Henri in Michigan

[00:00:00] I mean, I felt like that buildup of intense anxiety. And when I decided, oh, fuck it, I'm going to do it. It was like all that intensity released and I felt really calm. You know, I was about to pull the trigger and I just felt like it's over. I'm done. I'm gone.

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

[00:00:55] 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. If you are a suicide attempt survivor or ideator and you'd like to talk, please reach out. I'd love to talk with you. Our email is hello at suicidenoted.com. You can learn more about the Suicide Noted podcast, including our membership in the Noted Network.

[00:01:20] Podcast training in our show notes, among other things. And a friendly reminder, rating and reviewing this podcast is really helpful. You can do that on Apple. You can do that on Spotify. And on Spotify, there's also a weekly poll. And I would absolutely love to hear from you. It really helps. Finally, we are talking about suicide on this podcast and my guests and I don't hold back. So please take that into account before you listen or as you listen. But I do hope you listen because there's so much to learn.

[00:01:47] Today, I am talking with Henry. Henry lives in Michigan and she is a suicide attempt survivor. Henry, it's our second conversation. It is. It's our second. Last week we talked for a little while. It was a good talk, I thought. And then you let me know. No, it wasn't so great, at least for you. No, no, I wasn't super happy with it. Tell me why, please. Thanks.

[00:02:12] Well, you sent me the recording after the fact and I listened to it and I heard myself doing exactly what I was hoping I wouldn't do. You would ask me tough questions and then I would duck and weave and avoid answering them. And I would focus on something else. Like my avoidance won that day and I wasn't super happy about that. But you caught it and you're like, let's talk again and get a little more real if that's how we want to frame it. Yeah. Yeah, I thought I could do better. Let's let the audience know a couple of things we have in common. We don't appear. We don't have hair.

[00:02:42] We also have in common tattoos. I have one small one. You have more than that. You're in Michigan in your home. In my house, yeah. Last time we talked, you were at a friend's cellar. Yeah, I was in the basement. When you think about the word suicide, is it dark? You know a lot of people say it's dark and I never understood that. Does it feel dark? It feels heavy. Like it's a heavy subject. Because you've dealt with your own attempts and ideating, which of course we're going to talk about. And then others too, right?

[00:03:12] Yeah. No, suicide has impacted my life many times in many ways. Impacted directly and indirectly. And when I was 24, I had a friend who was murdered. And her murderer, he killed himself in prison a year or so later. So it's really been a big part of my life in a lot of ways. You've tried to end your life? Yes. I have tried to end my life many times in excess of 30 attempts. 30.

[00:03:39] How many of them were, in quotes, dangerously close to working? There were two that held the potential to end my life. And a third that didn't have the potential necessarily to end my life but could have ended in permanent organ damage. So my first suicide attempt that I can remember, I was in the first grade. Five or six years old. I'm an adult survivor of child abuse and child torture, mostly done by my mother. But in addition to that, I was bullied in school very heavily.

[00:04:08] And that bullying actually started in kindergarten. Now, kindergarten wasn't all bad. Kindergarten is where I met my original, like, first ever best friend. But then the bullying I was enduring got so bad that it started to affect her in the first grade. And her family told her she couldn't talk to me in school anymore. And so that made first grade even harder. Yeah, my first attempt was first grade. It was either when I stabbed myself in the stomach with a safety pin or it was when I tried to hang myself in my closet with yarn.

[00:04:38] Five or six-year-old brain, I know, is a five or six-year-old brain. And we're going back some time. But those were two attempts, both in first grade? Yeah, they both happened in first grade. And then you go back to school without your best friend around. Your mom is probably still your mom. Yep. Dad is dad. Yeah. My dad, he worked very long hours. And he was frequently just gone the whole day. And sometimes his job would take him out of state. So I would only see him on the weekends. When my dad was around, my mom was a completely different person.

[00:05:08] So when dad was around, I had the loving, sweet, caring, compassionate, patient mother that I needed all of the time. And when dad was gone, I got the monster mother instead. I also have two sisters, one before me, one after. And I know my older sister has also had suicide attempts from the abuse we suffered. I know the younger sister ideates. I don't know if she's ever attempted. But we all struggle. In second grade, I got a break from the bullying. We moved to North Carolina for my dad's job. I loved it there.

[00:05:35] And comparatively to what I was coming from, from Michigan, North Carolina was amazing. But I was still being abused by my mom. And so was my older sister. We were still experiencing abuse. And North Carolina is where we started having problems with head lice. I would go on to deal and battle with chronic head lice for 12 to 14 years. I'm not sure of the exact time frame. Off and on. My mom decided at some point that lice shampoos didn't work. That's not true. They work. You just have to follow the instructions.

[00:06:05] You have to, you have to actually show up and do it. Well, my mom decided that those shampoos clearly didn't work or were fraudulent. I don't know why. And I would come home from school and I would sit cross-legged on the floor in front of her and she'd be on the couch and she would be using her knees to pin my shoulders and body in place. And she would go through my hair one strand at a time. And that's not hyperbole. It's not an embellishment. It was strand by strand and she would pick through and pick off all the lice eggs with her thumbnails.

[00:06:33] And she would pick lice as she went and drop them on a piece of paper on the coffee table next to the couch and crush them with her thumbnails. So I'd be sitting there for hours while my mom made me sit in this position. I wasn't allowed to move. I wasn't allowed to complain. If I drooped forward a bit, because, you know, your body naturally will relax, I would get yanked back up by my hair. I'd get swatted with a hairbrush. Sometimes she would like, she would grab my head and like reposition it really forcefully. Okay. For the most part, did you like North Carolina?

