Glitch, Author at Welcome

The Shambling Suicide Beast

The shambling suicide beast is what I call it. In the darkest times of my despair, it would arrive, from somewhere on the dark horizon of my mind it would appear, on the edges of my perception, it would come crashing through my inner landscape to bear down on me, crushing the will to live from my soul.

I wasn’t constantly suicidal. Some days were OK, most days weren’t. On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is “I’m going to kill myself”, and 10 is “I can’t believe how great life is” , I look back and think maybe I was at a muted 3 with frequent forays into the depths of -5. Nowadays I would say I flow right around a 7.

In the times when things were just drab, gray and lifeless, it was a constant struggle to function. I knew taking my own life was wrong but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, how great it would be to just check out, to not be here.

The shambling suicide beast that was out there was something I had created. It was ominous, dark, heavy and loathsome. It was huge and nondescript, massive, colossal, dark and shadowy. It contained all my darkest fears, my anger at myself, my failures. I had pushed all my dislikes, frustrations and otherness into it. It grew each time I put something else into it.

In retrospect, anthropomorphizing my suicidal intent was in a way a gift. The beast wasn’t me, it was something else, part of my inner landscape that I had created. Maybe I could tell it to go away, to back off, that it had no power over me, that I was stronger than it was.

Even now, it’s still there, it lurks on the periphery of my consciousness, I can feel it. It’s smaller now, it is smaller than I am. It doesn’t dare approach me, I have knowledge of its flawed machinations.

Asshole, I Love You.

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.”

Reality versus perception of Reality

“We create the world that we perceive, not because there is no reality outside our heads, but because we select and edit the reality we see to conform to our beliefs about what sort of world we live in. The man who believes that the resources of the world are infinite, for example, or that if something is good for you then the more of it the better, will not be able to see his errors, because he will not look for evidence of them. For a man to change the basic beliefs that determine his perception – his epistemological premises – he must first become aware that reality is not necessarily as he believes it to be. Sometimes the dissonance between reality and false beliefs reaches a point when it becomes impossible to avoid the awareness that the world no longer makes sense. Only then is it possible for the mind to consider radically different ideas and perceptions.”
― Gregory Bateson

For me, this quote sums up the suicidal state better than any other. When I was stuck in the suicidal state the world no longer made sense. That was why I was going to check out. There wasn’t anything else, there was no place else.

What is reality? According to the dictionary:

re·al·i·ty
/rēˈalədē/
noun

the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.
“he refuses to face reality”
the state or quality of having existence or substance.
“youth, when death has no reality”

What “actually” exists? What is the state of things?

What actually exists? This is up for interpretation. What if everything and yet nothing exists? Do the things that exist for me also exist for you? I would propose that no, they don’t. When I was suicidal the reality I existed in was unique to me. No one shared it, otherwise, they would most likely have been suicidal as well. It was a dark, terror-filled, anxiety-ridden, reality. This was the reality I had created, that I had manifested, that I lived in.

What is the state of things? The state of things is just that, the state of things. It is nebulous and yet clear. It’s nebulous because we can’t fully grasp it, it’s clear because we believe it to be so. Take for instance if I wear glasses, sometimes they get dirty through use, smudges and scratches distort my vision, my view of the world around me. Until I remove them and clean them up I cannot see what is actually in front of me accurately. My view of the world around me when my glasses are dirty is altered, when they are clean I can see more clearly. When we are in a suicidal state our glasses are dirty, soiled by our beliefs, our traumas and struggles. What happens when I have worn my glasses for so long and yet never gone to the doctor for a new prescription when I have never taken them off to clean them. I start to just believe that the state of things is as I see them.

My mind was full of false beliefs, That life was miserable, that I was a bad person, that no matter how hard I tried nothing worked out. Everything I did was a struggle. In this place, I was confirming my own beliefs, It was a horrible feedback loop, a carousel of madness, that I couldn’t step off of. The world no longer made sense.

Therapy for me was a disaster. I would sit in the therapist’s office, talk about my troubles and strife, and the therapist would confirm my beliefs. Not intentionally of course, what else did they have to work with. I needed a new prescription, I needed to step off the carousel. But the carousel was all that existed for me.

I needed help. Who could challenge me and help me see the mad carousel ride was all my own doing? How could I step away and see things differently? How could I clean my own glasses?

