Ali in Virginia

[00:00:00] I have a razor blade on my nightstand that I love, love, love, love, love having there. It's just one of those fucked up sharp razor blades. It's there every day, all the time. I look at it, I touch it. I love that it's there. It calms me.

[00:00:35] Hey there, my name is Sean and this is Suicide Noted. On this podcast, I talk with suicide attempt survivors so that we can hear their stories. Every year around the world, millions of people try to take their own lives. We almost never talk about it. We certainly don't talk about it enough.

[00:00:50] And when we do talk about it, many of us are really just not good at it and that matters. So one of my goals with this podcast is to have more conversations and hopefully better conversations with attempt survivors in large part to help more people in more places, hopefully feel a little less shitty and a little less alone. Now, if you are a suicide attempt survivor and you'd like to talk, please reach out. Our email is hello at suicidenoted.com. It's that simple. It's that easy.

[00:01:18] You can check the show notes to learn more about this podcast, including our membership and the Noted Network and all kinds of other cool things. It's all there for you if that's something you're curious about. And I want to thank Risa Beckett for her financial contribution. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that contribution was from the Beckett family. Her husband, my brother-in-law, Ray, Risa's my sister, and their lovely daughter, my niece, Nicole.

[00:01:43] Thank you for that support and all of your support. I really appreciate it. And a reminder that we have a listeners meeting on Sunday evening, February 16th at 8 p.m. Eastern. I realize I cannot accommodate everybody's schedule. I will have other meetings, but if you are available, I would love to meet you, to talk with you, to learn more about why you listen to this podcast, how it's maybe helped or whatever else comes up. I really hope to see you there.

[00:02:12] Finally, we are talking about suicide on this podcast and me and my guests. We don't typically hold back. So please take that into account before you listen or as you listen. But I do hope you listen because there is so much to learn. Today, I am talking with Allie. Allie lives in Virginia and she is a suicide attempt survivor. Hello, Allie. Hi. Where in the world are you, Allie?

[00:02:39] I am in Alexandria, Virginia. I'm a Baltimore native, though. That's home. And here we are. And here we are. Bizarre. Middle age, maybe? I don't know. I don't want to. Old age, 55. I'm a little younger than you. I'm still middle. I'm middle. I'm middle as long as I can. Whatever you need to be, man. As long as I identify that way, then that's what the fuck is. Am I right? Certainly nowadays, that's the case. You can identify with whatever you want to be. All right. So former smoker.

[00:03:06] Pot smoker, which I've also had to give up as well. When I think about that sometimes, I get really sad. And then there's times where I'll go a month and I'll be like, well, there's no THC in my system. Maybe I could just take a hit off of one and it's okay. But then you get the taste and then I try again the next day and I'm fucked. Gives you a reason not to do it, I guess. Exactly. You ready to dive in here, Ellie? Bring it.

[00:03:36] You're a suicide attempt survivor? Yes. I tried when I was 33, I want to say. 35, 36. Somewhere in that block of time. Much more recently, you stumbled across this podcast. Much more recently, I've stumbled across this podcast. I've been looking. You go into your podcast app and you put in suicide over and over. Well, not everybody does that.

[00:04:02] Oh, I was desperate for someone to speak from not my perspective, but our perspective. And there's an onslaught of those left behind. And I get it. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Right, right, right. It's critical to address those people and their grief and all of it. But they're not the only ones. Right. So, like, I never understood, like, there's a lot of people out there that tried and are still with us.

[00:04:30] And why is there not a resource that just seems like this huge kind of gap of people that could be addressed and supported? And the irony, like, we need support more than any, you know. Irony. We don't want it. Right. Exactly. You don't. We're trying to avoid a repeat of where we were, but I can't find anything.

[00:04:53] I had some recent trauma in my past few years. And so I was working with a trauma counselor, very specific to almost like I was not raped, but as, you know, close. And I unpacked it all with her. And it just felt good because she was very nonjudgmental, as a good, you know, therapist should be. Look, I've been to a bunch of them, but she really hit it on the head for me.

[00:05:22] And so I was able to talk without feeling like a freak. You can't bring this up. You can't talk about it at dinner. You can't, you know, when people get together and they say, what do you do for a living? You know, and what's your life like? Well, I tried to kill myself. Right. That conversation's over. You just you can't bring it up. It's too shameful. It's too scary.

[00:05:44] It's too even with your closest people. You can't. You have to find somebody that's really got some darkness in them and in their past in order for you to say these kind of dark things without being judged, feared. I wanted to find a podcast. I wanted to find something that I could listen to in my car. Yeah. Without having to be interactive and just somebody that could speak to my experience.

[00:06:09] And so it was like a month ago. It's like, holy shit, this this is it. Where where's it been? I can't believe I haven't found it sooner. Yeah. I'll even know. Where have you been? I don't know. But, you know, I found it and I just thought these are my people. These are my people. Right. If I'm going to make sense to anybody, I'm going to make sense to them. Right. Yeah. I'm glad you found it. Which just tells me that you were not only suicidal in your 30s, but are you are you in that space now?

[00:06:37] I was injured in surgery in 2021 and it took my whole life, my job, all my money, my body. And I'm in chronic pain 24-7, 24-7.

[00:06:53] And so when you get to that space, you know, three surgeries in an effort to, you know, eliminate or alleviate some of the pain kind of work, but not really like I'll be with this forever and ever and ever and ever. And when I think about that, right, I have those dark thoughts. And sometimes they are when I'm alone at home screaming at the top of my lungs, like, take me just fucking.

[00:07:20] I'm ready. Please just take me. And I think about it more often than I care to admit. Right. Because you don't want to say it as out loud. But I have a kid and I can't fucking do it. And it makes me angry at her because she's the reason that I can't go. So, look, I love her with all of my beat. But I say that almost in like a ethereal kind of sense that I'm mad at her.

[00:07:48] Like, you know, if she was gone, if she got hit by a truck, then I could leave guilt free. And I don't wish anything. Please don't take that out of context. But a counselor of mine years ago, as I was almost like preparing for the first attempt or the attempt, she said, suicide cannot be your legacy. And that hit me like a ton of bricks.

