonna lie, it’s pretty weird waking up the day after you’ve made the decision to kill yourself. Not least because it means you’re still alive. I was safely ensconced at Dominique’s house, but really trapped in limbo.
To Dominique and her husband’s (Rich) credit, they were endlessly kind and concerned, but were neither nannying me, nor running around trying to hide the bleach or anything. It was all slightly surreal; logging into my laptop at their kitchen table to start work. As though it’s just another day. The surrealness is magnified by the fact that I’m wearing some Uggs for the first time ever – these have been proffered as a vital survival tool to combat the Arctic temperatures of their kitchen. I’d actually been shivering for days as as reaction to the stress of everything, so I’m never really sure whether I’m even hot or cold on any given day.
Rich is at the other end of the table in some all-weather clothing of his own. We quickly establish The Ground Rules of successfully co-working from home. I fail utterly at Giving A Shit About Football, but I redeem myself by being Very Handy At Crosswords.
I take a couple of calls for work and try to get my head together. But really, all I’m doing is working the problem of how I’m going to kill myself. I’m obviously not going to do it at Dominique and Rich’s. But the urge hasn’t lessened. If anything, it’s crystallised in my mind. It’s palpable.
My phone rings. It’s my friend Chris, who’s been checking in with me every few days as he knows I’m in bad shape. Today’s the day he finds out just how bad that shape is as I let him know of my decision to kill myself. Again, speaking to him and saying it out loud doesn’t dissuade me, it just reinforces the central logic of the decision. Chris is amazing (as usual), albeit shocked and deeply affected. He asks me to keep in touch and to just wait, that things will get better. I make him no promises, but say that I have some time in the absence of a method. Time, my adversary for so many weeks, has now become the one thing keeping me alive. Yet it still feels like my enemy.
An hour later, my friend Bharvi calls. She’s also just checking in. I break the same news to her. She implores me to change my mind and keeps trying to convince me that things will improve. I just don’t believe this any more.
This thought of suicide, that came to me so swiftly and so fully-formed, is now out in the world. Tangible, almost.
Without really knowing why, I quickly set up a WhatsApp group of around 20 of my closest friends. Each of these I’ve always known I could call at 4am and they’d drop whatever they needed to help. I have the luxury of picking from a much longer list and it strikes me once again that someone with this many genuinely incredible friends shouldn’t feel as lonely as I do. But mind works the way the mind works, I guess…
I write:
With this missive sent (and ducking-out of the group accomplished), I did the only thing a woman in my situation could do – I went to Greggs with Dominique. And, yes, of course a sausage roll was had. And a chicken sandwich that was more mayo than chicken, but was on a brown roll, so still ostensibly a health food (there was lettuce also, for any of you clean-eating Nazis).
The rest of the afternoon trickled by and I realised that given that my closest friends were now broadly aware of my intentions (although some of the messages I was receiving suggested that they thought this was regular break-up blues rather than arsenic o’clock), I had to put in a call to my parents. I knew and was relieved that Mum would likely answer – my Dad is a veritable leviathan in certain ways, but has no capacity to deal with anything on the emotional spectrum. And this was totes emoshe.
I let Dominique know that I was going to make The Call and dialled home. I hope you never have to make a call like this, but it’s fucking weird to ring your mum to tell her that you’ve decided you just don’t want to live any more and you’re letting her know that you’re not sure how much longer you’ll be around. Oh, and can she let Dad know? Because it’s all a bit awks. ALSO, you’ve no plans to go home for a visit. Because I didn’t and still don’t. I can’t really explain this. Maybe a medical professional will crowbar it out of me.
I’ve so far avoided detailing the convs I had on this topic, but they are all broadly the same – I’m remarkably consistent in my language and thought patterns .
So here’s what I told my mum, which didn’t differ meaningfully from what I’d told anyone else:
- I had decided to kill myself
- It was currently the only viable option. I felt only clarity, calm and relief when I contemplated it
- I felt too much pain and sadness and chaos and loss and desolation and loneliness and devastation to bear
- I had no energy left to pull myself out of this hole
- I was totally fucking exhausted
- I was so tired of taking care of myself all the time
- I’d realised that I didn’t want to be single any longer, but in the absence of a viable gentleman caller, any loneliness I already felt was compounded a thousandfold
- Whilst the break-up was the rawest part of this, I was questioning every aspect of my life and it felt as though the middle of me had been ripped out. I had no fucking idea who I was any more. I certainly didn’t like the wretched creature currently inhabiting my body, but I couldn’t see a better version rising from the ashes
- Even if I could somehow get past this, I had lost any hope of there being a future left that I would want to live
- The person that I had been even 4 months previously was gone and couldn’t be resurrected
- I’d always been happy, I had no regrets, life had always come pretty easily and I wasn’t up for sticking it out now that things had got hard. And they seemed so hard.
- I’d rather kill myself now, with the knowledge that I’d had a really good life, rather than roll the dice on a future that seemed to contain nothing but emptiness, pain, frustration, loneliness, disappointment and despair.
- I was terrified of becoming one of those women I’ve always pitied (compassionate pity, but pity nonetheless) who are desperate for a man and that reek of need and desperation only makes the likelier to stay single
And that’s really it. Those are the reasons I can’t or don’t want to go on. And I am so aware of those who have experienced more trauma and who are somehow getting through the day. But suffering isn’t a competition and I am all out of resilience. I feel no guilt about that at all.
My mum took it like a champ, given the circumstances – although I think she was understandably in shock. She told me over and over again how sorry she was that I felt so sad and that she wished she could take it away. And then there was really nothing left to say. For now. She asked me to promise to email her the following day to let me know I was doing ok. I said “Fuck you Mum. Fucking call me. For fuck’s sake”. It felt the right thing to say at the time… She said she would. We told each other that we loved each other very much and ended the call.
So. Monday. Didn’t kill myself. Told people that the end was likely nigh. Had a sausage roll. Let’s call it a 5/10.
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