L in the Milky Way

[00:00:00] I had these two ideas of the future, one in which I'm fucking everything up. And the other one was a very solid and responsible person who would be in charge if I wasn't here. That seemed like the better option.

[00:00:38] 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, and we almost never talk about it.

[00:00:51] We certainly don't talk about it enough, and when we do talk about it, many of us, including me, we're not very good at it. So one of my goals with this podcast is to have more conversations and hopefully better conversations with attempt survivors.

[00:01:02] Now if you are a suicide attempt survivor and you'd like to talk, please reach out. Hello at suicidenoted.com, on Facebook or Twitter at Suicide Noted. You can check the show notes to learn more about the podcast and other ways to get involved, including our membership.

[00:01:18] We would love to have you participate in that. We could use the support. Special thanks, huge thanks to our most recent member, Elizabeth, who joined. If you are listening, and I know you are, be like Elizabeth. However you're involved in support, we really do appreciate it.

[00:01:33] Finally, we are talking about suicide on this podcast. We don't hold back, so 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 Elle.

[00:01:45] Elle lives somewhere in the Milky Way and she is a suicide attempt survivor. Hello, Elle. Hi. Where are you? I'm in my yard. I love getting a little glimpse into your life in your backyard. It's a nice yard. Hold on, let me show you.

[00:02:04] It is a nice yard. Yeah, it's new. I just got this house. Big girl things. Did you get the questions? I did. Yeah. Did you look at them? I hadn't. And then I was talking to my therapist about it and I was like, oh yeah,

[00:02:17] I'm talking about it on a podcast. And she was like, well, did he send you questions? And I was like, yeah, I haven't read them yet. So then we read them together. All right.

[00:02:25] Now, Elle, in the Milky Way, there are some things we're not sharing with our audience about you and your locale, however. But we can't say that you're outside. We can't say that you're wearing glasses or no? I am. And a bandana. Yes. I didn't wash my hair today.

[00:02:44] So. Ditto. Ditto. As far as talking with me for this podcast, suicide noted. As my friend, Corey May would say, why? Why? I have said, I think I'm ready to do it.

[00:02:59] And then I've texted you a few days later and said, nevermind, I'm not ready to do it at least three times. Fair. So it's not a consistent why. I do think my particular period of ideation really caught me off guard. I wasn't expecting it.

[00:03:17] I certainly didn't have the tools for it. And I didn't feel, to me anyway, like a stereotypical case. So I thought it was important to talk about, you know, I had always had this stigma of

[00:03:29] people who are really depressed for a really long time and then something catastrophic happens in their life and they want to commit suicide. And that isn't really how I found myself there.

[00:03:39] So I wanted to talk about that and, you know, really talk to you and see if like you have through all of your work here, noticed other variations of them. A lot of variations for what it's worth. You're like conversation number 190 something, which means I'm not fucking around.

[00:03:58] Just so we're on the same page there. How old were you when you were, I believe first? Is it first ideating? Is it wasn't something that happened earlier in your life? Like when I think back to when I was a kid, there was, there were probably more warning

[00:04:10] signs there than I recognized at the time, like hindsight's 2020, but I was 31. How old are you now? 33. And maybe what I have in my mind is not based on actual statistic. Maybe it is just pure stereotype, but like pretty old to, you know, have those ideas

[00:04:29] as intense as I did as a first timer. For your first 30 plus years, it's really hard to summarize. I know, but like you're not ideating. Um, I'm not ideating. I certainly am running, not comfortable in my own skin, not comfortable with my own head.

[00:04:47] Hindsight 2020 probably was so uncomfortable along in my head because I knew, you know, how dark it could get in there, but did a really good job of outrunning it for a very long time. What does that look like? The running?

[00:05:02] So, I mean, you know, the most basic version of the story is that I have PTSD, but I wasn't diagnosed with it until after this period of ideation. It is based on a series of traumas that happened from like 16 to 19.

[00:05:16] Then after that, I thought to myself, if left to my own devices, I do not make good decisions. So I should give that power to someone else, not be in charge of my own life. So I got married very young.