[00:08:13] Because if I do it, it almost opens up the possibility that if something really horrible happens to her, that suicide is an option. And I will have been the one that introduced it to her. I don't want suicide to be my legacy. I don't want it. It would fuck her up. My mom blew her head. You know what I mean? It would just, it would. And I can't. I can't. I can't. Right, right. That's something that's keeping you here. Yep. How old is your daughter? She's 22. Okay.

[00:08:41] So if my math is correct, you had your daughter around when you tried to end your life? Exactly. Okay. Are those two related, those two things? Three, three or four. It was more related to the dissolution of my marriage. What do I see behind you? I am in the garage of my home because I wasn't sure where my kid was going to be. I wasn't sure where I'm apart. And I was just like, you know what? I want to be as far away from all of you as possible so that I can be as loud or emphatic

[00:09:08] as I need and say things that you probably haven't heard. And I don't want to have to worry about it. So I kind of sequestered myself down here. And so, boyfriend, are you talking to me? Yes. It hurts his feelings that she's my only real reason to stay. He says all the time, like, do I not count? And I say to him, like, I'm her mother. I'm her mother.

[00:09:36] I don't care if we are together for the rest of our lives. That bond will never be what it is with my child. I fucking grew her. So for me, you can't compare the two. I know it hurts him, and I can't say anything to make that better, which makes me sad. A lot of sadness to go around here. Right? And your daughter know we're talking? No. No. We'll dig into that a little bit later. She knows everything. Right.

[00:10:06] Okay. But she does not know about this conversation. Yeah. I'm always curious about stuff like that. Like, what's happening in someone's life now? Where are they in their home? Who knows we're talking? You'll hear me ask those questions. Yeah. It's fascinating to me, because I do think, even when I ask, people might be wondering, like, why does it matter why or how they found the podcast? It's like, it matters. Like, what is going on in their life that they looked for that? Because that's not a- Nope. It's not coming up on your- This American Life section. Right. Right, right, right. Joe Rogan, This American Life, Prime Junkie, Suicide Note. Yep.

[00:10:36] So what was the first part of your life like, Allie? My dad was, here's what I say. My dad was a douche. He's a douche. He is. I forgive him for being a douche. He wasn't great to me. Made me feel kind of gross and, like, heebie-jeebies a little bit. There was a little bit of a, I don't want to say incestuous vibe, but I'm going to say incestuous vibe, which, like, you know, kind of initiates the gag reflex.

[00:11:06] He never touched me that I am aware of other than hitting. Um, so he was kind of a douche. And my mother was incredibly weak. I loved her too. Right? She's gone. She's been gone a long time. But she did not protect us, my brother and myself, from him. And so I have some resentment towards her for that. And not only did she not protect us, but, like, he would, you know, hit us and treat us like shit.

[00:11:34] And then she would go over to his apartment after they were separated and fuck him all night long and then come home. And I'm just like, dude, are you serious? Like, what are you doing? What message is this sending to your children? So messed up. Definitely a messed up dynamic. Blah, blah, blah. We get older. I go to college, graduate from college, and I kind of am doing the prepare to launch thing. So I was, like, living with her until I could kind of get my shit together to go get a job and yada, yada. And then she was diagnosed with lung and, by extension, brain cancer.

[00:12:04] And so, like, blow up my world. Right? And so my brother was living in Virginia Beach in a band. And so it was the two of us living in our house. It was the two of us. And she, thank God, her passage was quick. Well, three months. But that was three very intense months. And the worse it got, the more people kind of stayed away, which is also very natural. People don't want to be around death.

[00:12:33] People don't want to be around the creepy bald lady that's the kind of disintegrating in her bed. They just, they can't handle it. So it was just the two of us. And it was fucked up. I just remember thinking, like, where is everybody? I'm 25? Like, I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Like, I don't know how to give her her medication. I don't know how to get her on the potty. Like, I can't lift her. I need help. And I just, it was just the two of us alone.

[00:12:59] And then when she died, I asked my brother to come help. And he didn't because he just couldn't get his head around the fact that she was sick, dying. So I was the one that went to the funeral home and at 25 years old, picked out her casket and, you know, had to go get the cheapest one because we didn't have any money. And that brought out anger. And so then anger became my primary emotion. And honestly, like, it still kind of is.

[00:13:28] And it ruined me because you can't go through life angry. And I didn't have anybody that kind of loved me enough to sit me down and be like, you might want to check in with or get a therapist and start working through some of that anger because it's going to, like, pollute the rest of your life. And I didn't have that conversation. And it absolutely did. So that set the tone for kind of the rest of my existence. And my dad kind of was around during that time and just was unbearable, just abusive.

[00:13:56] Like, it's hard to even say. Anyway, he made a horrific experience exponentially worse. And I was just like, dude, what the fuck are you doing? Like, I am a kid. You're a grown man. What are you doing? Why are you tormenting me? Like, he was sad and he didn't know what to do with his emotions. And so we just. So I packed up her house. I got on a plane and I moved across the country to get the fuck as far away from these people and this situation and this energy as possible.

[00:14:26] But I was alone. I didn't know what to do. And I was in a shitty little apartment in the Phoenix, in the city of the scuzz of the. And I had gotten a prescription for sleeping pills because I was, you know, I went to the doctor and I'm like, I'm all fucked up. My mother just died. I can't sleep. Blah, blah, blah. He sent me a script. And so then it kind of became around the clock thing. Like, take it before bed. Sleep for 12 hours. Wake up. Take it to, again, sleep for another 12 hours.

[00:14:56] Like, they're just, I didn't want to be awake. If you're sleeping for 12 hours and then sleeping for 12 more hours, how do you have money to buy food and not die? So she left me a little, like $50,000, which it took, you know, 15 of it to get across the country to ship all my things and get my car and blah, blah, blah. And put the down payment on the apartment. And it sounds like a lot of money, but it is not a lot of money. So by the time I got out there, maybe it was $30,000.

[00:15:23] And so I was able to sleep for a year and not have to worry about food. Right. At a minimum, didn't have to worry about food. Yeah. No, let's not kid ourselves. Money matters a lot. Fucking hell. The irony. So I was from Baltimore and I came to find out through this person or that person that there was a group of people from Baltimore in Phoenix doing a consulting job at a healthcare company. So I was like, shut the fuck up. Like, I'll reach out. Right.

