I went to Dr. Palting today. I’ve never been a “suicidal patient” before. It’s an honor I’ve managed to skirt. Not sure I like it much now it’s caught up with me. That’s how the nurse put it when she was on the phone making an appointment for me with counseling services. I overheard words I knew I would never forget, that dropped into my chest cavity one by one like lead musket balls: “I have a suicidal patient. She’s actually attempted suicide.”
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They are wrong, but I suppose that is just semantics. The cutting I specified turns into suicide implied. It’s all the same to them. I understand.
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But what a weight on me at those words, seeing the wary alarm in their eyes that I had wanted to avoid – this choice colors all lenses, tints all glasses that people will squint through trying to see me.
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I did not attempt suicide, nor have I ever, but it was close enough not to matter. Who would understand that my parents have chained me here with their blinding love to ever leave such an option open to me? Who can know that a couple of cuts and the soft thought of permanent escape is all I can ever have when it gets this bad? There are some times when thoughts don’t lead to actions.
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But oh, what anxiety is in me now at this label. And it is so ironic that life had begun to turn for me. The irony of my life will be the death of me one day. After Rachel called me and my dad spent the day with me the next day for Valentine’s Day, I began to feel normal for the first time in a long time. The numbness had cracked and splintered like a spring thaw. And in a whoosh, the writing I had been hunching over with all this pain informing it exploded to take the place of my burdensome reality, and all of a sudden it became my reality, my true reality. My writing was my bliss and I was good at it. It was my true vocation, my real job, and without warning, those loathed hours at school seemed to take on the look and feel of a thin, watery film I could poke my finger through. I had joy again, good feelings, certainty in my future. I was going to write and write and write, every night, at work, on the weekends. I was going to write because I had to. And wonder of wonders, I was able to go into work on Monday morning and all that week with a perfect peace. This was not my life. My writing – that was my life. I was going to get published. It was miraculous! All the storm clouds had split apart and the sweet moon was spilling through. I was happy. God, it stunned me. I even began to wonder if I needed to go to the doctor. Would I waste my time and money on medication I didn’t need?
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Then as if in answer to my query, last Sunday night, I had a startling drop into the old dread at the thought of going in the next day and deal with all the behaviors and all the work and all the crap. It took my breath away because it was so unexpected. I gasped with the sudden tears because I had been so certain that I had had more than a week in me. And where before I hadn’t journaled to chronicle this miracle because I was too busy writing stories, now I walked past my journal because I didn’t want to have to write of that glorious change in the past tense.
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I calmed down and my chest unclenched but it answered my question. I couldn’t trust any unaided good feelings in the maelstrom I was navigating through.
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So I kept on with my writing, having to take a couple of days away from it to just watch a movie and cross-stitch, because as lovely as my second job was, I was still working two jobs. And I put in leave for today’s doctor’s appointment. Good thing I didn’t take a half-day. I’m between appointments now, scribbling away with a heavy heart before my emergency counseling appointment. At least it’s a woman I’m seeing. I just don’t want to have to unearth my whole dating history and mindset and motivations like I did with Dr. Rabinowitz. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. Not that I mind the subject matter – it’s just so complicated, I’d have to untangle it for someone outside my own head. But it’s a big part of it. While I think it might be a relieving thing to tell someone everything, I sigh inwardly and gird my loins. I am a suicidal patient after all. I wonder if I should have just lied about the cutting to the nurse and Dr. Palting. I hate to lie; it itches, sits wrong on my skin. But honestly is sticky – I’ve been burned before by it. I truly think if I just got the medication I’d be fine. I don’t think I need counseling. But it’s out of my hands now, isn’t it?
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I had just been starting to feel normal again, not so broken anymore. I have been emailing with this guy on Match.com, with dad giddy over my shoulder. He makes me laugh in his emails and he doesn’t make me nervous. And when I feel broken, I just don’t see how I get started with him. When I feel normal and just ready to feel good and all my defenses are gone, I don’t feel any anxiety about him. He may be the One, he may not. I’m not thinking ahead. I just want someone to make me feel good, feel safe. You make me feel good, I’m yours. Simple as that. But now, this thing is hanging over me, this label, this diagnosis or whatever it is. And again I wonder if any man would want someone with these scars?
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