[00:05:30] I did all the things that you're supposed to do. I was like a very active student, you know, got a, uh, kept going to school, kept getting degrees. I started a family. I wanted so badly to blend in with everybody else, knowing the whole time that my brain

[00:05:45] was a little bit different than everybody else's and, you know, a little bit darker. And you had a sense of that then? I definitely knew that I was different. I think now I know people have a lot of opinions about like, you know, the merit of labeling

[00:05:59] and certainly I feel no desire to label others, but I really have benefited from my diagnosis and like understanding what it means and understanding how I got to this particular headspace and you know, my own, like when I get activated and what I do about that.

[00:06:15] And I'm not sure I would have taken all of that like self learning so seriously without a diagnosis, you know? Yeah. What is it? PTSD. As you said, listen, Sean, listen. It's like the most important thing for this fucking podcast.

[00:06:30] I wanted to swap it out for something else just to test, just to see if you were listening. Yeah. I don't, I mean, you know, it also came with anxiety and depression, which I knew and which

[00:06:41] didn't really like glean anything in my life, but that one was just like, oh wow. So I did this and then I did that and that's why I did this. So your original question was, do I still feel like my brain is darker than most?

[00:06:52] I think my life is very different than most in lots of ways. Some of which are like sadder than the average life and some of which are much more beautiful than the average life. How so? Oh gosh.

[00:07:03] I mean, I share custody of my child, which means I'm either an overwhelmed single parent or I'm missing my kid a hundred percent of the time. Always. You're always one of those two. You're never, I've never found a place of being quite balanced.

[00:07:18] And I also had always imagined him to be one of many kids, to be a whole bunch of children running in and out the door and creating madness and blah, blah, blah. When he's not here, it's very quiet, obviously.

[00:07:30] But even when he is here, it's a little bit more quiet than I had imagined his childhood to be. So yeah, those are parts of my life that are sadder than the average.

[00:07:40] I mean, I say that also knowing that I'm an incredibly lucky person and like lives can get much more sad. It just wasn't exactly for being someone who followed the recipe for so long. I am way off recipe now and that in and of itself is anxiety producing.

[00:07:56] Sure. So 31. 31. You have a kid, you've had a kid. You don't have a kid at 31. You have a child. So this child, boy. Boy. Is in your life. Yep. You are presumably separated no longer with that partner. Life goes on. Life goes on.

[00:08:16] So again, the stereotype that I had always understood was a very depressed person who then something bad happens to them. They've always had depression and something bad happens to them. So they're at an increased risk of addiction. I did a really good job of not looking depressed.

[00:08:31] Like I got out of bed every day and I ran miles, went to the gym, hung out with my friends, sort of like hyper speed. I always needed to be around other people all of the time because I was sort of brought up

[00:08:48] with this idea of like, if you pretend to be happy enough, you'll be in a good mood. You know? So just like always surrounding myself with people. The last straw that broke, the last straw where like all the ideation came flooding in

[00:09:02] was actually the end of the relationship after that one, after my marriage. So I outran the depression of my marriage by running straight into another relationship. And then when that one ended, that was like, I'm alone in my own head and I have fucked all of this up.

[00:09:19] You know, I think I took a lot of expectations that I had from my marriage and I put them on that relationship. So yes, it wasn't the person that I thought I was going to do this with. But like, look at us, we're playing house. Everything's fine.

[00:09:31] But you know, I was just trying to stay really, really close to the script still. And then when that marriage ended, I honestly didn't know what was going to happen next, I think for the first time ever.

[00:09:40] And I came to the ideation from a really like anxious place. I have, I'm too far off book. I'm way far off book. I am just like a burden to everyone. No one thinks that I'm doing this well. No one thinks that I'm navigating this life well.

[00:09:57] I feel, you know, I don't know if you have anxiety, but like when I feel incredibly anxious, like my mind is moving too fast. It's going too fast. And I used to have these, well, I still do.

[00:10:10] But you know, at the time, very intrusive thoughts of like, you've totally fucked this up. Like just take yourself out of the game. No one thinks that you're doing this well. Not everybody who's going through things and you know this, I'm just sort of throwing it

[00:10:23] out there for the sake of conversation and learning more. Not everybody goes through things and even says I'm way off script and even says I'm a burden and even says all those other things, thinks about any other life. Yeah. You don't necessarily go hand in hand always.

[00:10:37] So I'm wondering for you, you know, you're feeling that way and you were also feeling that other thing. Now we may not never know why, but do you have any idea how those two are connected for you? Yeah.

