I sat huddled on the floor, wanting to die. There were several ways I could accomplish this grim task: gunshot to the head, overdose, hanging. For months, I had been through all the possible variants of murdering me in my head.
I had decided to exsanguinate myself in the bathroom, arms draped over the edge of the tub full of warm water. I needed help, but I was embarrassed to ask for it. I was a wreck. I had recently admitted myself to the ER in a suicidal state. After a few hours, they sent me home.
I called the suicide hotline, as we are told that is what to do. The suicide hotline answered, a phone menu of choices, I selected whatever it said to. Then I waited, hold music playing in my ear. Fuck I wanted to die, and just be done with it. What the hell is taking them so long to answer?!? My mind is reeling with thoughts that if I could just do it, I would be at peace finally. Jesus Christ, why am I still on hold?!? Maybe I should just kill myself now and get it over with. I get redirected to another line, it rings, then I am on hold again. What the fuck! I have been on hold for over twenty minutes. All I can think of now is how angry I am that they aren’t helping me. I’m just angry that no one is helping me. The shambling suicide beast retreats to the edge of my mind, lurking there in the darkness. I hang up the phone after thirty minutes and I am pissed. For a while, I forget I want to kill myself.
Three days later, I have laid out a plan. On March 31st, 2018, I will murder myself. All my financial affairs are in order, I have written letters to those I care about. I sit in the chair and cannot understand fully what I am going through. There is only one option: to kill myself, as that will end it. I sit there weeping, distraught that it has come to this. Soon it will be over. For some reason, I pick up my computer and type “Suicide therapy Seattle’ into Google. In the first few results, I see something that catches my eye…
I had been in therapy for years off and on. I am a recovered meth addict and a recovered alcoholic. I am also a father and ex-husband 2x over. I have a successful career. I have a long list of problems and pain, and I can’t see the good parts of me or the world. There’s nothing to soothe myself with any longer. Therapy for me was bullshit. Sit in a room for an hour and talk about your problems and complain while someone else sits in a chair and nods. I would feel better after my sessions, like I accomplished something, but the beast would always come shambling back.
The website that caught my eye said that it was different. That it was successful. I found it at suicidetherapy.com. It used a therapy approach called Contextual-Conceptual Therapy, CCT. Well, what do I have to lose!? I can always kill myself later. I called, left a message, and filled out the online form. Then I read all I could about CCT while I sat and waited. Twenty minutes later, I get a text message response to my online message, asking me a few questions. He says there is an opening Friday, March 30th. I find this to be unbelievable. What therapist can see someone on such short notice? This guy must be a hack!! I decide to take the 2-hour slot at 10:30 am. If nothing came of it, I could always kill myself the next day, March 31st, the set date of my plan.
I lived a life based on fear. People’s words, actions, and intent were all against me. I wasn’t paranoid, the world was just a dark, ugly place. And I had had enough. I believe the genesis of this was when I was eleven or twelve years old, when I started having seizures. I would awake in the middle of the night in a terror, lose my sense of identity, hallucinate, and shake and shiver. I grew up in a very religious household. I remember the first time I seized like it was yesterday. I awoke not knowing who or where I was, but aware that I had lost myself. I was terrified. I heard voices and saw darkness all around me. I sat on the floor as my family looked on. I said, “I am evil, I need to die.” I remember my Mom calling the pastor, not the hospital. For the next forty years, my soul struggled with that moment. What if I was possessed, what if I was the devil?
Friday morning arrived, the morning of my “suicide therapy” appointment. I feel curious, but reserved. Will CCT be different, or more of the same? I have hope that it will. I need something different, otherwise, I am going to die. I drive an hour to the appointment and park. “Well, Kurt, this is it, do or die.” (there is some dark humor in that). I find the office and walk in. The therapist, who I nickname F, greets me and walks me into the room.
It’s a mess! What kind of therapy is this, I wonder? The room is filled with posters, toys, whiteboards, and mobiles hanging from the ceiling. Does he usually treat kids? He offers me a seat on a beach chair, low to the ground. He sits across from me, in the same kind of chair. We look at each other. I sense that he can see me.
I was heavily medicated: two anti-depressants and a large dose of anti-seizure meds. Finally, when I turned thirty, I was medicated for my seizures. They had gone away for many years after my teens, but had come roaring back just after my second son was born. Sometimes I had seizures three times a night, or more. I was finally diagnosed as having temporal lobe epilepsy, not demonic possession. That was a relief. I must have gone through 5-10 different medications in the following ten years. It was grueling. But at least I didn’t have the devil in me anymore.
We sit there in our chairs. In the first few moments, he says there are two rules in this room: “Don’t believe anything I say and don’t disbelieve anything I say.” I say “okay”, not fully understanding what that means. It seems contradictory. What the fuck. The next thing out of his mouth was:
“you are an asshole!”
Really? What the fuck, did my therapist just call me an asshole? I thought, ya know, he is right. “What kind of person wants to kill themselves?” He is right: I am an asshole that wants to murder myself. Somehow hearing it from someone else hit me like a tsunami. For a moment, I understand. I cry. I think he also has tears in his eyes. Can he really see me? I felt so disconnected, adrift, at odds with everyone, even myself. I was like a Golem trudging around, lifeless but determined. Determined to kill me and end this painful lifeless existence. That was the way I felt. But here was someone who saw something else, it seemed like he actually cared. What could he see that I could not? He could see ME.
We spent two hours in the room that day. Things looked slightly different. I see that maybe things aren’t as I thought they were, that maybe it was something I was doing that had caused my current state.
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
As we end the session and I am about to walk out the door, F asks me if I will promise not to take my life before Monday’s session. I wonder if I can make it two days? I think I can, as I glimpsed that maybe things can be different. I say yes, I will promise that. I have hope, something I haven’t had in a long long time.
As I open the door to leave, F says to me, “I love you.”
I remember thinking “well that’s good, because I certainly don’t love me.”