Life After Attempting Suicide (my Sound Out for Life story)
My name is Julie. I've been married for 15 years, I’m 42 years old and an only child from a small town in southern WI. I keep myself busy as a blogger, author, community organizer, mental health advocate, peer counselor and amateur photographer. I am also a suicide survivor. That's what I am going to talk about today.
Artist, photographer, peer counselor... I have a lot of titles these days. There used to be a time, where I only had one title though, a title I didn't choose and I surely didn't like. When I was around 18 the people in my community began to refer to me as the "crazy lady" or the "psycho bitch", depending on their generation. When I go home to visit, I still hear it whispered behind peoples’ hands. That stigma hurts me, to this day.
My family life wasn't the greatest growing up, as is the case with a lot of people. I was a sensitive kid whose feelings were easily and often hurt. My mom loved me and did the best she could, but she was struggling with her own stuff. She tried to get me help, but that wasn't successful. My father was MIA from 7-13 years old and I had no real friends. I was bullied, sometimes violently, by my peers. I felt like no one in my world really cared about me. At 4 years old I was abused by a close family member, but my mom was the only one who believed me. Everyone else accused me of lying. Over the years I developed a mental illness known as Borderline Personality Disorder.
Borderline is a disorder that makes it hard for those with it to regulate their emotions. We are easily stimulated and it seems impossible to stop the emotional flood that ensues. Once we are emotionally triggered we also lack the ability to self-soothe. I heard it described somewhere that people with Borderline are like emotional burn victims. Even the kindest touch can cause unbearable pain. Around 10% of Borderlines die by suicide and for years I just knew I would be part of that 10%. Despite a diagnosis at 15, I was never treated for anything other than major depression for years.
My teenage years were spent in and out of mental institutions and psych wards. At 15 I was committed to the state mental hospital for a year. I got no treatment there; I was basically just warehoused since I was too troubled for foster care. After a long stint as a teen runaway I was shuffled among family members until I turned 18 and was completely cut loose on my own.
After I turned 18 I was drinking to deal with my trauma and ended up in 5 point restraints in the hospital often. I basically become psychotic when I drink. The police would charge me with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, despite knowing I was having a mental health crisis. They never took me to jail at first, they always called an ambulance to do a 5150 on me at the same time as charging me criminally. Eventually all of these arrests landed me on probation.
Around the time I went on probation the psych ward in my local hospital closed. From that point on my mental health crises were dealt with by putting me in jail. I know they knew that it was actually mental health problems, rather than a criminal issue, because they used probation as a way to force psychiatric treatment on me.
My criminal/mental health issues were unfortunately made worse by psychiatric drugs. While on probation I was forced to take meds on and off, once by a doctor using me as a guinea pig. He had me on so many drugs I was so out of it I would half wake-up at night, light a cigarette (I still smoked back then) and pass back out. One night I set a couch and my own self on fire without realizing it! I finally couldn’t take it anymore. On top of all that, I have a rare and somewhat disabling bone disorder. The extra weight on top of that almost completely incapacitated me. Every time I complained about side effects though, the doctor would add more drugs to the mix.
The thing that got me into the most trouble while on probation was my use of medical cannabis. I use cannabis to treat pain from my bone disorder as well as my anxiety and other PTSD symptoms. I tried dozens of psychiatric drugs over the years and had horrible reactions to every single one. Some of them made me violent, some made me suicidal. Cannabis has been the only drug that eases my pain and anxiety without causing me dangerous, possibly deadly side effects. Unfortunately I would go to jail at least once a month for using it while on probation. During the time I set the house on fire though, I had been abstaining for several months because I was so sick of jail. I was trying to do things "the right way".
A day or two after the fire I decided that the psychiatric drugs were killing me so I stopped taking them, cold turkey. I found out quickly that cold turkey caused brain seizures, it felt like my brain was being given an electric shock every second or two. I didn't know how to stop it, was starting to think of hurting myself, until someone said cannabis controls seizures. The cannabis stopped the seizures virtually instantly, so I started smoking it again. At that time I was on parole, stopping the drugs that were killing me and using the drug that helped me were each a violation of my parole conditions. They revoked my parole and I went to prison for one year and 11 days.
There are other ways mental health struggles can be stigmatized, as well. Back East I was jailed twice after suicide attempts. The first time the police officers didn't do the 5150 on me when they brought me to the ER, so when they showed up the next day to do it they were told by my doctor it was too late. The officers called my probation officer, who put me in jail for 2 weeks instead of taking me for professional help. The reason? Violating my probation by misuse of prescription medication. The other time I went to jail for an attempt the judge appointed me a public defender, against my protests that I couldn't afford it, for the release hearing. Months later when I couldn't pay the public defender fees I was held in contempt of court. I spent 6 weeks in jail that time, while my husband worked overtime to pay off the $800 I owed to get me out.