[00:15:53] At least I'll have somebody. So I reached out to these people and I slowly started to develop a group of friends. And that was fun. Like 28 to 30 was really, really. And I was working. So I had an income and I didn't feel like a total piece of shit. And we all got together on the weekends and smoked pot and drank beer and swam and the things that you do in Phoenix because it's a thousand degrees. And it was great. It was great. Those couple years were great. That's interesting.

[00:16:21] Thinking about how you can appreciate that when you've gone through something so hard. Absolutely. But then also when it gets hard again or with time, you look back, you're like, oh, shit, that was, you know, because the way you're bracketing it, it's like it's almost a definitive start and end. And by extension, I met my husband, ex-husband in that group of people. I have wonderful memories for like those couple years.

[00:16:48] And then it went south. But those years, like when I think back on them, like I have nothing but a smile in my heart. You know, I feel very fortunate that I did have, right, those 24 months of just absolute no kids, no bullshit. We're all working. We can screw around as much as we want. You know, this house had a pool. That house had a pool. You know, it was wonderful. And so early 30s, I know things are going to get rough.

[00:17:17] And when you get married or at least you have a child. I got married. And I need to preface that with, okay, so dead mother, right? Dead mother wanted a certain kind of guy for me. You know, to take care of me, certain demographics, certain kind of financial bracket. It was all very important to her. Certain religion. It was all very important to her. None of it was important to me. But it was all. And she was dead. And you have that voice of the dead in your head.

[00:17:47] And I wanted to make her happy. I wanted for her in heaven. I don't believe in heaven. But I wanted her to be like, you did it. You did it. You know, she guided me. And then all of a sudden, all the things she ever wanted for her daughter came to fruition. And I did that in almost a very kind of clinical is not the right word because that has like a medical connotation. But like, almost like I had a spreadsheet. This is what mom wants.

[00:18:15] Like the spreadsheet was that's what it was called. And so, you know, in column one, it was all the things. And, you know, column two was whether I should check them or not. And love and sex weren't on the spreadsheet. And I didn't know that that was like a foundation of marriage. Which looking back on it now just sounds ridiculous. Wait, wait, wait. Hang on. I mean, you don't have to share what you don't want to. But when you say that, you mean you... I was not attracted to him. Okay. So that would affect sex probably. Right. And you didn't love him?

[00:18:45] I wasn't in love with him. He was like my bestie. And I thought... What were some of the things on the checklist that made him eligible? She needed me to marry a Jewish man. I'm Jewish. That was really important to her. Our heritage. She wasn't like super religious or whatever. But like the foundation of Judaism was... So it wasn't like she needed him to be... But she wanted him to be Jewish. I heard that my whole fucking life. She wanted him to come from like an affluent family.

[00:19:15] She didn't mean to marry a millionaire. But she needed somebody that was secure and was going to be able to buy us a house. And go on a couple vacations a year. And so that was really important to her. It was important to her that this man had good parents. And that he had a good relationship with his mother. Because oftentimes if a boy gets along with his mother, he's going to treat his wife well. So it was just kind of like all of those... That checklist. And I think those were probably the three biggies.

[00:19:43] And so I checked all of those boxes. I got myself into a position that I never should have been in. And once it clicked that that's what I had done and he was in love with me. Like the self-hatred just like... Because I led this man to believe something that like in my bones I knew was not true. And was unsustainable. And what I kept telling myself was...

[00:20:13] You know when you're 80 you're not having sex anymore. So like it doesn't really matter. But it's a stupid thing to say. Because there's a whole lot of time between 35 and 80 that you're going to want to be fucking. And I wanted to be fucking. And I wasn't going to be fucking him. I was never unfaithful. But at some point I remember saying... I'm never going to have sex again for the rest of my life. Oh my god. I've got to end this marriage. Because who's not... We're all sexual beings right. At the end of the day. Like at our core we are primal.

[00:20:42] And so not long after that I didn't have a choice. My body was imploding. Sick and ulcers. You know what I mean? So I had to leave. Up until that point in your life. As best you can recall. Did you ever ideate? Did you think about suicide? No. So there was no real... What's the word? Reference point beyond the theoretical philosophical understanding. Had you lost anybody? First or second degree? I had. I had. A friend of mine. So I was very close with a couple. I knew he was struggling.

[00:21:12] But it was like at that point in your life where you're like you don't know what to do. You don't know what a career. And we all go through that kind of mid-20s. Like I just finished college. Like I don't want to sit at a desk for the rest of my life. But I guess that... You know what I mean? That kind of mid-20, midlife crisis. And he came from a place of, you know, negative influences and no coping mechanisms. And he... The girlfriend was Valentine's Day. She went to work. She came home from work. And the stereo was blasting.

[00:21:41] Which I guess was to hide the sound of the bullet. We all kind of went there that night. And there are no words to... Right? You know. Like you have a similar... I've never... I've never... I've lost. I've never seen that. No. No. I'm just saying you lost a friend. Right. That was particularly gory. But you lost a friend to suicide. And what that does to a psyche. So when do the thoughts stop creeping in? Okay. So as the... Any marriage is dissolving. You know, that last year or two is a bitch. Mm-hmm.

[00:22:10] Because you're just falling apart, right? You're conflicted. And you feel terrible for him. And you feel terrible for yourself. You had an image of what the life was going to be. And blah, blah, blah. There was an imbalance between... Did you ever see the show with Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle? My Fair Lady. Okay. So he's refined. And this professor. And she's, you know, from the streets and whatever. And he kind of takes her in and teaches her how to, you know, speak eloquently. And then they fall in love.

[00:22:39] It was a similar kind of situation. So I'm Eliza Doolittle. I'm a little on the trashy side. Whatever. I'm good with it. I kind of like my trashy side, if I'm being completely honest. And he was Henry Higgins. Just like refined. And Eliza Doolittle doesn't dump Henry Higgins, right? If anybody's going to get dumped in that dynamic, the classy guy is going to dump the trashy girl. So he was shocked that a piece of shit like me would dump somebody like him.

[00:23:08] And so he had to write a narrative. Correct. The narrative was, I was batshit crazy. Like, I was insane. I was a mental patient, which was he used with some frequency. I did not have the ability to love, which is why I couldn't love him. These were things he needed to tell himself, right? You need to. She's crazy because who wouldn't want to be married to me?