[00:07:01] I had so many friends in North Carolina and I got along really well with my classmates, which showed me at least for that year that the bullying that I endured, it wasn't my fault and it had nothing to do with me because that had been my belief that there was something wrong with me. But it was a reflection of my environment. Yeah. We lived in an apartment complex and we had a pool. Nice. It was great. Although I was really confused by winter. I'm used to Michigan winters and the year we lived there, I was like, wow, there's like a light dusting of snow on the ground. Where's the mountains and mountains of snow that I'm used to?

[00:07:30] Where's the six months of heavy snowfall? Where did it go? And then my mom became pregnant with my younger sister and decided we should move back. I was about seven, six going on seven. So just to be clear here at five or six, you have an attempt. It sounds like more than one because- More than one. Yeah. Right. And then not too long after that, you moved to North Carolina and things are kind of good. Kind of good. Yeah. Yeah. Was there any safety pins or yarn taken out? No. No. No attempts in North Carolina. Not a single one.

[00:08:00] Thinking about it? Nope. You go back to Michigan. Not willingly. I hid and like barricaded myself in the bathroom of our apartment and I wouldn't come out and I had to be literally dragged out and forced into the U-Haul truck that we had rented. I rode with my dad. I didn't want to ride with my mom. I refused to ride with my mom home. So I rode with my dad home all the way to Michigan. I mean, you knew what was waiting for you in Michigan. It makes total sense, right? Right. I was pretty sure it was going back to not having any friends and being cast out and

[00:08:29] bullied and that's exactly what happened. And it's what happened. It's exactly what happened. Would you rather have not had North Carolina because then you had like this reference point of what life could be? No. I'm glad that I had North Carolina. I think it was a really good experience for me to know that like things could be better. How do you make your way through elementary school, junior high school, high school into your young adult years? Throughout all of this, kindergarten, first, second grade, I was struggling with my grades and that did not improve.

[00:08:59] I got mostly Fs with the exception of choir because all I had to do was show up and sing. So third grade was much the same as kindergarten, first. It was like a game for some of the other students at my bus stop to grab me and throw me in front of oncoming cars. But that came to an end when one of the parents in the neighborhood actually called the police about it. And like all those kids got a pretty stern talking to by their parents. I was very physically small. I was very underweight as a kid. I just I was just tiny. And so it made me really easy to pick on.

[00:09:28] I was also a bit younger than everyone else. I started kindergarten at four years old. Fourth grade, again, same thing. More bullying. And it escalated. I remember there was a day I was in class, the principal, the vice principal, a few other folks from the office, and I think one of the other teachers showed up to my classroom. They pulled me from class and they walked me down the hall to the girls' bathroom. It was like a fourth grade perp walk until they were all really angry. And they took me into the girls' bathroom and pointed to the ledge of the bathroom sink and they asked for an explanation. Like, what is this?

[00:09:57] And I walked over and I said, well, it's writing. And they made me read it out loud to them because somebody had written in pencil on the ledge of the girls' bathroom sink. Henrietta, last name, is going to die. You didn't write that? No, I did not write that. And I told them I didn't write it. They did not believe me. At some point they did phone my mom. My mom showed up and took one look at it and said, that's not my daughter's handwriting. So for all that my mom was a monster at home, there was nothing she loved more than being the hero in the public eye.

[00:10:26] She was just handed on a silver platter an opportunity to unleash her rage righteously on other people. They didn't keep the bathroom door shut, though. So while this was going on, girls were coming in and out of the bathroom to use the bathroom and this gaggle of girls was observing the whole thing. So I felt so humiliated and afraid. And in that moment, I just felt like I got that confirmation that I really was worthless and nobody wanted me around.

[00:10:51] So I went home that day and sometime after dinner, I continued to have a lot of little suicide attempts here and there, trying to suffocate myself in plastic bags, trying to drown myself, etc. I had found some clothesline that wasn't super rotted like the yarn had been and I made a noose and I was going to hang myself in my closet that day. But then I discovered I'd had a growth spurt at some point and I was too tall. Yeah, I was too tall.

[00:11:19] I sat on the floor of my closet and just bawled my eyes out because I couldn't end my life right there. Not only are you going through all the things you're going through, what's the impact of regularly not wanting to be alive, especially on a young brain? You know, you wonder. It couldn't have been healthy. Does that having that option of an out help you get through the day? It has. Like knowing there's an exit door that I can take. Yeah. But the problem is I couldn't figure out how to, you know, what the key was to get through that door.

[00:11:47] Or find the right door. We can play with metaphors. After that, it like became a thing at my school where people would write Henrietta is and follow it up with a mean message. So Henrietta is stupid. Henrietta is fat. Henrietta is ugly. Eventually, towards the end of the school year, we kind of circled back to like the original message that had been written where somebody wrote Henrietta needs to die. And then finally someone wrote Henrietta should kill herself. You don't forget stuff like that.

[00:12:17] No, it's like burned into my memory. I felt so hated and rejected. So does this last for many years? It does. It didn't go for the whole of school, though. In fifth grade, I did transfer to a new school. Somebody would have had to physically put me into a classroom at that point at my original elementary school. I would have had to like sit there and hold my arms and like hold me in place. I did start having panic attacks and I would run and go hide in school. So for fifth grade, we moved me to a new school.

[00:12:47] That school decided that I needed psychological evaluation because of my outbursts of crying, my panic attacks, my bad grades. And so I was put through psychological assessments where I did receive a list of diagnoses, but my mom didn't tell me what they were. And it was determined that I have dyslexia, dyslexia, dyscalculia, and at that time already PTSD. So I was moved to special education class, a separate classroom, an actually segregated separate classroom.

[00:13:15] And we had a special slur reserved just for us. We got called speds and short bus kid. Your first attempt, you were five or six. Yes. You're now 36. I am. When was your most recent attempt? February 6th of 2023. In all of that time, and I'm happy to hear more, fill it in. There's a lot more to talk about. Is there ever a period of time for however long that you don't either attempt? Because you said more than 30, right?