[00:10:46] I mean, I said this earlier, but my most intrusive thought at the time and really throughout my adulthood until that time was if left to my own devices, I don't make good decisions. So not only am I so off script, but I'm not capable of getting back.

[00:11:02] I cannot make a decision by myself. It has led to only trauma and hard things. And in fact, if I take myself out now, I won't drag other people along with all of these horrible decisions that I make when I'm alone, particularly my son.

[00:11:17] You know, like if I take myself out of the game now, then I won't drag him through X amount of fucked up relationships, X amount of, you know, poor judged moves or, you know,

[00:11:29] whatever it might be, because I thought so little of my own ability to navigate life on my own and to navigate in part his life on my own that I should do him.

[00:11:39] And, you know, the people who would be in charge of him if I were not here a favor by handing the baton. People talk a lot when I ask about myths, people always say, it's not selfish. It's not selfish. And you're just speaking to that.

[00:11:50] And I'm using that word. It's like, you're not thinking, you're thinking about your son. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had these two ideas of the future, one in which I'm fucking everything up. I mean, really just that relationship that I ran into running out of my marriage was

[00:12:05] not a good one. It was not a healthy relationship. It wouldn't have been a good like role model for him to learn off of. So like one version of the life is just way more of those and way more poor decisions

[00:12:17] and way more, you know, spontaneity and reactivity and all of these things that would have dragged him through shit. And the other one was a very solid and responsible person who would be in charge if I wasn't here. That seemed like the better option.

[00:12:32] So there was no third option of maybe I'll find somebody who can be that person for both me and him? No, I mean, I was pretty much aware at the point that I needed to stop looking for respite

[00:12:43] in other people, which was really, you know, the motivation of a lot of the decisions I had made. I mean, the secret third option was that I could like come into my own a little bit more and like understand that I make good decisions.

[00:12:57] But that one seemed so much more farfetched than the other two. So much less attainable than the other two. Yeah. Did you remember when the first thought pops into your head? Is it that is it a clear moment? Yeah, yeah.

[00:13:11] I remember when the first thought popped into my head and I was lucky in that every morning I woke up okay. I used to describe it as I would fall into a hole and I couldn't get out of the hole.

[00:13:23] So by the end of the night, I needed to go to bed or, you know, I was going to do something dangerous. But every morning I woke up okay. So I had enough time in the morning to like tell my family, get all the meds out of the

[00:13:35] house, you know, like protect myself a little bit before everything fell down. The most intensive time, the time that literally my best friend saved my life. So one of the things that had weighed on me, you know, throughout this experience was

[00:13:52] that I found out that I couldn't have any more kids. So this idea of I thought he was going to run around with a bunch of people, you know, he wasn't going to be able to.

[00:13:59] So all day I was volunteering at his school and I was around babies, but I was holding tiny babies like the little, you know, the weight of a baby. And I just was like, oh, this is never going to be my baby again.

[00:14:09] You know, that period of my life is over and I didn't enjoy it at the time. And God, you know, I can't fucking do anything right. I can't even enjoy these special moments when they happen. And I was just coming out of that toxic relationship.

[00:14:20] And, you know, we had been texting back and forth a little bit and that wasn't going well. And I pulled over, I was holding a panic attack in all day. That's another thing about this time. I had really, really intense panic attacks.

[00:14:30] I was holding one in and I pulled over on the side of the road and sat on a park bench and just lost my ever loving mind, like in a very public place. There were people driving and I called my friend and I was sobbing.

[00:14:42] I couldn't get anything out. And I was just telling her, you know, these really dark things, these, you know, I've completely fucked this up. This isn't going to get better. I shouldn't be in charge of somebody else's life.

[00:14:53] I shouldn't be in charge of my own life, blah, blah, blah. She said, you're going to come over and you're going to watch TV with us. You know, my daughter and I were going to order pizza. And I was like, no, it's okay.

[00:15:02] I just needed to tell you and then I'm going to go home. And she said, I did not ask you a question. I love her. I know. And when she said it, I heard how nervous she was, you know, and then I heard why she was so nervous.

[00:15:19] Like I, you know, played back. It was the first time that I like saw it happening. And I was like, holy shit, like you really are in a tough spot. And I really, until this period of time, a really unmarked terrain for me.