[00:23:32] And because I felt so guilty and I knew that he needed that narrative, I became what he needed. And so I assumed this role of this pathetic mental patient because I needed him to feel better about himself more than I needed to feel good about myself. Do you have a kid at this time? By this time? She was little, little to something. I'm curious when you just said that about you became the thing he needed and you described

[00:24:02] it as batshit crazy or whatever else he said about you. This might sound like a bit of a weird question. Is that something you figured out or is that with the aid of some therapy and counseling? No, I came to. Here's an example. So I'm driving to work one day and I can't remember, like I got rear-ended or maybe somebody rear-ended me or there was a car accident. And I'm sitting, I call him because that's who you call. And I'm sitting in my car and I consciously thought this is good because he's going to

[00:24:31] come here and he's going to rescue me from this situation and it's going to make him feel good. And so like, I'm kind of happy I got into this car accident because like I have damaged his ego so badly over this time that he needs this and it'll make him feel good about himself. So that was, that was it during the marriage. So it was, it was a dynamic that I was aware of and introspective about. And so as time went on, it just kind of blossomed from there. How long were you together in total?

[00:25:01] Even before marriage? Five years, maybe total. Look, I wish everyone could see Ali's face. Oh my God. You have no idea. It literally makes, I referenced the gag reflex early. It literally makes me want to throw up. It literally makes me want to throw up. The father of your child, right? Yeah. Just picturing his face. Wow. He's fucking evil. So, you know, and that'll come later. I didn't always feel this way about him after we broke up, but he grew into Satan. Wow. Yeah.

[00:25:31] I married Satan. Not a memoir title, but it's interesting. I'd like to write that book and drop it off at his fucking house, you know, because he would be like, well, can't really argue with that. What happens? Because I accepted and adopted and owned that narrative, and because I loved my daughter like any mother, right? She came from me. I was certain that she would be better off if I was gone.

[00:25:59] And so I truly, objectively tried to kill myself for my child. What do you mean that she'd be better off? If I was a mental patient and batshit crazy and, you know, imbalanced and horrible and, you know, pick a negative adjective. I couldn't possibly be a good mother, right? Like, I'm going to, you know, live in a loony bin for the rest of whatever it was or, you

[00:26:26] know, bang my head against the wall for the next three years and just, oh, that's not a good mother. That's not going to bode well for the child if the mother is insane. I loved her and I didn't want her to be like me. And I didn't want her to be influenced by me. Look, when you're suicidal, the thoughts are not rational. So like, I'm hearing myself talk. I'm like, well, that sounds ridiculous. But I did it for her. I wanted to go for her.

[00:26:54] So does it become this sort of, I make the decision or inching closer to this child? It's not an easy decision. And then you start planning? Is it sort of like in three months, I won't be here. So let me start doing? Yes. Yes. You don't tell anybody? No. And I'm high and drunk all the time. So like, think about what that does to your, you know, brain. Yeah. That's not helpful. But you don't know that it's not helpful because, you know, you wake up and your hands are shaking and a couple of beers make them stop shaking.

[00:27:23] You're going to drink a couple of beers. But then your, you know, your thought process gets a little crazy. Yeah. I was, I knew what I was going to do. I knew where I was going to do it. And it was just a matter of when. Where did you do it? Didn't want to do it in my home, which was also the home that I shared with my daughter because then she would, you know, not ever want to walk in there again every time she drove by. And I didn't want anybody, anybody, mother, well, not mother, father, brother, whatever. I didn't want anybody to find my body.

[00:27:49] I didn't want anybody to have that image in their heads for the rest of their life. So I was at Rite Aid one day and I saw this like stoner chick in like the hairbrush aisle. I can talk to anybody. So I was just like, hey, how you doing? And I knew she was high and she knew I was high. And so I was like, hey, well, you know, want to go back to your place and catch a buzz? And she was like, yeah. So she was, she was crazy.

[00:28:19] Anyway, we hung out a few times. It was calculated. I didn't like her, but it was calculated. She had a house and she was a stoner and kind of, you know, hippie-ish, nonjudgmental-ish. And so I was like, okay, here's the, here's the deal. I didn't know when it was going to happen, but I knew that this is how it was going to go. I was going to take a shit ton of drugs, wash it down with a bottle of wine, do a, you know, smoke a ton of weed, go to her house. I don't know why I'm whispering right now. Go to her house, go to sleep.

[00:28:48] Like be like, oh my God, I'm exhausted. Can I just, you know, take a nap in your bed for a couple hours, you know, and then we can, you know, get up and party some more. This is my plan. And then she would walk in and find me. And she's not anybody important in my life. She's just a vehicle at this point. She would find me, call 911 and they would cart me away. And then, you know, sooner or later, everybody would find out, but nobody would have that image. You know, I had the image of my mother when she was dead and it doesn't mess with me anymore,

[00:29:15] but I'll always have that image of her body, a little shriveled up. You know what I mean? So I just, I didn't want to do that to anybody because I cared about them. I didn't want to scare them. And so if they just heard about it and they didn't make the sea or picture or whatever, and then that would be it. And I had, uh, I had a, um, end of life documents that said I was, you know, to be cremated. I still have that. So it was like, boom, boom, boom, put her in the kiln and we're done here. Those docs include a note.

[00:29:43] How different would any suicide note sound? Like I'm sad. I don't want to be here anymore. I love you. Don't take this personally. Love Allie. You know what I mean? It's almost like a form letter. So yeah, I didn't even, I didn't even think about an, I guess it was obvious. Like my ex would be like, you know, your mommy was crazy and she would have hurt you anyway. And I know this is hard, but I'll take care of you and, and you'll be okay. Your ex said that you were among other things, a mental patient. Yeah.

[00:30:12] Have you ever been in a hospital for that? After the suicide attempt. All right. So we'll talk about that. I'm wondering something. You know, I've been asking this question a little more often lately. Do you ever feel like killing him? Him? Every minute of every day. If I could leave there right now and go to his house and stab him in the fucking heart in a, and I would get away with it. Okay. I would close this laptop right now and be like, dude, it was nice seeing you. I'm gone. More than 20, 20 or so plus years later, feelings are pretty strong. It's worse now.