[00:13:44] That's a pretty hefty number. Yeah. Or ideating, where there's like a stretch of decent stuff in life. Yes. So I had a stretch in my 20s. Yeah. Okay. So 2009, I had a couple suicide attempts. And then 2010 through 2020, I didn't attempt or have very strong ideations. I'd have a dust up every now and then, but it wasn't super serious. So for a decade or so, you're... Yeah.

[00:14:11] Even though I was in like a long-term abusive relationship for most of my 20s, I was still happier. So from fifth grade when you moved... Fifth grade, I continued to be bullied. Mm-hmm. And my mom had dropped me off at my special ed class for the first day of my new class and told me that she hoped that this would make me feel ashamed of myself for being lazy. And part of why she wouldn't tell me my diagnoses was that she wasn't going to hand me an excuse to be even more lazy and embarrass her even more.

[00:14:38] Because she saw, I guess, having a learning disability as shameful. She also said throughout the first 18 years of my life that depression's not real. So sometime between fifth and sixth grade, there was a day when my mom and my older sister got into a fight. So I actually just talked to my older sister about this a couple days ago to get her to fill in some of those blanks for me because I couldn't quite remember what all had happened. I was acting like a child, which I would expect because I was a child. And I guess I got on my mom's nerves one day and she grabbed my hair and pulled me by my hair.

[00:15:08] So my older sister shoved her back and they got into a screaming match. I ran upstairs. And then at some point I came over to the hallway where we had our kids. A railing over the staircase, right? As my older sister pushed mom and then mom grabbed her around the throat and knocked her down and pinned her against the stairs by her throat and was calling her a little bitch and other awful things. I must have gasped or something because my mom turned and looked at me. So she's got my sister pinned by her throat, right?

[00:15:37] My mom's hand is around my sister's throat, holding my terrified sister down to these stairs. My mom turns her head and smiles at me and says, oh, you don't have to be afraid of me. Honey? Which didn't know. It's this image of like my smiling mother and my terrified actively being choked sister. And I ran and hid in my room. I have a good sense to your mom, I think. Yeah. Sometime after that, a house on my street exploded and I witnessed that. And I remember just thinking that the world is such a terrible place and it's full of dangers.

[00:16:06] And I felt so tired. Yeah. Of living in it. I only got breaks from my mom when I went to grandma's house. So when I was 12, I had an opportunity one day where no one was around. And obviously I'd been trying new and creative methods to check out of life. And I got a knife from the kitchen and I stabbed myself in the stomach when I was 12. That one had the potential to end my life due to fortunate or unfortunate, the placement of the stab wound.

[00:16:36] I missed all major important things. So I didn't hit any arteries, no organs, nothing. I wound up recovering from that. How do you feel about that today? Do you wish it had worked? I've had times where I wished it worked. Right now? I'm not consistent about it. I have other days where I'm glad that it didn't work. You can apply that to other attempts as well? Yeah. It wasn't the first time I tried to stab myself in the stomach. I'd started doing that in fifth grade when I was too tall to hang myself in my closet. I would try to stab myself.

[00:17:03] I also did start doing self-harm in the fifth grade. So I would take kitchen knives and I would hold them against the bulb of my bed lamp, my bedside lamp, until the blade was hot. And I would use that to burn myself. I'm very surprised I don't have more scars. I have a couple. I have one on my upper arm around here and I got like a couple on my thigh from self-harm. And of course, the stab wound scar on my stomach. That became a really well-known about suicide attempt because my mom would tell anybody with

[00:17:29] ears about it in front of me to embarrass and shave me on purpose. And she would bring that suicide attempt up over and over and over for the next six years. So there was an opportunity for me to go to a singing competition because I used to be very good at singing. This was a couple of years afterwards and my mom said, you could have gone to that, but you spent all of your singing competition money on that little attention-seeking stunt of yours. It was like four years later. Like, let it go, man.

[00:18:00] Move on. Let's move forward. Yeah. But at the time of the attempt, you know, my mom and my sister got into it again and they got into a huge fight in the ER room. I remember that more than any of the treatment I had. I don't recall what all the treatment was. I know I got stitches, but they got into a screaming match and actually got removed by security and got into a fist fight in the parking lot. And then my older sister asked me later, why didn't I leave a note? And I felt really stupid because I didn't leave a note because I didn't know I was supposed to. I was like, oh, I even did suicide wrong. Look at that.

[00:18:31] There's no blueprint, is there? No, there's no blueprint. It did go through the school. It went through the rumor mill. So everyone in my school heard about like, oh, some girl went crazy and stabbed herself. And of course, it became bigger than it was. Like this girl stabbed herself 15 times and like bled out on the side. Like it was just so over exaggerated. But some of the kids had figured out that it was me. And it was it was a weird time because all of these kids who had bullied me for all of

[00:18:57] these years, because some of them were from my original elementary school, some were from the second elementary school I went to in my hometown, not not the North Carolina one. And then some were kids I'd met in middle school. And I just had all these kids coming up to me and apologizing and saying sorry and ask me not to kill myself. After all those years of hate and just being treated so badly. And I didn't I didn't know how to react. I froze up every single time when someone would approach me and they would be crying.

[00:19:24] I didn't know what to do because how do I say, well, if you didn't want me to die, why did you say that all those years? Because I used to get death threats written on paper and shoved inside of my locker. Like if you didn't want me to kill myself, why did you all treat me like that? Why did it take me stabbing myself in the stomach for you to stop? So the bullying in school did stop that year. After that, everyone got really nice to me. I think they were a little bit afraid of me and they all did not know how to cope with their own guilt for what they had done. You got through school.

[00:19:52] Yeah, I had a couple more attempts in high school. Did you go to college? I did go to college. I did not know I was dyslexic or that I am dyslexic and I didn't have disability accommodations. I flugged out of college three times in my early 20s. And about that time, 21, you mentioned there's a couple more attempts. You mentioned you're in a long term relationship and that. But for the most part, you're not ideating or not attempting. The year I turned 18, I dropped out of high school. The year I turned 18 was really rough.

