I will be 49 years old on Monday Aug. 2. It is strange that I finally have an answer to what has been going on with me for all the years of my life. I grew up in a family in which my father was an alcoholic and committed suicide when I was 12 years old. I can remember most of the fighting, but a lot of it I have hidden deep inside of me. I have always said I walk this world alone…now I understand what I mean by that.
My 19 year old daughter slit her wrists two months earlier, a week after that I lost my job. Last Monday I had an unemployment appeal hearing, after that I remember very little except that I contacted my best friend who lives in another state and ask him to please call my children and tell them I was sorry. I then took my whole bottle of Xanax out of the cabinet. I went to get a glass of water…through all of this I was watching myself…it was as if I were watching a movie. I was so calm and did everything just as it was to be. There was no conscious effort on my part to try to kill myself…no emotion. , no anxiety….there was nothing…just me watching myself do it. I honestly have no clue what happened that day….I remember bits and pieces of the movie.
I thank God a phone call from my niece seemed to click me back into reality….back into my own self…no longer me watching me go through the actions which could have been fatal….. This was the first time that suicide had ever entered the nightmare of the movies I have made….Thank God I was already in therapy…….because otherwise it would have just gone on this way forever..never to understand what happened, just like all the other times in my life. It all hurts so bad……but at least I understand I am not alone in this world anymore..others have felt this disorder as I have…the strange feeling of displacement in this world…the strange feeling of total focus on our every move….our escape…our detachment…our movie…our nightmare….