[00:30:42] Wow. Okay. If you put me in a room with him for five minutes, only I would walk out. Maybe he would kill you. No chance. He's a pussy. There's definitely zero chance of that happening. And I have too much rage inside me. Whatever he did would be irrelevant. Yeah. Because I was thinking when you said earlier, uh, evil, you know, people don't really throw that word about too loosely. Unless it's apropos. Sure. Sure. Sure. And it is. That's what I mean. Right. There's gotta be a lot going on there. Unless you're a mental patient.

[00:31:11] I may very well be, which is why he should be scared. That was the plan. Everything's in place. Mm-hmm. Do you, uh, do you ingest the pills and drink the booze and smoke the weed and drive or walk or bike over to her place? Yep. That was when you were about 33. Ish. I want to say, no. So I'm, I have the chronology wrong. I got married in 2001. My daughter was born in 2002. Okay.

[00:31:40] And we were married for maybe three years. And so I think the attempt was somewhere around 2006 or seven. Okay. Didn't work. First part did. It all went south from there. So, yeah, I like to slow down and stretch these moments out. Uh, so as best you can recall, you know, what, uh, she's home. You go there, you knock on the door, you go in, what? You smoke a blunt, you have some beer. What happens? Gradually.

[00:32:06] I kind of lost control of my legs and I was so fucked up. I, let me say this. I've never done LSD, but that 14 hour experience, I can only equate it to like having done like five tabs and to the point where I was like hallucinating. I couldn't walk. I kept like standing up cause I couldn't understand that I couldn't walk. So I would like stand up and fall down. Stand up. Like I got this, this time stand up, fall down. Like I just had no control of anything.

[00:32:36] And I had no, I had no idea what was going on. I was, I was tripping. I was tripping. I remember being terrified of her. I remember being terrified of her husband. Almost like I would like turn around and one of them would be there and I would just gasp in horror. Obviously I can't really remember a lot of it. I remember being in the bathroom one point and she was cleaning me up, but I don't know if I like puked on myself or shit myself or peed my pants. I have no idea. There's something, something came out of my body that obviously she needed to clean.

[00:33:05] And like over time they were like, fuck, something is really wrong with this woman. And so maybe like 10 hours into that trip, they were like, you know, did you take something? And I was like, yeah, I took a lot of pills. And they were like, well, we're going to give you Epicac. So maybe you can throw it up. But it was 10 hours later, right? It's already there. You can't throw it up at 10 hours later.

[00:33:29] But they gave me the Epicac and started puking all over the house, kitchen, den, whatever, everywhere, just throwing up. Projectile, that happened. And I just remember thinking like, I'm not puking up the pills, you douchebags. I'm not puking up any, I'm just puking up puke. What I do remember is I was laying on the kitchen floor. I probably tried to walk there and ended up on the ground, throwing up, just throwing up, blah, blah, the puddles of throw up.

[00:33:57] And I looked at her and I was like, I'm not dead. So we should probably call 911. And that's what happened. And they came and they said, did you try to hurt yourself? And I said, yes. And because, duh, right? I couldn't even lie about that. And then off to the loony bin where I stayed on suicide watch for a while, was there for a week, 10 days, something like that. Got out. But it, so then the shame takes over, right?

[00:34:23] So then you're just devastated with your existence and you're so humiliated. Yeah. And so the husband who was resentful that I, Eliza Doolittle dumped Henry Higgins. He was like, I told you, you were a fucking mental patient. And so we lived in a very small community and it was broadcast. I'm talking broadcast.

[00:34:48] And so everyone within a 20 mile radius, he'd already told them I was a mental patient because I dumped him. Whoa. And now he had all the proof that he needed. So he just took it and ran with it. And that shame was a blanket over me for the next number of years. I knew I had to get out of Baltimore. He lived around the corner. We had joint custody of my kid. So he saw his hideous face all the time. I told my daughter for years.

[00:35:17] I was like, the minute I take you to college, like almost on the same day, I'm leaving Baltimore. I don't know where I'm going. I don't care where I'm going. It will be, you know, calculated and responsible. But you're going to college and I'm getting the fuck out of here. And I tell you, I took her to college on August 16th. And on August 18th, I moved. Oh, you were waiting so patiently for years. I didn't want to fuck her. I would take her away from her friends. Right.

[00:35:45] She was so, so you waited years while he spread that. Correct. And it took a number of years for me to get back on my feet. You know what I mean? I couldn't, it took a number of years for me to get back on my feet. There was a lot of, it was, I did inpatient for a while. And then I did like, they had like a program with a local loony bin, sorry, where you like go from nine to five and then you go home and it's five days a week. And so like, I did that for a few months. And so it, you know, it dominated everything. Yeah. Wow.

[00:36:13] So you were in a, that, that place, a mental psych ward, whatever we're calling it right after the attempt. And then. And in and out on an outpatient. In and out over years. Seeing doctors, were you getting medicated? Meds? Um, probably. Well, probably. I mean, I, I remember lots of pill bottles in my bathroom cabinet. None of them, which were conducive to death, but yeah, yeah, I definitely was probably only two or three different.

[00:36:41] And is that I know you can't probably put all the experiences in the hospitals together and say those experiences were good or bad. I'm sure it was all over the place, but I'm just curious. Did, did sometimes at least the care suffice? You know, sometimes you find a therapist that really, you really connect with and really make it, makes a difference and reaches you. And then sometimes you find a therapist that just doesn't. And so it's, it's kind of that, you know, ebb and flow of like, this one really gets me.

[00:37:10] That one totally doesn't. And until you find somebody that you can really connect with. And so that sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn't. Some, you know, it was, it was hard. You know, when I first woke up after all that, I had a wonderful therapist and her first question was like, are you sad? It didn't work. Yeah. And I'm like, yeah, you know how hard I tried? Like that wasn't, I wasn't, it was a willy nilly effort. Yeah. Yes. I'm devastated that it didn't work.

[00:37:40] And so like that in itself comes up the ton of unpacking. And it took a long time, a long time for me to get back on my feet. This is the best way I can explain it. Uh, I know in the, in the email I wrote you, I, I mentioned, um, the, in Greek mythology, the Sisyphus, you know, Zeus condemned him to push a boulder up the hill every day. And soon as he was, he would get to roll back down the hill. So I was Sisyphus.

[00:38:06] There was this giant boulder, which can represent any number of things. And my ex was on the other side pushing for the next few years. He kind of went on a mission to encourage me to do it again. And so I had to fight that with everything that I had, because I was really messed up in the head. I wasn't strong. You know, I took the emails that he sent me to a, to a therapist and I was like, would you read this? Like I getting this feeling.