[00:15:32] It was all very, so I didn't go home, which was great because that was the time I had, you know, the most motive and the most opportunity. So she really stepped in there. Was there a way to end your life at home? Yeah.

[00:15:45] That was before I started getting rid of the medicine and stuff. I didn't have a garage. So that wasn't an option. And I didn't know if I could, I had thought about the other ones, but you know, at the time, it was a very intense period of time.

[00:15:59] And I remember thinking like, well, if I apply for a gun now, you know, it's going to take a couple of days. And, you know, like I was just sort of thinking through what was going to happen.

[00:16:06] But again, I was very lucky in that there was a period of time every day that I wasn't in this place. So I could, you know. That's, that's a period of ideating, but it's really moving close. It's close. When you're thinking about motive, when you're thinking about method,

[00:16:20] that intensely, you know, that's getting really close. Yeah. There were a few other times when I had my son with me and I was, you know, distraught, panicked, panic attacks all the time.

[00:16:33] And I remember thinking that I wanted to ask his other parent if I could drop him off, like, you know, say that I had somewhere to be or something. But knowing that if I didn't have him that night, I would be in a really, really dangerous spot.

[00:16:47] So keeping him, which is incredibly unfair to him, but like, you know, keeping him with me as a shield against myself. The isolation loneliness thing. I know they're not the same thing are so dangerous. Mm-hmm. It's so fucking dangerous because you don't have that respite. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:17:04] You often don't have that respite. I'm curious about one thing in particular, when you went over to your friend's house that night with the pizza and the daughter watching TV, I'm not going to ask you what programs you were watching though.

[00:17:15] I'm tempted to, I am going to ask you what she did for you that helped. Her daughter told me all about her play that was coming up. We ate good food. I got to pick the movie. We stopped to make fun of it a whole bunch, almost nothing.

[00:17:29] I mean, like, you know, not, not a pin you in the corner, lecture you or get it out of you, but just love and community. Of course. Now I have to ask you what damn movie it was. Twilight. Which she loves and her daughter and I hate.

[00:17:44] So it was introduced as like, oh, we're just going to make fun of you for the next several hours. Probably felt pretty damn good. It did. She had already seen a lot of this over the span of a couple of years.

[00:17:56] I had my first panic attack as an adult on her couch. And she was the one who was like, you know, what are three things you can smell and three things you can taste and blah, blah, blah. Magical person.

[00:18:05] It was a comfortable place for me to be that night for sure. The panic attacks are coming before you even meet the guy. They are, they, the kind where like this world is spinning or the bottom is dropping, or is it something more like dready? It's not dready.

[00:18:20] It's you've totally blown it. You've totally blown this facade of like, I want to look like everyone else. I want my family to look like everyone else. I want, you know, to blend in.

[00:18:31] You've completely fucked this all up and you're just falling endless falling now in a very panic inducing way. Heart racing or not that physical? Oh yeah. Heart racing. All fours on the ground, hard to breathe and was usually triggered probably still is, although

[00:18:48] I've been lucky to not have one in a while, but I'm usually triggered by like the optics of everything. I was always a very optics focused person. So like if someone I loved called to tell me that they didn't agree with what I was doing,

[00:19:02] that would be enough for me because again, if left my own devices, I don't make a decision. So I rely on other people telling me that this is a good decision.

[00:19:10] And if you don't think it, then it's not, you know, really no like sense of self at all. I love the fact that you have, you've said it a few times. If left to my own devices, I don't make a decision, but it's a phrase.

[00:19:22] Every word's the same. You're like that. You're locked in with that shit. Look, I never give advice, but I'm going to, I'm going to make an exception here. If this person fucking calls the one who didn't agree with your decision, just take your webcam

[00:19:36] out, show them that backyard and be like, boom. Yeah. I mean, I've had the great fortune in the past few years to start to trust myself, which has been really nice, but that was sort of the beginning of the end, right?

[00:19:49] Like for 31 years, I thought if left my own devices, I don't make good decisions. It wasn't until I was at the bottom of the pit with nowhere else to go. It was either take yourself out of it or learn how to fucking trust yourself that I had the

[00:20:04] opportunity to start that process. It's not flawless, obviously, but I took a little bit of anxiety meds up until the period of ideation and then was like, I really just don't feel safe in my own head and I need help making my head a safer place to be.