[00:20:20] It started out with my aunt on my dad's side. His only sister died. Her cancer came back and it was really aggressive and sudden. So we found out about her cancer in October the year I was 18 and she died by December. Shortly after that, my ex-uncle used to be married to my aunt, but they divorced his girlfriend. They died in a car crash and they worked at my grandma's nursing home. So I saw them almost every day.

[00:20:44] After my suicide attempt when I was 12, going back to that, my grandma had a stroke about two weeks later and my mom convinced me it was my fault that I had caused grandma's stroke. So I hated myself so much for those years because I thought I'd ruined grandma for everybody. But then I'm 18. The state took my nephews. My older sister made a lot of mistakes and so she lost custody of her kids. So my relationship with my nephews went up in smoke and it's, you know, just gone.

[00:21:09] Then a friend of mine, her boyfriend tried to kill her and then successfully killed himself. Five days after that, my mom had a stroke caused by a blood clot. Well, that's a fucking rough year. Yeah. Due to the circumstances, my parents not being married, my older sister being unreachable and my age, I became my mom's legal next of kin. And so when it came to all her medical decisions, technically on paper, that was all up to me suddenly, you know, and I adored my mom. In spite of all the abuse, I adored my mom.

[00:21:38] And the last thing I wanted was for her to die. And in fact, in the hospital, one of the last things she said before she couldn't talk anymore from the stroke was, you know, don't let me die. She'd grabbed my dad by the shirt collar and pulled him to her and said, don't let me die. But she did die. She didn't make it. And she was a gift of life organ donor. And it was a little bit comforting, you know, to receive letters in the mail giving me updates on like people who got her organs and how they fared. So none of them rejected. They all kept.

[00:22:05] And, you know, it felt good to know that at least our tragedy could be someone else's miracle. And that, you know, she may have been a monster in life, but, you know, she could be an angel in death. Also memoir titles up the yin yang here with you. I don't even know where to begin. There's so many. And that was my 18th year of life. So I dropped out of high school and then I moved in with my high school boyfriend. And for like two years, I did not have any ideation or attempts, but I think I was in shock. 21. You try a couple of times. Yeah.

[00:22:33] So at 20, I got the GED and then I met my next bad boyfriend, the abusive one through my 20s. He really preyed on me. So I was significantly younger than him. And he said, oh, hey, you know, you know, you can qualify for college. Like it started out good. And he helped me apply for college and then offered like, hey, we're moving out of this city to another city. You should come with us. And so I went with him, his wife, their son, because it was a whole polyamorous thing.

[00:23:01] So and then I left the blah boyfriend from high school behind. Wasn't a bad person, but he wasn't a very good boyfriend. During the moving process, the new boyfriend, it should have been my first red flag how much he was just screaming and yelling. But I also know the process of moving is really tiring. So I like explained it away. But when we moved to where we live now, you know, I had to like confront the reality of moving into an adult life and adult responsibilities with no mom, no grandma, no, you know, everything I've lost. And it really came back to me.

[00:23:31] And so I attempted again. I took a very massive overdose and actually had to drink charcoal with that one. And sometime after that, I don't know if it was right away or like a week or two later, but I went to inpatient care, mental health inpatient care. First time? For the first time. Yeah, I had inpatient care for the first time. How was that? Boring. It was a pretty low security place, too. I could have walked out the doors and right walked off the grounds because it wasn't even fenced in or anything. I could have just left. What gets you from that feeling suicidal to then some years of not? Any idea?

[00:24:01] I became my younger sister's legal guardian and she lived in with me. I have some regrets about that because she did get, you know, subjected to abuse through the boyfriend that I had for all those years living with us. I had to let all that go and be here for my sister. And, you know, that was an arrangement between me and my dad because of his work and how he goes out of state all the time. And then she was reaching a point where she was like falling behind in school and needed help and needed like somebody there to guide her. So she lived with me until a little bit after she turned 18 and then she moved out.

[00:24:31] We had a falling out, actually, and she didn't talk to me until years later when I almost died from a heart attack. You stay with this person for a while. Yeah. You're mostly okay in terms of you're not thinking about ending your life regularly. In 2020, what happens? In 2020, I became very, very sick. I started to menstruate continuously in July of 2020.

[00:24:55] I would later get a trifecta diagnosis of endometriosis, adenomyosis, and polycystic ovarian syndrome. And the PCOS is why I lost my hair and gained so much weight. So, yeah, I started bleeding. And then after a couple weeks of this nonstop bleeding, I contacted my gynecologist office, made an appointment. It was quite far out in the future because of COVID and COVID restrictions.

[00:25:22] And, of course, pregnant people coming in with COVID would be viewed as more emergent than me because what I was dealing with wasn't typically a life-threatening thing. But I was a really severe outlier, and it was. So, for months and months and months, eventually stretching to over a year of my life, my existence was dominated by having to go to the bathroom every 45 minutes to take care of my hygiene. I would bleed on myself, have to take a shower, bleeding into my clothes, bleeding on my furniture.

[00:25:48] It just my whole life became one ongoing situation where I felt like this meat sack, and the only purpose was for it to just bleed and bleed. But then the date of my appointment approached, and then my gynecologist's office called and rescheduled it. So, we get to the second date, they call and they reschedule it again, and I started arguing with them like, no, we can't do that. I'm really sick. But they did it anyway, pushed it all the way out to December of 2020.

[00:26:11] I started looking for another gynecology office at that point while keeping that appointment because I was so scared I was going to, you know, die by the time they got to me. And all the offices around me had a six-month wait minimum, and that was optimistic. We get to December, they rescheduled me again, and this time it's for all the way out in April. And I just begged them, don't do this to me. I'm dying. Like, I can feel myself. Like, I'm sick. I'm dying. I'm not doing well. They told me to take some iron pills. So, I did start taking iron pills.

