November 26th, 2014
July, August, and September passed as though they were only a handful of hot days, not months. They have not passed in the way normal time passes. A depression in my chest, which had settled in July, continued to haunt me until October. It is now one week before December. I allowed myself to forget November even as it passed by, rattling its bones at the prospect of winter. I’ve been working so hard to take care of myself. If sitting on the shower floor and letting hot water rush across my back is self-care, then I am very good at it. And there are few things at which I am very good. Good at laying in silence, watching the walls, dancing in the worst of my hours, as if on psychedelics. I am very good at watching the sun sink below the ocean, the sound of the shore pounding in my ears. I am very good at listening to the rain in the forest, and the small and low sounds of birds beneath a wet canopy. I am very good at letting go, at letting time pass, at letting the days and nights unravel, a thin silken string. I am very good at meeting the encroachment of darkness with warm hands. I have begun to be very good at taking my meds in the morning, evening, and night.
These days my life is different, it is not the one I have lived. These days my life is quiet. My life is now without the instability that I thought would likely perpetuate the rest of my life. But what did I know of lifetimes at twenty? I knew only what the doctors told me. That I would for the rest of my life be an unstable schizophrenic. That there was no coming back from the days of psychosis and mania. No coming back from the hallucinations. No coming back from the bottle of gabapentin I swallowed at twenty. Homeless always, and always searching for something I couldn’t have. Somehow though, the lifetime I was promised, is not the one I have. The life I am living is placid but productive. It is whole and happy and satisfying.
I work. I come home. I have my meds. I sleep well and deeply and wake up rested. I wake then, somewhat sleepy, and make coffee. I nurse the mug, hot against my cold hands. I drink my coffee standing in an unlit kitchen. Sometimes I drink my coffee in bed. Sometimes I drink it staring out the living room window. My eyes wandering amid cold pavement, dead leaves, and a pale morning sky. Today, I’ll make soup. I’ll cut the carrots gently, crush the garlic, and make warm broth.
I have learned to allow the seasons to pass with an appreciation for the cycles of growth and decay.
Winter has arrived, and the days now end in early darkness, cold and hushed. At night, in the winter in Maine, you can hear the wind, rushing against the last vestiges of soft yellow sunlight. I am happy for the Autumn months before winter. I am happy for low light mornings, early evenings, and candlelit bedtimes under warm blankets on soft beds. Autumn smells like used books, burnt matches, and decaying leaves. Winter, who has only now arrived, smells cold, smells calm, smells like snow. Winter smells of memories, of woodsmoke, of hibernation. November is a hard month for me. It harbors memories of trauma, of my own, and the trauma of others. The holidays too. But those memories, of hospitals, of suicide attempts, of near-death experiences and the yearning for them, memories of self-medication, of self-harm, of slowly healing wounds (mental and physical), often overtake delighted moments and memories. Though I am trying to change that. But something about listening to the sounds of my heartbeat after my overdose, ticking quietly away as it was decided that I would not need my stomach pumped conspires to haunt me. The colorful hallucinations that came after, dancing and gleaming and pulled me down into a deep drug-induced rest. It was determined I had taken 5400mg of gabapentin. What I did not know then that I do know now is that gabapentin has a significant max dose. I had not taken enough, at least from what I understand, to kill me.
I am not as grateful for winter as I am for other seasons. Though I know I should be. It is the season of rest before we race again against the clock to prepare for next year’s winter. One hundred years ago we could only hope we had what we needed to allow winter to pass, and one hundred years before that it was about survival. These days I am just grateful for the quiet life that I have now. I have learned to cope with trauma anyway, and with another winter comes one more year between myself and the day I wanted to die. Between myself and the year you intended to die too. But look now, see where we are? One more year passes in which we are alive to see it.
There was a day in which I had come to terms with what my life was expected to be. Overmedicated in group homes, or even likely still homeless. But I have beat the odds, I have not ended up with what was promised to me. And how lucky, I have been told. Partly luck perhaps, but hard work too. I have worked tirelessly to get to where I am.
Looking through an old journal I found an old suicide note. Looking down at the book in my hands, at my old and messy handwriting, at the implication of the words, at the heaviness of discovery (which I will not share here), I found myself, momentarily unable to breathe. Just a few weeks later I wrote in that same notebook:
“November 26th, 2014: But after all this, I have decided not to give this illness the only thing it wants: my life. Because that life is my life and I’ve just started to love it. No sense in giving up now.”