[00:20:22] And that started more meds and an increase in the dosage that I was taking. And now I feel more comfortable in my own head, probably because of the meds. Thank God. And this is not a question that you've asked, but there was always sort of a stigma around

[00:20:36] mental health in my family. And in thinking about, you know, how I want to raise my son, I have these little like pill packs and every Sunday we fill them together.

[00:20:45] You know, like he's in charge of putting them in order and popping them out and I put the pill then and blah, blah, blah. Your listeners are going to say that's not very safe, but it's been really helpful. And sometimes he's like, what is this?

[00:20:55] And I was like, oh, it just helps mom think a little calmer and a little clearer when she's stressed out, you know, just talking about it. Well, I mean, you said earlier the word normalize. I mean, there you go. Yeah.

[00:21:04] How long did that period last or are you still in it? Yeah. So June to September, three very solid months. I met with the psychiatrist in August. We started messing around with stuff. So my son's birthday is late fall.

[00:21:19] And I remember thinking, I'm just going to stick around until then. I really wanted to see his party and, you know, see him age and be with his friends. And I liked the theme and stuff. So I thought I would stick around until then.

[00:21:30] And then if I still felt it at that time, I would feel more validated in my plan. You know, that there really isn't a way out. So late spring to late fall. Yeah. What got you out of it then? Meds. The meds. And writing about it.

[00:21:43] So I say meds, which is true. Didn't feel safe in my own head until I got on the right meds. But also once I felt a little more stabilized, then it was therapy and writing and, you know,

[00:21:57] the coping mechanisms that I had already started trying to build up like since the divorce. And when you say write, are you writing on a pad or are you writing on a computer? I write often on my phone. Like a millennial. Fucking millennial.

[00:22:13] Yeah, I don't usually write like pen in hand. Do you write pen in hand? No. Are you saying that because you know I would judge the answer? I think you're judging regardless of what I say. That's probably true.

[00:22:24] You got out of it and you've been out of it for the better part of two years. A year and months. All the while you're keeping a full-time job. You're raising your child. You have family and friends that you have some connection with that you do.

[00:22:37] So, you know, like you said, you're not bedridden. You're doing your living life. You're navigating it through this lens in part. Suicide an option? No. I would say, you know, I have days that feel shakier than others. I trust myself more now.

[00:22:52] The most dangerous and the irony of this will not be lost on you. But the most dangerous thing I could do for my mental health these days is not spend time alone.

[00:23:01] If I have a couple of weeks at a time where I'm surrounding myself by people all the time, I start to go back there. I start to go back to this very like frantic running, depending on others for everything. That's a little tricky though because you like people.

[00:23:20] I like people. Yeah. But I… You used to only want to be around people. Yeah, but for my own benefit, right? I was using people to a degree.

[00:23:28] I needed them to tell me that I was good, that I was okay, that I was still like a worthy person. When I spend too much time with other people, it puts me back in that headspace where I care

[00:23:40] a lot about what other people think and then start caring less about what I think and then start trusting myself less, you know? I tried dating again recently and I found that it's very hard to do when you need to be alone

[00:23:55] a lot for your own mental health, you know? It definitely started slipping then. And they were lovely. And there was really, you know, it was that stupid like, it's not you, it's me thing. Like I just don't have it in me.

[00:24:09] I don't have the extra energy because all of my energy right now goes towards time with my son, time in my world that I'm building, you know, friends that I love dearly, their children.

[00:24:19] I get to be in a house where kids are running in and out and I get to love that space and you know, definitely like building a community that's helping me through grief and then also just time alone. And between those three things.

[00:24:33] We're having a lot of extra time. No, no, no. How many people know that we're talking? Three. I'm not included in that, I assume. No. The girl who saved my life that day, my therapist and my sister.

[00:24:45] How many people know about the ideations for that period of time? Way more, way more. The number is going to be really small, but it took me a long time. My therapist and I talk a lot about like the power of the words suicidal ideation.

[00:25:02] I talked for a really long time about like, especially during the actual period of time about like falling into a hole, the hole being a really dark place, me feeling not safe when

[00:25:12] I'm in the hole, you know, like all of the like clues, all of the different ways to describe it that weren't actually, I'm thinking about killing myself. So I would say there's probably 15 people who could tell you that I was in a hole at that time.