[00:26:42] April, they called it because they reschedule it. And so, on April 25th of 2021, I had a heart attack. Oh, wow, shit. Yeah. I had a heart attack from the severe anemia that I was experiencing. So, hemoglobin levels, a healthy level for an adult is like between 12 and 15. I was below 5, and the point I was at had 11 days. That's median survival time for people who get as long as it was. 11 days.

[00:27:10] Yeah, and I experienced a heart attack, which should have been a scarier experience than it was, but I was so tired that I was just willing to go. Mm-hmm. And so, you know, I had this heart attack, and then I was unconscious for I don't know how long. And I woke up very different, very confused, very disoriented. Somehow drove home from where I'd been without crashing my car. I still don't know how I accomplished that. Passed out on my couch. Wow.

[00:27:36] And I know that my hemoglobin was that low because the Friday beforehand, because this was Sunday, the Friday beforehand, I did see my PCP and begged for help. And he told me not to be hysterical. And then he spent all weekend scrambling trying to get a hold of me because I was dying and I wasn't hysterical. You wonder how common that kind of thing is, right? I mean... For women, U.S. healthcare is terrible. So for us, I think it's very common. Yeah. It's not a conversation we hear too often. Yeah. 2021 is when my suicidal ideation had returned. Okay. Now, you're married, yeah? Married, yeah.

[00:28:05] So at that point, how long have you been married? We got married in 2018 at the end of the year. Still married, right? I'm still married. In April 2021, you have a heart attack. Yes. From April 2021 to February 2023, you're ideating. Yeah. I started strongly ideating. How close do you come? And also, Henry, I want to know, I don't know if it's so much how close do you come, but it's more like what keeps you going? I was just desperate to survive at that point. Yeah.

[00:28:33] I'm simultaneously ideating how well in my life while doing everything I could to live. I signed paperwork on June 30th with a new gynecologist's office after some really unethical visits with the previous one who had ignored me for so long. And I did file really extensive complaints about what had happened there. June 30th, 2021, you know, I signed paperwork like, yes, if I get a hysterectomy, I'm aware that I will not be able to have children after this. Like, I understand the ramifications of this decision.

[00:29:02] If I had not signed paperwork that day, I wouldn't be here. Like, it would have been the end because I was at the end of my rope. I was exhausted. You know, I didn't get to sleep well. I was bleeding. I was tired. After the heart attack especially, I was profoundly tired. At some point, I lost fear of death. Like, I wanted out of the illness and I wasn't afraid of death, but I did want to survive. I wanted to at least get to the other side of it. September 7th, 2021, I have my hysterectomy. I kept my ovaries.

[00:29:27] And then it was just kind of like this long, long new stage of recovery where I started having panic attacks and nightmares. December of 2021, I had an actual, like, a PTSD flashback with the, like, the full visual hallucinations and everything. That was really scary. That was, like, scarier to me than the heart attack because I didn't know what was happening. Yeah, over the next couple of years, I was, like, contending with this whole new phase of mental illness that I had not anticipated.

[00:29:54] Like, I had no idea that this would be happening to me. I thought once the hysterectomy was done, the nightmare was over. But it wasn't. So I thought things would get easier. And in many ways, they didn't. So throughout 2022, I was really struggling to, like, find myself again. Trying maybe too hard to find peace with what had happened. I was trying maybe a little too hard to get back to normal, quote unquote. My husband and I have faced a lot of hardships together, too. So it's not like things have been easy when we've been together. So in January of 2023, I slipped on our front steps.

[00:30:24] It was winter, obviously, in Michigan. Some ice had formed and I slipped. I fell. And I fell so hard, I partially collapsed my lungs. I got really injured. And I even went to the hospital for it. And yeah, so they gave me breathing exercises to do. Like, it wasn't so bad. I was going to need surgery. But it would take a while for my lungs to reinflate. And it was very painful. And the day after, my husband was in a car accident that I witnessed. Hang on. Do you believe in God? No. Not at all. Do you? No, no, no. I'm very much an atheist. Things happen because they happen. Right.

[00:30:53] So you're just very unlucky, arguably. Or lucky, depending on how you... How do you say it? I think I'm neutral on it at this point. Things happen because they happen. All right. So you get hurt on the ice. You witness your husband in a car accident. I'm certain this is leading to a month later or ish. Yeah. After I fell and he was in the car accident that I witnessed, I guess I hit my personal tipping point. And I really just felt done. And not in... Like, all of my suicide attempts when I was a kid had been very, like, emotionally charged.

[00:31:22] They were very in the moment. Impulsive. Yeah. I mean, I feel like maybe those were a mix of impulsive and not impulsive because of how much I'd been trying to kill myself for so many years. But we had a shotgun. We owned a shotgun. Just thought, oh, there's an easy out right there. I had a friend kill herself when I was 27 and she shot herself in the head. And I thought, well, if it worked for her, it'll work for me. So, I got out the gun when I had privacy and my husband wasn't around and, you know, looked it over, figured out what ammo it would need.

[00:31:52] I am familiar with guns. I have shotguns. And shot shotguns. Shot shotguns. Et cetera. I'm not super into guns. I've done it. Not a super big fan of it. You're like a regular person in Michigan. I mean, that's what you fucking do out there. Yeah. Yeah. No. I couldn't go hunting. I couldn't kill things. But I'd shot shotguns. You know. My dad took me hunting once and I cried my eyes out. So, it never took me again. Because I'm like, I can't do it. I can't shoot Bambi. Don't make me do it. But yourself is different. Yeah. Yeah. Myself is different.