To be continued in the next post…

The morning my Mother butt-dialed me

This was originally written on 5-10-2018 early in the morning.

I had a great call with mom at 4:00 am. She apparently pressed the wrong button on her phone and facetime called me. I thought it was an emergency and answered it. I told her I would call her back in a few. I got up, dressed, and made a cup of coffee. Little did I know what would happen…

We talked for a bit. Mom asked how I was, I said really good. I told her a bit more about how I was, said I was on sabbatical from work, she still doesn’t want to hear what happened with me, she doesn’t know about my suicidality. She keeps asking if I had a midlife crisis. I say no (what does that mean anyway?). I tell her I am seeing a therapist 2x a week for 4 hrs total. She asks if he is a “normal” therapist. I smile and say, what does that mean? She says well, he doesn’t do Voodoo, he hasn’t hypnotized you has he? I say not he is not into Voodoo, and he has not hypnotized me, and yes, he is a therapist. She seems worried that I am into something strange (she uses the word strange). She wants to make sure I am getting “normal” treatment, she uses the word normal several times more. I assure her I am getting good treatment. And that I have not been hypnotized, and have not seen any chickens beheaded.

I then ask her to tell me about her father, Pete. Describe for me what his qualities and traits are for me. She stops and thinks. Looking up, she says, peaceful, kind, faithful, giving. She recalled Pete building things for them as Christmas presents out of wood when they were kids because they were so poor, like blocks and small toys, which Dorothy would then dye with food coloring.

She then says: They never owned a house, always living in the ranch hands house.

I ask her to describe her mother, Dorothy. Mom says: faithful, kind, loving, happy, playful, social, and used foul language, (which my Mom didn’t approve of). Mom added, she was competitive. You couldn’t beat her at anything. She always won at everything. Mom shared memories of Dorothy going to her sister’s house (Aunt Gladys) and making doll clothes for one of my mother’s dolls when she was little.

She then says that even though both Dorothy and Pete went to church all the time, they were never baptized because they smoked cigarettes. They felt that it made them never good enough for baptism. This made me sad for them. How our own perceptions limit us, keeping them from what they must have really wanted to be.

As we talked, she smiled as she looked back at these memories. As we talked, I could FEEL both Pete and Dorothy in my heart more clearly. It was beautiful. The memories and times with them start to rebuild and unfold more completely. Prior to this moment, my memories of Pete and Dorothy were clouded by their deaths, watching old age and sickness take them.

Remembering my father, I ask her about Dad. She begins: He persevered, helped people, serious, quiet, a thinker, reader, creative, entrepreneur, faithful to his mother (which at times caused some trouble). You could never beat him at trivial pursuit (he was so well read it was amazing)
We talk about Dad further. I have, for a long time, held onto the knowledge that my Dad may have had an affair. After he died, I came into possession of a lot of his things. One was a box full of journals and letters. In them, I discovered a lot of his thoughts and memories. Around the time I was born, it seemed he had an affair, but I couldn’t determine if it was accurate or not, and he wasn’t around for me to ask him. I didn’t know if she knew or if my brother knew. So I kept the knowledge to myself for the last 20 years. It’s has been heavy, disturbing, and made me question many things. Last year when I moved, I read it all one last time, sitting on the floor of my basement, sad, hurt, confused, then destroyed it all.

Then something happened with mom and me as our talk transitioned.
This morning when I talked with mom, she brought up the time that Dad was doing work for the military in the early ’70s, and his unit was investigating a woman in his unit. Mom said she had always had suspicions. I asked her about what? She said: an affair. She went on telling me what had happened and how she felt. How she confronted him and what he said. She told me how he moved out of our home for a while after I was born. I felt how hard this must have been for her after the loss of two children and then having me.

I told her I knew because I had possessed all Dad’s letters and journals since he died, and all that time, I had been carrying it around as a burden. I told her I had never said anything because it wasn’t right to tell when he wasn’t here to tell his side of the story. Not to defend himself, but to make the story clear, because it certainly wasn’t clear from old memories and letters. I told her I had destroyed it all. She thanked me. Another burden I have been able to let go of. More memories can come back, things remembered can return to me.