[00:25:28] And I would imagine that many of them know exactly what I mean by that. They just were nice enough not to. Everyone mirrored my language, which I found very helpful at the time. I understand in retrospect that I probably fit some criteria for depression, but it really

[00:25:42] came as a place of control. I needed control back. I wanted to control the path because I felt like it was just, you know, I was again going off recipe. So like aggressively so.

[00:25:55] I also now understand that if you have an intrusive thought that tells you when left to your own devices, you don't make good decisions. And if that intrusive thought has been in your head for 10 years, that's an important part of your constitution, right?

[00:26:08] Like I never recognized the power that it could have over me given the perfect storm that then happened, right? I think I knew it and I solved it by letting other people, you know, be in charge of my life.

[00:26:21] And I kind of thought the problem would solve itself. So the myth is like, you know, if you have this dangerous intrusive thought even before your ideating, that would be a good thing to address and not wait until it almost kills you. You know?

[00:26:35] Do you think if your friend hadn't invited you over that night, you would not be talking to me right now? My friend hadn't invited me over. I wouldn't want to be talking to you right now.

[00:26:45] If I could figure it out when I got home, I would have figured it out. When I was in college, I was in a class and they wanted you to like get personal in this class. It was a stupid course. And this person was asking me questions.

[00:26:57] And the premise was that the teacher will watch the person ask you questions, but sort of like monitor and make sure it doesn't get out of hand. They're asking me questions and questions and questions and questions. And I lose it.

[00:27:07] And I start crying and I get up and I run out of the room. And when I met with the professor who was like, what the? When I met with her afterwards, she said, I had no idea that you were uncomfortable until you started crying.

[00:27:18] And I think that's my life. I wouldn't have. I don't show anyone anything until really, really bad. And certainly as a trauma survivor, you know, like that was the job, right? The job was to be OK. Of course, I'm OK. I'm joyful. I am giddy. I am engaged.

[00:27:40] What do you mean something bad happened to me? Fuck you. Look how great my life is, you know? Yeah. And it wasn't until post this period of my life that I have been able to articulate to people that I'm not doing well before it gets really, really bad.

[00:27:54] You would share with me earlier about a time of the year every year where it's particularly hard for you and you call it. Wait, what do you call it? So I call it grief week. And grief week is on the calendar all year long.

[00:28:06] And I dread it and I, you know, build up my resources going into it. And this year I had the opportunity to tell a couple of close friends that it was grief week and the way that they took care of me was incredible.

[00:28:19] And by telling them that I was in a bad spot before the spot got I'm at the bottom of a hole, can you take my meds from my house? By telling them earlier, they were able to support me and love on me.

[00:28:33] And it was the best grief week I've ever had. But it was really a learned skill of mine. I didn't know how to tell people that I wasn't okay until I got up and ran out of the room crying.

[00:28:46] I don't have numbers, but of people that go through trauma or perhaps certain kinds of trauma and they're the people that are the kind of people who just sort of, I'm okay, I'm fine. Let's get on with it.

[00:28:57] I would bet a good percentage of them find themselves in your spot at some point in their life. Yeah. They cannot run it anymore. You get tired. You can drown it in shit and maybe get by for a while. You're doing something though. I'm okay, I'm fine.

[00:29:11] I don't think you can sustain that forever. You're going to be a drug addict, an alcoholic, some kind of addict. Something's going to give, man. By the way, when you have PTSD and you're diagnosed with PTSD, is that a forever thing? I think so, yeah. I don't know.

[00:29:26] Technically speaking, I have no idea. For me, it will always color how I'm reading a situation or how I'm responding to something or like where I feel a trigger in my body.

[00:29:41] I don't know if this is really related to the topic at hand, but when I got diagnosed with PTSD, which was again, probably right in that August, right when we were getting on the meds

[00:29:51] and stuff, she had to tell me four times that what I had been through constituted PTSD. I always, in retrospect, find that to be so interesting because I understand stigma and can happen off the battlefield, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:30:06] But then when it happened to me, I was like, no, say it again. Can we talk a little bit about the traumas? So there's three separate traumas. One of them was an armed robbery. I had a funny story that I would tell about this armed robbery.