It isn't just cops, even doctors can stigmatize us. Another time at the hospital, when I came to after an attempt I had the ER doctor screaming in my face. He told me repeatedly what a selfish little delinquent I was, among other nasty names. He screamed, just inches from my face, about how if my liver didn't start working again I was going to have to have a transplant. With spittle spraying all over my face I heard how some poor sick child would die because they would have to give me a liver that I didn't deserve instead of it going to the poor sick child who did deserve it. If I could have found a way, I would have tried again right then and there. It seemed I had managed to drag myself down even deeper into self-loathing and misery with my desperate attempt to escape them. I wanted to die even more and here was a doctor screaming agreement to my worthlessness.
It isn't just cops, even doctors can stigmatize us. Another time at the hospital, when I came to after an attempt I had the ER doctor screaming in my face. He told me repeatedly what a selfish little delinquent I was, among other nasty names. He screamed, just inches from my face, about how if my liver didn't start working again I was going to have to have a transplant. With spittle spraying all over my face I heard how some poor sick child would die because they would have to give me a liver that I didn't deserve instead of it going to the poor sick child who did deserve it. If I could have found a way, I would have tried again right then and there. It seemed I had managed to drag myself down even deeper into self-loathing and misery with my desperate attempt to escape them. I wanted to die even more and here was a doctor screaming agreement to my worthlessness.
When I finally got out of the criminal justice system about 15 years later, as you can imagine, I ran. I came to San Francisco with no money, no job and no place to stay. I lived on the street for about a year before I was awarded SSI and given housing in an SRO, where I still live. I came here because I knew that my mental health issues would be addressed by mental health professionals rather than the Department of Corrections. I knew that medical cannabis was recognized here- I could be a patient rather than a criminal for the only medicine that has worked for me. I knew I had a chance here.
It was here in San Francisco, after my last suicide attempt, that I met my savior. I was hooked up with an agency that provides services and emergency housing to homeless people (SFHOT). Once I got housing the agency had to close my case. It was the final appointment with them that I met him. My case manager wanted desperately to help me before she closed my case and brought Burt in to help her figure out something. When he was told my diagnosis he had the answer. He said, “If I could wave a magic wand and give you anything in the world, I would give you DBT”. I was instantly intrigued! With a magic wand he wouldn't wish me health, or peace, he would wish me DBT. But wait, “what the fuck is DBT?” It had to be something pretty amazing and I couldn’t wait to find out. (DBT is Dialectical Behavior Therapy. It is specially created for people with Borderline. It teaches mindfulness, distress tolerance, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation and gives HOPE.)
With his magic wand Burt gave me hope, for the first time in my life. I had hope that things could get better. “Better” seemed a path that was securely closed off from me until that moment. My case manager now knew what I needed and was quickly able to find it for me. Within 2 weeks I was in DBT groups and individual therapy that I had faith in for the first time, ever.
For about 18 months I spent nearly every day at this agency going to DBT, therapy and other groups full time. I was finding some control over my emotions and my life, it was an amazing time. While there I gained confidence in myself enough to go back to school, something I had always wanted to do. School had just never seemed possible before that; mental illness was controlling my life.
Up until finding DBT I had lost every bit of faith I had ever had in the mental health system. It had done nothing but hurt me before this, physically and mentally. I hated it and spoke out against it regularly in public and on social media. DBT was such a miracle to me that I decided I wanted to try to give that miracle to others too. I enrolled in City College into the Community Mental Health Worker program, where I was delighted to discover that mental health was undergoing a transformation. The old medical model system is on its way out and the wellness and recovery model is on the way in. This is something I can believe in!
I am doing things today that would never have been possible for me before that last suicide attempt. I have graduated from City College as a certified mental health worker, do community organizing work, do art, advocate for social justice issues and work in my community to help my neighbors keep their housing and access to services that we need. My life isn't perfect, not by a long shot. Things still really suck sometimes. But today, I have HOPE that the rough times will pass. HOPE was something I had never felt before Burt waved his magic wand over me. Today it has become my mission to bring that hope to others who need it.
Last November I saw Burt at a Project Homeless Connect event. He looked really busy and I was feeling really shy about approaching him, especially if he was as busy as he looked. It took me almost an hour to work up the courage to speak to him. I’m really glad I did. I told him, “you probably don’t remember me but you saved my life a few years ago.” He suddenly stopped what he was doing and looked at me very intently. “How on earth did I do that?” he asked. I told him about the magic wand and DBT and how he had given me the gift of hope. He just kept looking at me for what seemed like forever. Finally he said, “That kind of sounds familiar. I wish I could remember!” He looked at me some more and said, “You just made my day. Thank you for telling me that.”
Always be kind to people. Always listen to their needs, you never know when you will hold the magic wand, the HOPE that has the power save another person’s life. You never know when your simple kindness, one you don’t even recall it is so inconsequential to you, could transform another person’s life.