[00:38:34] And she was like, yeah, he wants you to do it again. He's doing everything that he can to get you to do it again. And so that makes you crazy. Like I might be a piece of shit, but I'm still the mother of his child. You know what I mean? So the next number of years were him and a 10 year custody battle, uh, bleeding ulcers and vomiting blood and just the horror of horrors. He was a, he's an attorney.

[00:39:03] And so he would say things like, I have 10 attorneys just waiting to destroy you. He's like, and you're penniless and I'm wealthy. So don't fuck with me because they're all just at the ready. And they weren't. I didn't know that at the time. And so he pulled all this psychological shit that I didn't, I don't know the law. I don't, you know what I mean? And it was, it was horrible. I'm thinking back to you. You didn't share much about like growing up a little bit.

[00:39:31] And you mentioned Phoenix, particularly a couple of years that were kind of the golden years. My words could really good years. This is probably like a no duh type of question. At some point you just wake up one day or you're living your life and you're like, I absolutely cannot believe this is my life. Yes. It was 10 years. It was 10 years. It was 10 solid. I didn't date. I mean, I had random sex, but I didn't date. I didn't have any relationships. I couldn't maintain friendships.

[00:39:58] I couldn't, I probably went through 10 jobs because I couldn't function or focus at work because I was always so terrified of this, you know, team of lawyers descending upon me to take my daughter away. I never got to the suicide point again because I knew I couldn't do that, but I was pretty fucking close. He just, he wanted to take her from me. That was the biggest fear of my life. And he would say, I have proof that you're an unfit mother. Oh man. And I would always say like, what is the proof?

[00:40:27] Like I have an apartment, you know, I pay my bills. She is clothed. She is fed. She gets to school every day. She, you know, we have friends over. My apartment is neat. It's clean. There's no drugs here. There's no alcohol here. And he would just, I couldn't understand, but I, I took his word that he could take her away. And so the next number of years was me trying to find ways to keep her.

[00:40:54] But in the end, he never intended to take her away. So it was just like this psychological mind fuck that I, I didn't find out until 10 years later when I got an attorney and he was like, you know that he can't do this. So you know that this isn't legal or you know that if he said this to you, that's not possible. And I was like, oh my God, oh my God, why didn't I find you 10 years ago? And the irony is I ended up with sole custody. It was great.

[00:41:24] It was the best thing. I mean, it was horrible for her because he fucked her up, but I got her away from him. Finally. How did you not end up trying again over that time? I guess it felt like I couldn't give him the satisfaction. It's what he wanted more than anything. And I was just like, no, no, I'll, I'll, I'll die. I'll have, you know, I was bleeding inside. I would go into the bathroom each night. I don't know if you've ever thrown up blood, but yeah, and it hurts. It would be like two o'clock in the morning.

[00:41:52] I would go to the bathroom, throw up. You know, you don't turn the light on when you're going to puke. You just puke. And then the next day I would go in and it was like a crime scene. He had, you know, torn my insides out, but I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of leaving the planet because that's a sociopathic thing to wish is that your daughter's mother kills herself. Like that's, that's sociopathic.

[00:42:19] And I knew that on some level and I wasn't, I just wasn't going to do it. I just, it tore me apart and I was depressed and scared and all the things, but there was no way that I was going to leave her because he wanted me to. Is he in your daughter's life? No, he, irony. Oh, sweet irony. So he met a woman and ain't that always the way. Sorry, that sounded like an old movie. It's the truth. And I preface it.

[00:42:49] Remember I said, he's a pussy, right? We would have established that. Okay. And so, and that's fact, it's indisputable. So he met a woman when, so my daughter was 12 and everything just kind of went south. That was almost like my daughter would describe it. Like she was, um, snow white, you know, kind of cleaning the fireplace. And the other kids were kind of the sisters that got all the dresses and the, because my daughter didn't really like her.

[00:43:19] They were, they could not have been more different. They just could not have, I could, I could go on and on and on, but they're just very different people. And that's okay. My daughter knows who she is and she's grounded in who she is. And this woman kind of wanted her to be a certain way. And she would come to me and be like, well, she wants me to do this. And I don't want, and I'm like, don't, she wants me to wear this, but I don't want to wear that. Well, then don't, she wants me to eat this, but I don't want to eat that. Then don't, you don't have to do anything that doesn't feel right in your bones. Cinderella. Uh-huh.

[00:43:48] Did I say snow white? Cinderella, Cinderella, Cinderella. You're right. You're right. You're right. So over time, my daughter's kind of resistance to love this woman who is unlovable drove my husband, ex-husband, crazy. And he would say, you know, you better go and talk to her and sit and have a conversation. And my daughter would be like, I don't want to. It makes me uncomfortable.

[00:44:15] She's like, you know, she, she puts me down and she, and I don't want to do that. And he was like, I don't care. And you know, she's got a lot of money and she's does wonderful things for you. And you're unappreciative. Insane to like a 12 year old, like what 12 year old even can, can understand that concept. So over time, she wanted to spend more time with me because even though I was in a lot of pain, my home was very warm and calm and welcoming.

[00:44:43] And I loved her exactly the way that she was. There was nothing wrong with that child. So slowly but surely, she wanted to be with me more. She wanted to be with me more. She wanted to be with me more. And it pissed my husband off. And so he redid the custody agreement to go from 50-50 to 75-25. Then from 75-25 to 80-20. Then from that to 90-10. Then from that to nothing. And he was like, well, I'll take her to dinner on Sunday nights. And I was just like, what?

[00:45:13] Oh, I misunderstood. I thought he was trying to take her away from you. The irony is it totally, because my daughter didn't worship his new. Oh, so you got it. He was like, I don't want you. I'm done with you. Go be with your mother. However, before she left his home, it's too much to think about. They sat her down. And she was maybe, I don't know, 15. And they were like, you think your mother's so great? She tried to kill herself. She overdosed on drugs.

[00:45:42] That's the mother that you want to go live with full time? That's who you think can take care of you? She can't take care of you? She's insane. She tried to commit suicide. I knew that I would tell her someday. But that is certainly not the way that I, with malice. And you know what I mean? To try to turn her against me. So she comes home to my apartment that night. And I'm like, what's wrong with you? What's happening right now? I don't understand.

