Suicide Changes You

Suicide Changes You

I can’t look down and see 8-0 on the speedometer without panicking. If I am not paying attention and make it up that high…seeing those numbers reminds me of the exact point on the highway – passing just under the 290 flyover on IH-35 – when I saw those numbers before and spot checked myself: “Ok, slow down; why are you going so fast, Steph? Because you heard his voice. Because you’re scared shitless. What do you say when you walk in and he’s holding the gun? Think – what do you say, what do you do? What do you do if he points it at himself? Or at you? No he wouldn’t hurt you. Walk in and hold him. Tell him you’re here. What if he tells you he’s done? You heard the resolution; this is different than before. He might act. You need to get home now. Why is there traffic--it's noon! And he’s not picking up his phone. Ok, calm down. Let’s think. Think.”

Something as simple as driving 80mph is forever changed. It doesn’t catch my attention because I may get pulled over and ticketed. It floods my mind and churns my gut with the reminder of that day. My heartrate increases; I hold my breath. Something like speeding means so much more than it used to. Because suicide changes you.

Suicide Changes You

I don’t go to the movies any longer. The first movie I went to after Ryan died I thought I was doing the right thing: you know, getting out of the house? Whiplash. There wasn’t much at the time to go see. As I watched the stress build from bullying, I sat white-knuckling the seat thinking “Someone’s going to hang themselves.” Not exactly a positive experience. Avengers kicked my butt because Black Widow is on video with the Hulk as he says goodbye and the screen blacks out. Cue Trigger. I go watch Magic Mike and all I can think is “I just want to go home to my Man, to my Best Friend.” but instead I sit around on a “Girl’s Night” surrounded by married women complaining that their husbands aren’t Channing Tatum. Count your blessings, bitch, you get to go home to someone... I went back to the car and screamed at the top of my lungs, pounding the steering wheel in frustration. Straight Outta Compton was much too violent to calm down: my pulse was racing and I couldn’t relax and be “entertained”. I’ve given up on movies for now.

Suicide Changes You

The dryer alarm going off as I’m trying to fall asleep makes me jump out of my skin and puts me on high alert just as I’m settling into the emptiness of sleep. Well shit, restart the falling asleep timer. A car running over a plastic bottle as I’m running down the street brings the panic and hypervigilance that is exhausting to keep cycling through. Pretending that these sounds and moments aren’t impacting me so I look “normal” adds to the fatigue. “Tired” doesn’t begin to describe the feeling.

Suicide Changes You

Out of nowhere my mind attacks me, flashing an experience of standing behind Ryan screaming for him not to, and then watching him pull the trigger. I should not have these memories. I was not a witness. My brain has decided that doesn’t matter; it has rebuilt its own reality, reconstructed from the condition of the house afterward, the details of the ME's report and other minute pieces of information and experience. These day terrors happen, thankfully, with much less frequency and I have now spent months packing away the smallest details so that this doesn’t happen, but sometimes they flood to the front unannounced and without warning. At the back is where they must stay.

So when you see me “zone out” I’m simply trying my best to pack up something that spilled in my brain in order to protect myself. When I get up and walk out of a room at random, it’s not because you said anything wrong; it’s because while I put back those files that spilled from my mental filing cabinet, I cannot have the external stimuli of conversation and televisions and lights and movement. I must walk away. As necessary as drinking was to get to give reprieve from the insomnia, I do a LOT of remembering before I get around to the forgetting...Because suicide changes you.

Suicide Changes You

I want to be happy for others and their happily ever after moments, but the reality is, the engagements and the weddings, the babies and the big life moments, at times I just cannot muster the strength to celebrate at the level I should. You’re asking me to reach down and touch the hot stove – to sear my skin voluntarily as I watch the happy moments I miss or I never got to celebrate now being enjoyed by another, even by those people I sincerely care about. Biting the inside of my cheek to hold the tears back when a man puts his arm around his partner’s waist, lays a hand comfortingly on her thigh, laces fingers with her, or when carries his young son out of the grocery store on his shoulders. I see these and while I want to support your moment of joy, I’m standing alone missing my Best Friend. It’s a stab to the heart behind an empty smile and some weeks I may not have the strength to handle. 

Suicide Changes You

Moments are frozen in time while months simultaneously pass at lightning speed in a way they never have before. I may only recall 1 or 2 things that I’ve done or accomplished over the last week or month, but when you ask me when was it that “X” event happened, I still catch myself reacting with “Like 3 months ago…” for an incident in September/October 2014. It makes you feel like you’re going crazy - that everything I remember and refer to about Ryan is in relation to January. It’s not denial, it’s simply this inexplicably-bizarre time distortion.

Suicide Changes You

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” 

“I just need one person at a time to talk.”
“Wait, what was I saying?”
“I think we talked about this, but I don’t remember…”

My memory is gone. Forgive my forgetfulness. I am listening; I just cannot retain right now. And by all means, please don’t crowd and question me all at once. I need to be the director in this chaos.  I’m not incompetent. I’m just digging through the rubble of a scared and insecure girl who has spent the last 10 months feeling less safe, less cared for, less certain of anything than ever before. This girl is searching to find the woman who was competent, intelligent, and would fight as long and hard as necessary to be successful. You’re not the only one that notices she’s gone. I too want to find her so incredibly bad. But I don't want all of the “Old Stephanie” back, I just want pieces of the person I remember. She’s never going to be back in her full form but I’m taking baby steps to retrieve some of her best parts. 

And in the meantime everyone, including myself, will just have to learn to deal with the sensitive, jumpy, forgetful, sometimes teary-eyed space cadet that is the “New Stephanie” until the strong, motivated, helpful, smart, vibrant pieces return. And when they do, they'll come back added to a more empathetic, more loyal, more loving, more powerful woman.

Because Suicide Changed Me.