In the looking back over the earliest years of my emergent adulthood and onward, one thing was very constant: nothing that I did on the outside had any effect on my chaotic, fragmented insides.
But I tried everything. Surely going to my dream college would fix me; it didn't. Then I thought I'd try grad school to see if it would help; nope. I jumped into a marriage in hopes that this--what had to be the greatest affirmation of adult stability short of having children--would make be all better; another try, another failure.
I stayed sick. I stayed broken. I remained unresolved.
The decade between 20 and 30 was a dissonant whirlwind. I attempted all of the above, to no avail. I tumbled down the proverbial rabbit hole of pharmaceutical drug addiction in such a way that was never an attempt to become the manifestation of a dark Appalachian stereotype, a hillbilly pill head, but the shoe certainly fit. I was a statistic waiting to happen.
I ended up on the wrong side of my parents and being one phone call away from ending up on a Britney Spears-type of conservatorship, for mostly the same reasons. Matter of fact, I was having my own substance abuse fueled mental collapse at the same time that she was. Reading of this on my favorite celebrity gossip blogs was such a darkly comforting affirmation for my existence. I'm not alone, after all, a sadly hopeful little voice whispered within me.
Honestly, the outward act of marriage, setting up house, and soon after, becoming pregnant with my first and then second child did cause the chaos within me to abate for a little while.
A little while.
I had very strong maternal instincts, and I had daughters. There was something about the strength of the feminine energy within me that had always been feminine like nature as opposed to female like a girl that was at its peak manifestation. Being a mother to daughters was something I was as naturally good at as writing.
I felt very much like a creature in the wild compelled with a knowledge that was in-born when it came to my girls. And how powerful it was to have girls. Friends of mine teased, the force-of-nature femininity in you would never allow for anything male to grow in your womb. I thought of it in terms of Clan of the Cave Bear. My totem is gonna whoop any man's totem's ass because, yeah. I'm that cyclonic.
God, I want to be able to tell you, even at this point, that I had found my happily ever after, for I was, with my tiny daughters, happier and more full of purpose than I had ever been at any point in my life prior.
But the day came when I yet again fell to pieces...there was another mental breakdown, another relapse onto drugs and alcohol.
The breakdowns have somewhat of a pattern:
Hospitalizations / relapses: 15, 21, 31, (almost) 39.
This one happened around my 31st birthday. I just came apart. My moods began to swing so wildly that I couldn't get back to any kind of equilibrium. I spiraled. I reached out for anything to self-medicate. The drugs made it worse. Things were already going bad in my marriage (we were not right for one another) and so it all just finally imploded.
I landed back in the hospital.
My ex husband knew me back during the last relapse and witnessed how bad things got with me when I had a psychotic break and picked drugs and alcohol back up. He hired a lawyer, went straight to court, and hit it head on.
And just like that, I lost custody of my precious daughters, ages 1 and 3.
I was denied even supervised visits. I can't describe the degree to which I felt like my soul had absolutely been ripped from my body. Those girls were the sum total of any and everything that had ever been good about me.
But it happened. I'd never hit rock bottom this hard before. And it was goddamn hard to pick myself up.
So I did the only things I could do: relocate back to the city where I'd lived right after undergrad. Regress backward in my internal age about ten years. go back to graduate school. Finish one Master's degree and start another. Write three novels by hand at first and then type them up. Get an agent. Get a job as a college professor.
And drink. God, did I ever sit in my apartment and just drink myself into an absolute stupor.
It was really dangerous, in the looking back, how big of a difference there was between what I presented on the outside for everyone to see during that time versus what was really going on inside of me. To the world, I was a brilliant, quirky, energetic albeit eccentric professor who was the absolute favorite of all my students, the one they wanted to go with them on road trips and come over and get high with them and sometimes, to date them (I did none of the above; I always had ethics, regardless of how wayward I was in other areas). Everyone was so impressed that I'd written books, found an agent and, holy shit, had secured an audience with major publishing imprints. I was interesting, I was successful, I was cool, I was so, so cool....
Meanwhile, on the inside, I had begun to obsessively contemplate in a very real way whether or not I might ought to go ahead and end things altogether. I'd tried at least three times to go back and get my girls returned to me, but family courts hate drug addicts and drunks in equal measure as they hate crazy people and I had all of the above going on. No, no, no, they kept telling me.
Almost three years had passed. My daughters were growing up. My ex wouldn't even let me see them, and there was nothing I could do about it. Losing my girls and being unable to have them returned to me was very close to being something that was a very real end for me. I sat in that apartment drinking more and more every night, looking back over my life. No matter how hard I had tried to rise--and I'd tried, God knows I had--I always fell back down, and there was nothing I could do about it. Mental health professionals certainly couldn't help me. Something was fucking wrong with me that couldn't be fixed. Everyone who'd ever loved me paid the price as the result. And now, this curse had passed down to my little girls.
It began to make a whole lot more sense to me to end things. Once I did this, sure, everyone would hurt, but wouldn't it be better for them to suffer one last. large hurt from me as opposed to contend with me hurting them over and over for as long as I was alive?
Once this idea had entered my mind, it was like a seed was planted that began with each passing day to put down roots, to push its head above the ground. It was frightening how plausible it seemed. And then this sense of fright gave way to a numb calmness, like I knew what it was I had to do, I needed only to decide how I would do it.
And the "how" came to me with such smoothness and ease it was almost frightening. I went to the pharmacy and acquired an entire three months' supply of lithium. I recalled the literal pinky promise I made to my psychiatrist before I left the hospital the last time that I wouldn't use it to kill myself. Well...I reckon I was about to make a liar of myself.
The Friday evening I'd chosen rolled around. I'd already made all the arrangements I needed, I'd written all of the notes necessary, to whom it may concern. All that was left was to move forward.
*
Seven years have passed since that night. And I'm still here, still living, aren't I?
What happened? Well...You know how they say it's always darkest before the dawn?
Hmm. I'm not sure that's true. Matter of fact, I'd say it usually isn't. But for me, right then, it was.
I will always remember this time time as the moment that things finally began to change.
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