[00:30:23] I was just a kid. I was in another country. We were on the road in the middle of the night and our headlights came on this guy who had this giant AK-47 and a vest that said police.

[00:30:33] And I asked the driver if he's the police and he said, it doesn't really matter. We have to give him all of our money. And I literally told that story as if like, oh, isn't the world such a funny, crazy place for like 10 years.

[00:30:45] And then I am telling this psychiatrist's story and she was like, that's a trauma. I was like, oh shit. Yeah. But I just misfiled it in my brain. I was just so good at like running from the hard things.

[00:30:58] And in that respect, I'm like, wow, you told that story to so many people asking them to receive it as comedy too. My mom at one point was like, you sure nothing really hard happened to you when you were there? What part of the world did that happen?

[00:31:14] So one trauma was in Costa Rica, one trauma was in Honduras. Growing up, I wanted to work on access to education for women in other countries. That was always my goal. I was going to be in the Peace Corps. I was never going to live here.

[00:31:26] I was going to do it. And then those two things happened and I was like, oh fuck. I was a very sheltered kid and it was an interesting example of like even the most basic things aren't true.

[00:31:38] You're safe when you're with the police or I mean, obviously it's a very privileged thing to say or like your tax dollars goes towards road work. Just like the very basic functionings of a society aren't true everywhere, which is again

[00:31:53] bubbled and privileged, but something I needed to experience first. My brain is such an interesting place that it can repackage things. And now that people in your life know that about you, do they sometimes say, hang on a second, I know you're presenting this way.

[00:32:07] I know you're saying it. I know this. But remember, you were doing that for years. The thing where you did the AOK thing. I'm not sure if I'm entirely believing you.

[00:32:16] I would say the friend who saved my life that day, she'll call you out on your shit for sure. Like if you're too bubbles about it. Around that time, lost a bunch of weight because I wasn't eating.

[00:32:26] I would see people with her and they would be like, oh my God, Grace, you look so good. And she would say, don't compliment her. It's the depression. She won't give me anything. Just really, really an excellent human.

[00:32:35] After experiencing such intense ideation, I am like a little bit proud of myself. This is maybe not a common thing that you hear from your participants, but I took out a life

[00:32:49] insurance policy when I was in the deep, dark place because it has a whatever that is like vesting time of two years. If you die before two years, then they investigate it. Certainly if it's a suicide, they can pull back and say that it was a scam.

[00:33:06] And I remember reading that part and being like, okay, I'll give myself two years. That's a good boundary. I can give myself two years. Then if I still feel much as I did with my son's birthday party, it'll be a more valid

[00:33:19] act for me to do if I still feel it in two years. So then I'm sure I'll have a thought when it's two years like, oh, that was a long ways ago. I just think aging is kind of, I've had a much different experience with it since thinking

[00:33:33] about suicide so deeply, which has only been a year. Maybe I'm just new. I mean, my life just gets weirder and weirder. The recipe thing, I'm off recipe now and now I'm just making up my own shit.

[00:33:44] That used to be a really scary thing because I didn't trust myself to make a good life. Now I'm making a pretty fucking great one. I think it's just like more and more you get to trust yourself more.

[00:33:56] When I think about the traumas of 16 to 19, they were very formative times in that it was like the first, 16 to 19 is when you're boundary pushing, right? I'm going to go on this big adventure and I'm going to learn that it's safe. I'm going to try this thing out.

[00:34:11] I'm going to learn that it's not safe. It's very like a kid around an oven, how close can you get without burning yourself? That's a very common experience for people to have. And I think the average person establishes pretty good boundaries, what's safe, what

[00:34:28] makes them comfortable, what doesn't. And that whole process was so fucked for me. And then I just put someone else in charge for 10 years. So a lot of this stuff I'm doing now, I feel like I'm 20.

[00:34:40] But I hear these stories of people and I'm like, wow, wouldn't that have been such an interesting experience to be able to go through 16 to 19 and learn where the oven is and what burns it, do all of that and come out the other side?

[00:34:53] I think a lot of my relationships would have been healthier. I don't think I would have had this if left to your own devices, you don't make good decisions. So I find myself a little bit jealous of them for being able to do that. Yeah.

[00:35:07] So is suicide still a possibility for you? It doesn't happen very often, but maybe like twice a year, you'll hear about someone, a celebrity or even just like a D-list celebrity, you know, themselves and one woman who was like a mommy blogger.