Sometimes things seem to have strange origins. We can’t fully put our minds around how or why they happen. I could have not called Mom back this morning. I could have been upset that she woke me up at 4 am with her errant facetime call. But I did call her back and I wasn’t upset. I just listened to the “music”. I paid attention to what was happening at the moment. That seemed to be that we should talk.

The moments where we can be present, sit with whatever is taking place and be vulnerable and compassionate are opportunities to connect and learn. The moments where we can sit, share what we are struggling with and ask questions with others to discover what has happened. To listen and be present with what has happened and how we feel is so important to our healing and also theirs.

For 20 years I had carried a dark secret, both physically and emotionally. This had caused me a lot of turmoil and struggle. Through being able, to be honest with myself and my Mom we both were able to share things that had been a burden, and in doing so we were both able to lighten our loads.

The Energy of Suicide

We spend an immense amount of time planning, scheming, and plotting. All in order to do one thing: to not live. We research which is the best way to murder ourselves, which technique will yield the desired result with the least amount of suffering or pain. We research the best way to die, hoping we don’t Fuck It Up.

Why do I use the word murder? Because that’s just what it is, it’s the premeditated killing of one human by another. you are killing YOU. When we are in this state we may not be able to clearly see who we are. We have forgotten.

We have written letters to those we love and care for, explaining why we are going to murder ourselves. Apologizing for the thing we have yet to do. We have put all our financial affairs in order. We think about which “technique” will leave the least amount of mess. We stop going to work. We sleep for inordinate amounts of time. We stop eating. We dream of the peace we so hope to find.

We become fixated on not being “here”. Where is “here”? If we could only be over “there”. If only we could stand someplace else that wasn’t this blasted plain of ash and darkness. What if we can’t see “there” because it is really “here”?

The amount of energy and commitment this all takes is unimaginable. It exhausts us and bears down on us. This Sisyphean task crushes us with its weight. We can only see one solution in our myopic view of life. That one solution is murder.

What if we can take all that energy, moxie, and grim determination and turn it around? What if we can somehow take this immense amount of focus and retrain our gaze on healing? What if we could harness all that unstoppable drive for murder and unleash it on healing ourselves? What if we took all the energy we have been pouring into not living, and instead poured it into Living?

We can. But it’s hard to see from “here.” I couldn’t see anything else from “here.” It was all dark and grey. Is it that I was blind? In a way, yes I was.

“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”
― Wayne W. Dyer

I know the above quote may seem thin and trite, but it’s true. What if we can change the way we look at things and then they do indeed change?

We have spent a lifetime building the reality we now live in, decades of concerted effort, and here we stand in the dark, we hear ourselves screaming in the distance, we hear the wailing of our own soul. We are full of pain, fear, grief, we feel lost, stuck.

We all have trauma and hurt, deep in our bones. We have stood here so long staring at it that we can’t see anything else. From where we stand the world is indeed a hard and dark place. We have brainwashed ourselves into believing that these traumas and painful experiences are all we have, and it colors everything we see and do.

What if we could take all that energy, all the hurt, all the pain and transform it into healing ourselves? What if we could take it all and redirect it, turn it upside down? We can. First, we need to look at where we are. Where we stand, does it serve us well, is it comfortable? Are we willing to let go of all of our beliefs, all of our misgivings, all of our pain? Those are the first steps we have to take in order to heal.

I know this sounds like a huge leap, to give up everything we know or believe. Things we know and believe are not fixed, they need not be concretized. Your perceptions are not fixed. Start asking, “What if?” Start using your imagination and curiosity. Step away from the logic you believe is serving you well.

Does the music ever stop?

“Listen to the Music”, my therapist said this to me the first day we met. He said, “the music never stops, we just stop listening”. What was he talking about? What music? And hey I am listening!

A week ago today I was talking with a friend about “My Story” and what had happened to me. This particular friendship began just as I began my therapy, my journey out of the darkness. He has seen what I was and what I have become. As we sat there talking we started discussing what had happened to me and some of the life-changing tools and concepts I had employed. As we talked I could see something in him, that he understood and wanted to know more. Something had clicked. He asked if I had written any of this down and if I could share it. I had.

Let me backtrack a bit here. Last May I was asked to speak to several groups of mental health professionals in Ireland. I was asked to talk about my journey, how I had gone from there to here. I spent a few days writing a piece I call “My Story”.