[00:46:12] I know her. I made her. I was like, come and sit down in my room with me. I had a big chair. It was kind of the talking chair. And she didn't say. And I was like, did your father tell you something? And she just lost her shit. I was like, oh my God. Now's the time. And so I said to her, I was like, you know, I had every intention of telling you. I wanted to tell you in my time, in my way, in a loving way, in a safe way.

[00:46:39] And she was just like, are you ever going to do it again? Please don't do it again. And they had just fed it to her in a way that just destroyed her and destroyed her and destroyed her. Because he couldn't hurt me anymore. Right? Like, I was just like, okay, this is fucking crazy. But the way that he could get to me was by destroying her. And so that's when, again, the custody. You know, and I kept saying, like, I'm an unfit mother. But you're giving up custody of your kid to me?

[00:47:08] Like, this doesn't make sense. I don't. What are you doing? If you think I'm going to, like, destroy her, why are you handing her over to me? So obviously you don't think that I'm an unfit mother. Obviously I'm not. I was working. Right? I had an income. Like, wait, what? I kept saying, what's unfit? Show me what's unfit about me. And then six years ago, he stopped talking to her and hasn't spoken to her since. And my child is obviously, right, every mother, right?

[00:47:36] But objectively, like, honor student, you know, honor society. She just graduated from University of Pittsburgh early with honors and a double major. And, like, that's just academic, right? That's her academic stuff. So, like, any parent would be proud of that, right? She's a great kid. And she's really close with the rest of his family. And they love her. And they've reached out to him and be like, what are you doing? And he's not speaking to any of them either. So he lost all of it.

[00:48:06] And so now it's him and the demon wife. And he has no family. He has no child. And I want to go to his house and strangle him and kill him. And that's where we are. Was your daughter moving back with you good for you? It was only good for me because I could then protect her. She never had to go there and feel bad about herself ever again. She never had to be lectured about what a piece of shit she is. So when your daughter goes to college, you move from Baltimore to Virginia to Effic. To D.C. For work. I left and went to D.C.

[00:48:36] What kind of work were you doing? So I was the assistant to the CEO of a global humanitarian assistance organization. Massive organization. Massive responsibility. Lovely salary. Eventually you end up in Alexandria. Yep. At some point, you require surgery that's been life-changing. What do you want to share about that whole experience?

[00:48:59] Because I imagine from what you shared earlier, it does play into why you were looking for a podcast with the word suicide in it, which is kind of... Chronic pain and poverty, basically. Chronic pain and penniless debt. Like the kind of pain where you're on the ground screaming. Yeah. Screaming. Like, you know, I gave birth. I was in labor for 32 hours. This was worse.

[00:49:25] It chokes me up to think about how much pain I was in. And so, yes, I, you know, I couldn't have had this conversation. Definitely could not have had this conversation. Couldn't have been sitting up for this length of time. But three surgeries later, I'm better? And that bankrupted you. Entirely. I'm on disability now, which is the most shameful thing I can say. It's awful. It's horrible. I was making $120,000 a year running a fucking organization. And now I'm on disability.

[00:49:55] And it's more than I can intellectualize. So I know you had a surgery. What happened? He cut nerves on the side of my head that caused the pain that I was referring to. I had a raging infection that he refused to treat. I ended up in the hospital. I almost had to call my daughter to say, like, goodbye. I turned a corner before I had to do that.

[00:50:24] I'm on more medication than I can fucking deal with. You know what I mean? I've lost everything that makes me sharp. Everything that makes me me is gone. That's really hard. That's a toughie. That's definitely a toughie. So I don't want her to see me like this. You know, she knows, obviously. So she sees me on drugs. She sees me crying. She sees me, you know, hiding in my room. She sees me, you know, she knows me. She can look at me and be like, da-da-da-da. She is me.

[00:50:54] You know what I mean? It's tragic. It's tragic. I was on top of the world. And now I'm lower than I've, almost lower than I've ever been. So it's like those feelings that I had back then are back now. I'm on top of the rest of my life. That's one of the things about being on top of the world, isn't it? That eventually you're going to, oh, it was so wonderful though. It was so wonderful. It was so wonderful.

[00:51:23] I'm just proud that I even have that story to tell. You know what I mean? It reminds me of how incredible I was. It's hard to lose that though. So I, you know, I push. I push and I white knuckle every day. And you're in pain every day? All, every day. All day, every day. Right now? Yeah. What was the rest of your life? I prepared for this call. Like I have certain provisions.

[00:51:48] I have like really high powered numbing cream that I put on, which is great. But it's so strong that it kind of eats through my skin. So I have to be really careful about when I put it on and when I take it off. I'm on anti-seizure medications because they block the pain receptors to your brain. But they also make you a fucking mush ball. So that's problematic. I'm on tramadol every day. Every day. Twice a day. Nothing can touch this side of my head.

[00:52:16] It's like a, almost like a electricity. Like burning electricity. So that renders this useless. Nobody can touch it. I can't lay on that side. I can't know even a hair. It's like, and it's agony. And the best part is when this gets agitated, because all these nerves are fried, it's like

[00:52:39] there's a rubber band around my throat, like strangling me all the time. And so, you know, I say to people like, just imagine you're laying in your bed, somebody breaks into your house and they put their hands around your throat, right? The survival instinct is to do anything that you can to get those hands off of your throat. Like whatever it is and flail about. And I can't, I can't get them off. I can't get the hands off my throat.

[00:53:10] They'll never come off. It's permanent. 100%. 100%. There's no surgery. I've been to 30 neurologists. I've had three neurosurgeries. So the guy goes into my head and clips nerves. I'm getting treatments from a neurologist right now that injects kind of numbing solution, which helps. It definitely helps. But it only lasts like 60 to 90 days. So I have to keep going back and back and back and back.

[00:53:39] It's brutal. It's brutal. It's brutal. So the suicidal ideation is alive and well. When's your birthday? 9, 18. I just turned 55. 56? Are you going to make it? I don't feel like I will be proactive. But when the cancer comes, and the cancer always comes, there won't be any treatment. But it might be 20 years away. I hope not.