[00:35:23] There is like a, huh, you know, she talked about her depression. I don't think she was super past tense about it. Right. Like she wouldn't tell you that she was hunky dory now.

[00:35:31] She was depressed then, but she's not now, but she did talk about it, which I think to a lot of people means that it's like at least on a shelf enough, you know, that you can

[00:35:40] talk about it and talk about it past tense and put the little spin on it and like all of that. Yeah. And we're thinking like, wow, it's just probably, I mean, it crept up on me for the first time at 31, but it's definitely coming back.

[00:35:52] You know, I had a series of events in which this intrusive thought was very tested. I can't imagine the intrusive thought will always be there. I can't imagine there aren't going to be other series of events that test it, you know?

[00:36:05] And I'm not saying that to be like darker. Well, can we just talk about that word for a moment? Dark. The darkness is not talking about it. Most of the stuff most of us are going through is just part of the human experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's light.

[00:36:18] That's the word I use when you talk about, like I actually love when people, Jared, this is the opposite of dark because I've been there where I'm like feeling this way and there's nowhere I can go. You know what happens then? You kill yourself. Right.

[00:36:30] That's actually, if anything, the one thread or takeaway from all the shit I've done. And I probably am sensitive to it and listen for it more than I do listen for other things, but you put someone in a position where they're not doing well and they are alone.

[00:36:43] That is a fucking dangerous combination or recipe. So, I mean, it's definitely coming back, right? I'm just building a new recipe now and I'll probably get knocked off of that one too, and that'll throw me sideways.

[00:36:54] You know, so it's like there's no reason that it's not coming back, right? People have shared this with me. Like once you open that door, it's really hard to permanently close. And I think it applies to you in that even when suicide becomes a legit option, not like

[00:37:06] a theoretical abstract idea, it's open. Yeah. I mean, I think I was more like I surprised myself that it was open, you know? Like I was like, oh, I didn't know that door worked. Okay. It's open now. I didn't know it could open.

[00:37:21] So like knowing that even, you know, I don't think about killing myself these days, but like now I know that door can open. So it's probably going to open again. I didn't know that door worked before that point. Why is a door almost always the metaphor?

[00:37:37] And I've never talked to someone who's had like, you know, cyclical periods of ideation, but I would imagine that when it happens again, I'll have an easier time saying it out loud to people.

[00:37:49] It took me a really long time, just like how I didn't leave the class until I was crying. You know? Like it took me a really – I didn't tell anyone until I was in a very, very bad spot. Right.

[00:38:00] And I would like to think that I wouldn't wait that long again. Yeah. When you didn't. Grief week. Oh, grief week. Yeah. Yeah, no, you're right. That could have had some really bad potential and now I just tell people, which is like,

[00:38:13] I don't know, for being a very like optics person, very optics focused person growing up, like it's still a little bit funny for me to like tell people, you know, that I'm having a hard time. I'm good at optics.

[00:38:23] You'll never – I mean, that teacher had no idea I was having a hard time until I got up and ran. You know? Remember my lens is everyone suicidal. Yeah. That's a little extreme, but my default is you're struggling.

[00:38:34] You know, I talk a lot about this pre-post, you know, period of my life. And pre, I was really focused on like optics and not letting people in and control. But in this post life, I really just love like authenticity. I love being an authentic self.

[00:38:52] I love talking to people about – I talked to my friends about the hardest things now, you know, and they tell me their hardest thing. Yeah. You know, there's so much love in authenticity than there is an optics, which like feels really obvious to the average person probably.

[00:39:06] But I'm still, you know, learning it and enjoying learning it. For sure. Well, Al, appreciate you joining me here today. All right, I gotta fix my hair. Thanks for talking. Bye. As always, thanks so much for listening and all of your support.

[00:39:23] And special thanks to Al somewhere in the Milky Way. Thank you, Al. If you are a suicide attempt survivor and you'd like to talk, please reach out. Hello at suicidenoted.com on Facebook or Twitter at suicide noted.

[00:39:34] Check the show notes for all kinds of other goodies and treats, including information about our membership. And again, thank you to Elizabeth, our most recent member. That is all for episode number 191. Stay strong. Do the best you can. I will talk to you soon.