[00:32:21] So, I buy the ammo. And it took a while because all the stores around us were sold out in 2023. And because, like, it's hunting season, I think, at that point. So, it took a while. I finally found a store that had the ammo I would need for our shotgun. And then I decided on a time and a place. And then there was a hitch in the plans because I got sick. I had a very, very, very severe cold. It wasn't like a serious illness, especially compared to everything else I've been through.

[00:32:46] I was homesick and he decided to stay home that weekend instead of going and doing his usual social thing that he does each week on the weekends. And so, originally, I thought, okay, well, I'll just wait it out and I'll do it next weekend. You know, I'll shift my plans by seven days. I can do that. But with each passing minute, I got increasingly anxious that I was continuing to be alive past when I'd planned to not be alive anymore. And so, for two days, this anxiety built up.

[00:33:14] And it was just like my bones were humming. Like, my whole body just was on edge and tense. And I couldn't sleep. And I couldn't think. Like, my thoughts about how I was still alive were so loud that it drowned out everything else. That week really is a blur. And so, I think it was two nights later, February 6th, in the wee hours of the morning, I had taken a lot of drugs. So, I took a combination of prescription medications for anxiety and sleep, sleep aids.

[00:33:42] I had taken over-the-counter medications for colds. I took some Benadryl with it. So, an antihistamine and melatonin gummies. None of them in safe quantities. But none of them in quantities enough to kill me because I wasn't trying to kill myself just yet. But when I was in that altered state on all of these drugs, I decided, ah, fuck it. So, I got out the shotgun. I was very impaired. Like, my hand-eye coordination? Forget it. I didn't really have it. Fine motor skills? Nah, not really.

[00:34:11] And so, I got out the gun. I got out the ammo I'd bought. I was trying to load the gun. And I don't know how long I spent doing that. But it seemed like forever. And I kept, like, dropping the ammo, picking up the ammo. And at one point, I thought I had the gun loaded. Genuinely believed, oh, there we go. I got it in there. And so, I got myself into a position to, you know, end it all. Put the barrel in my mouth. And I pulled the trigger. And then nothing happened. So, in my intoxicated state, you know, my perception wasn't good.

[00:34:39] I only have, like, really fragmented memories of this. And this is what I've been able to piece together. Yeah. I just kept dropping the ammo. Just to be clear, you pulled the trigger? I pulled the trigger. What was that like the moment? So, here's why I asked, if you can recall, of course. You know, if I were to be in the fly on the wall, were you freaking out? Were you calm? What's the mind like just before? I mean, I felt like that buildup of intense anxiety. And when I decided, oh, fuck it, I'm going to do it. It was like all that intensity released. And I felt really calm.

[00:35:10] And I pulled, you know, I was about to pull the trigger. And I just felt like, it's over. I'm done. I'm gone. And then I waited. I thought it was a hang fire, which is where the, you know, your ammo doesn't ignite immediately. And so, it takes a second. Hang on. Hang on. So, you pull it. Yeah. It doesn't work. Your brain, which was almost just destroyed, then rather quickly pieces together. Oh, it still might work because there's such a thing as a hang fire, which I just learned, by the way. Thank you.

[00:35:37] And then you keep the gun in your mouth. Yeah. You wait. I waited. Yeah. I put it in my mouth. So, some people might have gotten freaked out or whatever word you want to use taking the gun out. You kept it there. I kept it there. All right. All right. Yeah. So, it's about 15 seconds with a shotgun if you have a hang fire that you wait. Why, it's way longer than I thought, Henry. 15 seconds and longer for other types of guns. I think it's 30 seconds for a muzzle loader. 15 seconds, which did it feel like a half a second or an hour? I don't know.

[00:36:07] I just knew like it was about to be over and it was worth waiting. Not a hang fire. Not a hang fire. It was empty. And after that time, you're like, all right, I'm not going to try this right now again. No. I picked up the ammo and tried again immediately. Oh, man. I have to ask better questions. I guess I'm not right often. And again, what happens? Okay. So, I pick up all the ammo. I'm wobbly, you know, still very intoxicated, very impaired. And I try loading it again. And I get to the point where there is ammo in the gun.

[00:36:37] There is one. Out of a pack of six, there is one. So, I get back into the position I'd been in, put it back in my mouth, and I pulled the trigger a second time. Nothing. Nothing. I waited. And I waited. Could have been a variety of things that caused it to not fire that night. I didn't know. No, not fire twice. Two times I tried to. Yeah. I pulled the trigger twice in a night. And then I passed out because I was very drugged.

[00:36:59] I woke up the next morning, later the same morning, I guess, with the shotgun was in the bed next to me with, you know, the one ammo in there. The one round. And I just, like, I was in a daze. I don't know. I just felt like I was floating. That's how I describe it. Like, I was floating. I didn't feel real. I unloaded the gun. And I pulled the ammo away. I hit it where I'd been hiding it. I just went about my day like everything was normal. And a couple days later, I told my therapist what had happened.

[00:37:29] It was at the end of the session. And, you know, I decided to just divulge what had occurred. And I thought in that moment I was headed to patient care again. For sure. Like, I'm about to, like, lose my freedom and, you know, go spend some time in a psych ward. But what happened instead was he listened. He was very compassionate and understanding. And he asked questions and just let me talk and cry for a while. And then he told me I had options. Hmm. Agency, Henry. Agency. Yeah, I had options.

[00:37:58] And the options were I could call my husband. Right there on my therapist's couch, call my husband and tell him everything I just told my therapist. And then we formulate, like, a suicide watch plan slash safety plan. And then, of course, my husband would need to keep an eye on me. Or I go to inpatient care. And then my husband would do it anyway. All right. So maybe not agency. But I had options. Okay. Well, he didn't just immediately ship me off to inpatient care, which I appreciate. But I have a lot of medical trauma.