Here it is November now and new groups have formed in Ireland to discuss suicide therapy

Unknown to me that day as I sat talking with my friend, thousands of miles away 2 strangers stood in a room and read “My Story” to a room full of strangers.
When I got home after visiting my friend I sat down and opened “My Story” and read through it, tears in my eyes, my heart pushing up into my throat. I haven’t looked at this piece of writing since I wrote it and spoke it in Ireland months ago.

I think, how can I be here now when I wasn’t fully just 18 months ago?
As I sat there copying the story and about to send it to him, I received a text message from another friend asking if I had time to talk. I said “of course”
He called me a moment later and told me…. that his 12-year-old son is suicidal.

This is the music. It is always there, it is the connectedness of all things, things we see as separate but aren’t. How we believe that we are alone when we are in community. How we believe no one can understand what we are going through when they can. How we believe that our struggle is unique when it is shared by all of us. My story is your story and your story is my story.

How 2 strangers stood in a room in Ireland and read “My Story”, while I talked about “My Story” at the same time 5000 miles away and someone else was struggling with his suicidal son and reached out to me for help at that moment. This is the music.

This is the music. Its always there, it weaves it notes and binds us all together with its melodies, it never stops. But we have become deaf to it with our busy lives, our desire for more, our constant busying that drowns out the music.

So no, the music never stops, we just stop listening to it. And back to this thought, how can I be here now when I wasn’t 18 months ago. Because I now listen to the music, I can see how we are all connected, how we are all the same. So the next time you think something is a coincidence, maybe pause for a moment and listen more deeply.

Andrea Gibson beautifully says this in poetry. Please, listen.

And then I got a haircut

I don’t know if my hair has been growing faster than normal or time is just passing in a different way. My relationship with time is nebulous at best lately. Yesterday afternoon I decided to schedule an appointment to get my hair cut. I had been going to the same stylist for over a year or so, but this time I decided to see a different stylist. I don’t know why I made this decision, it just felt right.

The stylist and I were chit-chatting as she started cutting my mop, I don’t remember what brought it on but I mentioned that I was vegan. She asked how long I had been a vegan and why I had made that decision. I told her it had been 6-8 months or so and she again asked why. I was hesitant at first as the reason I became vegan is very personal to me, but I decided what the heck.

I told her that a few years ago I had become very suicidal and made it out the other side. After I wasn’t suicidal any longer I got to thinking that if I had the compassion not to kill myself how could I justify taking a life to sustain myself. It didn’t make any sense to me at all. It was as if I had flipped a light switch, once I had that thought I stopped eating meat and animal products.

She asked more about my suicidality and what had happened and how I had transitioned out of that place. As I sat there telling parts of my story to her I looked up in the mirror and saw that she had tears coming down her face. She stopped and said that she too struggles with suicide. I could see that talking about it was very hard for her.

Talking about our own personal struggles in that dark place is hard, we feel shame and fear. We don’t think others can relate, that they could even begin to understand. I could understand though, I had been there.

Maybe this is why I changed stylists today so that we could connect, be able to talk about it, to see there is hope. Suicide is a very dark and lonely place, we long for connection and understanding. Today I was able to be that for her, we connected, we shared, its the same story.

As I paid and was preparing to leave she reached out and hugged me, I told her that I am here and that if she ever needed to talk, to just call me.

And so it starts

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a dear friend and he said to me “I am headed to Danny Deardorff’s memorial service”. It took a second to register with me as I processed what he just said. I thought “oh no, Danny died.”

I didn’t personally know Danny and had never met him. But without him I know I wouldn’t be here writing this right now. Danny wrote a book called The Other Within: The Genius of Deformity in Myth, Culture, and Psyche. Early on in my journey, when things had gotten so bad I couldn’t see any way out, my therapist at the time recommended I read it.

The Other Within isn’t an easy read. It deals with complex ideas and uses language I still struggle with at times. But it presented ideas and metaphors that changed me. It changed me to my core.

As I sat there processing the news of Danny’s death with tears streaming down my face, I couldn’t help but think that in that book he had shared part of himself and in doing so it had saved my life. And now he was gone, no more books, no more words. Just what he left for us.

What if part of what he left is what I am now? I feel compelled to share my story, my journey, because if Danny wouldn’t have done just that, share part of himself, I wouldn’t be here.