[00:54:09] Pink and purple pill. I give you a pill magically through Zoom. If you choose to take the pill, you go to sleep, you die. No pain. Should you want this option as well, nobody knows that it's a suicide. It's just Allie died in her sleep. And you can do whatever you want with the pill. You could take it. You could save it. You could throw it in the trash or the toilet. What would you do? I'm doing it right now, Allie. Right now through Zoom. I have a razor blade on my nightstand that I love, love, love, love, love having there.

[00:54:37] It's just one of those fucked up, sharp razor blades. It's there every day, all the time. I look at it. I touch it. I love that it's there. It calms me. I can't explain it. I would put that pill right next to that razor blade, and I would just have it. And when the days hit where the pain is untenable, it would be distinctly possible that that pill would get ingested because I just can't, I can't take it. I can't, I can't take it.

[00:55:05] And if you would ingest that pill, you would taste something. You get to choose the taste. What is it? Cotton candy. Oh, that's perfect for like pink and purple too. Yeah. And I love cotton candy. I have cotton candy. I have cotton candy. I have some of them. You have a cotton candy taste. You go to sleep. Yep. I don't know if I ever asked you why exactly you reached out to talk and have other people hear because it's a podcast. It's two things. Like I have a story really quick. So you, you, you listen to a podcast and whatever the story is, and I'm just going to say this

[00:55:32] American life because that's, that's the, and you listen to the story and, and those people, it feels like there's this huge divide between this person that's telling the story and me sitting in my car, but like, they're just people. There isn't really that huge of a divide. And so I was listening to your podcast and I was like, well, no, I can say all the things that they're saying. Like nothing they're saying is like so different than my experience. And so that was a biggie. I'm like, I'm, I'm them. They are me. And then the other thing is like, I don't get to tell my story.

[00:56:01] Who's going to listen to this fucked up shit. Nobody's going to listen to this shit, right? They'll run out of the room, but your audience and your guests won't run out of the room. So I can say the most twisted things that I think without being judged and not only not judged, but embraced. That's good to hear that. I thought so. And you said that just your partner knows we're talking. Is that right? He does. Nobody else? My one other friend that has a pretty dark past.

[00:56:31] I love him to death. And there's a darkness in him that makes sense to me. And there's a darkness in me that makes sense to him. And he can say fucked up shit to me and I don't freak out and I can say fucked up shit to him. And he was, so there's a very pleasant exchange. How many people know you attempted back then? A lot of people. Okay. That's clear. How many people do you have in your life to talk to and actually in that conversation say the following thing? I'm seriously considering taking my life and you can still have a conversation that doesn't

[00:57:01] suck. Nobody. Zero. Yeah. Partner, no. He doesn't want me to want to end my life. He wants me to stick around and have a life with him. Yeah. Yeah, of course. I hate that. I feel terrible about that. Did you ever get a diagnosis you think is right? Not from your ex-husband? No. Depression. You know, that's what everybody, they throw that. Exactly. No. What helps you feel better? Exercise. Can you exercise with your condition? I can. My legs work. Thank God. God.

[00:57:28] I can't always work out when I want to because I'm hurting. And I had to take, I took a chunk of time off because when you're screaming on the ground, you're not getting on the treadmill. But yeah, if you took exercise away from me, that might be the fait accompli. I don't probably exercise and going and having a meal with my kid. Those are the two things that just really energize me. And sex. I like sex a lot. Are there any myths or misconceptions around, for you, it could be any number of things, right?

[00:57:58] It could be around ideating or attempting or chronic pain or whatever else has come up that you want to dispel. I guess the only thing that comes to mind is that people that attempt suicide aren't batshit crazy. They're just in a lot of pain and that they shouldn't be labeled for the rest of their life because of one. Look, I was watching some show and it was like, I don't want to be judged for the worst thing I ever, you know what I mean? The worst moment of my life that can't define who I am.

[00:58:27] For the rest of my life. And so, yeah, that's the myth. You know, nobody should be defined by the worst moment of their lives. As much as I think about it and as appealing as it is, when I hear that somebody's committed suicide, my heart breaks for them, for their family. And I think, and I'll stop and be like, you feel, this is weird. Like you're, you're heartbroken that that person felt so much pain that they felt like they needed to end their lives.

[00:58:56] And you're heartbroken that the people that love that person have to go on without that person knowing that they couldn't have done anything, you know? And I'm like, but that's me. I can't, you know what I mean? It's, it's, it's a weird dichotomy that it, that it affects me in that way, even though I fall into that category. It's, it's strange. Hmm. So we're talking in the first week of January, 2025. Jeez. Um, do you make resolutions typically? Absolutely not. Same here. Same here.

[00:59:25] I don't even think about it. It doesn't even occur to me. It's stupid. Uh, when this comes out and I don't have an exact date, but I'll try to let you know exactly when that is. Um, do you think you'll listen? I do. You think you'll hear your own voice? I will. Do you think you'll let other people in your life hear it? Maybe just my partner and my dark friend. I want a community where I'm safe and that's this. It's not this. Do you know what I mean? So, you know, just looking on your website and do I want to volunteer? Do I want to become a board member?

[00:59:54] Do I, I want a community. Uh, I wish we were talking when you were making all that money. I'd be like, you know what? I need a fucking- I know. It breaks my heart. Let's say there's however many people out there who will hear you, like you hear them in your car or elsewhere on your run or wherever. Is there anything else you want them to know or hear or understand or think about? You know, I'm not a therapist and I would never presume to tell anybody anything about

[01:00:21] how they should live their lives. Suicide as a concept makes me really sad. I don't, I don't want people to kill themselves, but they got to be them. And so I'm not here to give advice. I'm not here to give suggestions. I'm not here to say, call the 800 number. It's a solidarity. That's, that's all that, that's how I see this. It's like, I have this pain. I have this history. You have this pain.

[01:00:48] You have this history, like just knowing that you're out there comforts me. And that, that's really, that's really all it is. Thanks, Ali. This has been, I've really enjoyed this conversation. It was nice meeting you. Thank you. Have a good weekend. Too, bye. As always, thanks so much for listening and all of your support. And special thanks to Ali in Virginia. Thanks, Ali. If you are a suicide attempt survivor and you would like to talk, please reach out.

[01:01:16] Hello at suicidenoted.com. You can check the show notes to learn more about this podcast, including our membership, the Noted Network, and a bunch of other really cool things. And that is all for episode number 251. Stay strong. Do the best you can. I'll talk to you soon.