[00:38:25] And he felt that would have been very bad for me and would have worsened my mental health. And I think he's right. But you tell your husband. I call my husband on the couch and I tell him everything. And I listened to him be in shock as he went to where I told him the ammo was hidden and found it. And he was just in such disbelief. Wow. A lot of our friends who found out about that afterwards were in, like, shock and disbelief at the time. Right. But if they knew your whole life, would they have been in shock and disbelief? No.

[00:38:53] Because I heard parts of it here and there, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I did end up beating another best friend because my original kindergarten best friend was murdered. That's the friend that was murdered when I was 24. My high school best friend also had her own suicide attempts and almost succeeded in high school. She came very close. She was really hurt, but she wasn't surprised. She was hurt? She was hurt. Yeah. She was so hurt. And I think she threw up. And that was a lot of sessions with her own therapist.

[00:39:22] And she cried a lot. Not surprised, but hurt. Have you thought about it since? I have. I've thought about it. When did you find the podcast? I found it in 2023. And is it because you were suicidal or for some other reason? I had a 2 a.m. deep dive, binge search through the internet when I had insomnia one night. I was looking for survivor accounts of women. Specifically, I wanted to find the stories of women who attempted suicide with a firearm and lived.

[00:39:52] Because there aren't actually that many women who choose firearms as a suicide method. Just like there aren't that many women who choose self-stabbing. There aren't that many girls who do that. But that's actually got a low incidence rate of 3% or less of suicide attempts or self-stabbing. So I was just looking for stories that reflected mine. I felt really alone. And I found somebody's college thesis that analyzed your podcast. I couldn't sleep. So I read it all. And then I Googled your podcast after that and found it and started listening.

[00:40:21] I listened to all the women's stories first. I'll be honest. I was a little biased. And after that, I started listening to the men's. And I've listened to all of them now. I just, I feel like your podcast has been helping me a lot. And I hope that my story can further help other people if they've been through similar things. Like, you're not alone. I've been through it too and I'm still here. Somehow. Somehow. Against all odds, I'm still here. Do you think it's against all odds from what you've shared? It is. It's against all odds. I'm alive.

[00:40:50] How many people know we're talking? Two. Therapists. Yes. One friend out of state. In fact, my therapist knows that we're redoing it. Okay. I told him that it was humbling to hear myself from our original interview being so avoidant. Very eye-opening for me. You were that? I didn't think you were that avoidant. And I did because I knew how much I was holding back. Did you feel a little better thus far? Yeah. I think this one went better. Did you think about suicide today? I thought about it as like, from like an intellectual standpoint. Not as a, I'm going to go do it.

[00:41:19] We do the pink and purple pill question now? Yeah, we can do that. So the audience, because sometimes there might be a new listener. Hopefully there's a bunch. Give Henry this pink and purple pill. She takes it, goes to sleep. She dies quietly, peacefully. No one knows it's a suicide. What would you do with that pill, Henry? Save it. Where would you save it? I would probably buy like one of those urn pendant necklaces and I'd put it in there. And I'd wear it and keep it on me so no one else could like stumble across it and take it. So weird. You have this choker on with a pendant.

[00:41:48] And I was just thinking, yes. I would put it in my jewelry and just wear it on me. What flavor do you think it would be if you could choose? Pistachio. So yeah, you don't connect pistachio with pink and purple, but you can do whatever you want. It's your pill. It's the Moni ice cream. It's got like pistachio and I think strawberry. And it's, you know, pink and green. Doesn't need to be pink. I was just... So there's some people that know about your most recent attempt and others, other attempts. Yeah. No, I actually, I opened up about it at work to my management team.

[00:42:16] At the end of 2023, I told them, hey, you know, earlier on this year, I tried to end my life and I told them how I did it because I was going to start looking into more aggressive depression treatments. And I wanted them to know what was going on with me. And they were very understanding, shockingly understanding. That's uncommon, perhaps. Maybe. To get that understanding. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah. So last year I did TMS therapy. So transcranial magnetic stimulation therapy.

[00:42:43] I did 36 treatments of that and it didn't help me enough. It didn't do nothing, but it didn't do enough. Right at the end of last year and all throughout January so far, I've been doing Spravato, nasal spray ketamine. This was the memoir title. What was it? Oh, mine? My weird one? Yeah. Brain magnets and horse drugs. Brain magnets and horse drugs. If people aren't clear, the brain magnet is the TMS, the horse drugs is the ketamine.

[00:43:10] And you are still doing the ketamine. And from when we talked last time and some email exchanges, it's really helping. It's helping a ton. Yeah. Shockingly. I actually had a really rough night last night. Yesterday I kind of spiraled and I was crying off and on all night, but I didn't spiral so hard that I got to the point where I wanted to die. Whereas just in December, I had a similar spiral and I did want to die just that recently. So Spravato is helping a lot.

[00:43:40] How many people do you have to talk to where you can talk about being suicidal and it not be uncomfortable or particularly uncomfortable? You could actually talk. You know what I mean? Have a conversation. My therapist? Yeah. I've had friends who offered and said, hey, I'm always here for you if you need someone to talk to, but I have my own mental block about that and feeling like I burden other people with my problems. So I doubt I would ever actually do that.

[00:44:03] And then my husband gets very mopey when I bring up sad things and he gets so visibly despondent that I don't bring up things with him too often. I don't tell him when I have recurring suicidal thoughts because he gets too down and then it turns into me emotionally supporting him through my moment of need, which is not helping me. I'm not going to tell him and I suggest you don't either, but his memoir title might be Mopey Man. Mopey Man.

[00:44:29] In the years in which you've been struggling and seeking care and did you ever get diagnosis or diagnoses you think are accurate? Yeah. Major depressive disorder, which I believe is treatment resistant. Anxiety, like debilitating anxiety and PTSD. I was misdiagnosed in my early 20s with bipolar disorder, but that was removed from my records and like struck out as that was inaccurate when I had my week-long mental health stay and

[00:44:58] I had very in-depth psychological evaluations and they took that out and said, you're not bipolar. We're taking that out. I had a court-ordered visit with a therapist when I was 12. After stabbing myself, a judge said I had to go, but I only saw that therapist one time and I don't know that I ever received a diagnosis then or maybe I did and my mom kept it from me like she would have done. So she sat in the room with me the whole time. So I wouldn't talk and that's exactly what happened. I didn't say a single word. Not going to get very far doing that.

[00:45:27] No, because I would have exposed her abuse if she'd left the room and she knew that. She ain't no dummy. No, not at all. About my mom, just a little side tangent here. She did experience significant abuse herself, including child sexual assault. She went through a lot and for all the hell that I went through, hers was 10 times worse. So I understand her damage and I know why she was the way she is or was, I guess. But it still doesn't excuse what she did to me. And still somehow in spite of it all, I love my mom and I wish she was still here.

[00:45:58] It's really weird way to feel because when she died, I felt so relieved. She believed that she couldn't hurt me anymore. And still, I wish she was around at the same time. You have cats? I do have four cats. They help you feel better? They do. They do help me feel better, even when they keep me up all night and annoy the crap out of me. You got cats that help out. You got the horse drugs, yours, that help out. Anything else? I'm an awesome therapist. That helps too. Anything else? I've been getting back into listening to audio books.

[00:46:28] I love music. I do connect with friends and I'll go out and I'll leave the house and I'll get out of my house, out of my head and go spend time with other people. I won't necessarily tell them I want to hang out with you because I feel like I want to jump in the river, but I'll just be like, hey, let's go get coffee. And then I'll just try to show up with a positive mindset and be open to whatever we talk about. And it usually works. And I usually at the end feel a lot better. Are there any audio books or songs, playlist bands right now that you're super excited about?

[00:46:56] My therapist recommended that I read the book The Wild Dutch of Sorrow. So I have that audio book lined up. I listen to a little bit of it and I think it's going to be good for me. In terms of music, I listen to so much music I couldn't even pin down anything. When are you 37? I'll be 37 in October. You'll be around? I think so. My dad is alive and I feel very motivated to stay alive as long as my dad is alive. And secondary to him, as long as my high school bestie is alive, I feel motivated to stay alive for her too.

[00:47:25] They need me and I need them. I am repairing my relationship with my younger sister. Oh, cool. So I'm in the process of that. We're starting to like get reacquainted and that feels pretty good. So I think we'll add, you know, younger sister to the list of people to stay alive for. I love my older sister. We have our problem. I don't feel as motivated to stay alive for her. I'll be honest. I don't hate her. She tried many times to protect me as a kid, but she also abused me when we were kids. And then she made mistakes that, you know, had ramifications for my life too.

[00:47:53] So working on that relationship, maybe someday I'll get to a point where I say I would stay alive for her. Maybe. This is a question I have never asked. Do you think there's anyone in the world who's staying alive for you? Yes. That must be an interesting space to be in. Yeah. My high school bestie told me that. She really had a hard time last year and she really became suicidal. But what stopped her was she knew I need her. That goes a long way. Yeah. It's not that surprising.

[00:48:23] I mean, it's pretty basic human connection type stuff, isn't it? Mm-hmm. We complicate things. I do. Not you necessarily. Well, I'm sure I complicate things. Are there any myths or misconceptions about anything we've talked about that you want to dispel? Yeah. Well, the big myth that I think most of your interviewees say is that suicide is a selfish act. I want to dispel the myth that if someone chooses a non-lethal method to try and kill themselves, that that wasn't serious and it was just a cry for attention because that's what I got accused of.

[00:48:52] I wanted anything but attention during that time. I just didn't know it was lethal. So it wasn't a lack of intent. It was a lack of knowledge of lethality. You think you'll listen to this when it comes out? No. What, number? A couple months? Two, three months? This time, yes. Okay. I will. I will listen to this one and I think I'll feel good about it. And I think my therapist will. The one friend I told absolutely plans to listen to it. He does plan to listen to it. So you're not the type of person to go blow it up on social media? No, no.

[00:49:22] I think what you're doing is important. And the thing that keeps me coming back to your podcast is people don't hold back here and they actually talk about the things, which is why I wanted to redo the interview because I held back. Well, I appreciate you being honest with me about that and then reconnecting. And I appreciate your accommodating and doing the whole second interview and giving me even more of your time. Of course. Is there other things or are there other things that we didn't get to this conversation that you want to bring up, talk about, or whatever else?

[00:49:49] But no, anyone who's thinking right now in this moment or planning, try something new. Try something new to deal with the depression first. You know, give a new idea a chance because that's what I did with TMS. And although the TMS didn't get me where I needed it to, that led me to Spravato. You know, if you give a new idea a chance, you never know what could happen. You could find a good path forward and you could find relief. And if it doesn't work, well, what did you lose? You didn't lose anything.

[00:50:18] You maybe felt a little disappointed. Hmm. What's the rest of your day like? Um, I was going to go do a workout. I like playing ring fit, uh, which is a switch game for fitness, which is really ridiculous and very, very fun. That's a good way to get a workout. Not, not necessarily feel like, Oh, I'm just doing this boring workout. Let me do and count out all my reps. I used to work out like that, but, um, I don't find it very mentally engaging for me. I hope that goes well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

[00:50:47] Thank you, Henry, for talking. And I hope your day is decent. Thank you. As always, thanks so much for listening and all of your support and special thanks to Henry in Michigan. Thanks, Henry. If you are a suicide attempt survivor and you'd like to talk, please reach out. Hello at suicidenoted.com. I'd love to talk with you. You can learn more about this podcast in the show notes, including our membership, as well as the Noted Network.

[00:51:14] And that is all for episode number 260. Stay strong. Do the best you can. I'll talk to you soon.