I attempted suicide on Saturday.
I was just at my desk one night, wondering, "is this as good as it's ever going to get?" I can't really do much of anything. I can't work the way I am right now, I can't really focus on anything for a sustained period of time. All day, from the moment I wake up, I'm fatigued, weary to the bone or whatever the phrase is. I went on vacation with my parents, to Branson. It was nice. I was sitting in my room one night, thinking "I'm going to kill myself, but I will wait until the vacation is over, so that I don't ruin my parents' vacation."
I brought the bottle of lorazepam to my bedroom and just sat at my desk with the open bottle for maybe half an hour. I didn't cry. I wasn't even scared. I just knew that once I took the pills there was no going back, I guess. Eventually I worked up the courage to take them. I counted them out. There were 14 days worth of pills, 28 1mg pills. Distinctly, I recall how I felt in that moment. It wasn't cathartic. It didn't feel good. It didn't feel bad. If I'm being honest, I didn't really feel much of anything at all, which is the strangest part to me.
As though I was looking for some sign, some divine sign from God to tell me not to do it, I rolled the dice on it. "1 through 10 I don't kill myself, 11 through 20 I do." I rolled a 17.
Anyway, I woke up on Sunday, stoned out of my mind and completely okay. I tripped down the stairs and crashed into the china cabinet. The china was fine. I got a bloody spot next to my eye. That morning I made plans with a friend to go do whatever the fuck, but I was too dazed to connect what I was typing on my phone to events in the real world, so I was distinctly surprised when my friend showed up at my house. I was having a hard time reading the messages on my phone, too. It was kind of like that linkin park music video with all the shifting images and text. I vaguely recall that we went to the university library and wrote together. If you asked me anything else, I couldn't tell you.
Apparently I watched a movie with another friend. I don't remember the second half of the movie. I don't remember even watching it. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent was the movie. I need to rewatch it because I remember liking the first half.
Sunday night, almost 24 hours later, I told my parents that I attempted suicide. They were wondering why I was so loopy. They thought maybe I took my medication twice by accident. Ha! They called my psychiatrist in the morning. He said to take me to the hospital so that I could get bloodwork done to see if there was toxicity and whatnot, I think he was concerned that I overdosed on lithium. We got the bloodwork done, and then the hospital wanted to keep me overnight to make sure I didn't go home and kill myself. A social worker came and evaluated me. They took my clothes, phone, wallet, everything. I couldn't have anything except books. Then they stuck me in a room with a couple of other people. The guy in the bed next to me said "the glowing CIA people got to me again." I laughed. He saw that I had books. He asked me what my favorite book was. We got to talking. He told me of his brother-in-law's blues band. I don't remember the name. If we talked for longer, we might have been able to exchange phone numbers or something. I pride myself in my ability to remember numbers. Someone came and talked to him for a while and I think he was discharged, because he didn't come back.
Anyway, it was a boring day, I slept poorly that night, and it was a boring next day too. The social worker came back and evaluated me again. I told him "I don't feel hopeless anymore." which wasn't strictly true (or untrue I guess), but I was NOT going to spend another night in that hospital.
The people in the emergency room sent me to the psychiatry department. My parents came to pick me up. We sat in the small room at the hospital. A psychiatrist came and said that they wanted to admit me to the hospital AGAIN. I said "no, sorry, I don't want to be admitted to the hospital." Without skipping a beat, she spoke to my parents about getting a court-order to commit me, right in front of my face. I was right there. I'm not a teenager, I like being shown even a marginal amount of respect. I felt obscenely insulted.
I met with my psychiatrist on Tuesday. He said that there's a few medications left to test that are patented, so I would need to get them from a psychiatrist that can get them to me affordably, because otherwise they cost thousands of dollars a month. I don't know if it would go toward the deductible. Probably. He also brought up electroconvulsive therapy. Basically, the hospital would shoot electricity into my head to induce a seizure. It would wipe out a couple weeks of my memory, but apparently it works really, really, really well for a lot of people. It works for depression, mania, psychosis, all the shit. At this point, I feel so out of options that I am genuinely considering it. Surely it can't be all that bad.
My parents were going to start dispensing my medication out to me like I'm a fucking child in order to control my doseage. I told them, "if you think you're going to partition my medications out to me, I'm not going to take it." Besides, if I was really set on killing myself, controlling my medication would do nothing: I could just go buy a pistol or throw myself off a bridge. I think they decided that I'm not really at risk of overdosing again, because I took the bottles and they haven't taken them back. If they do, bye bye medication.
I talked with my brother a while over Discord. He said that he loved me, and that he was glad I didn't succeed. I remember being surprised. I didn't expect him to care that much, I didn't really expect anyone to care that much. I don't think I would feel sad if he killed himself, so it's this weird double-standard or whatever you want to call it. Maybe it's just a matter of philosophy. People that believe suicide is wrong are going to be inclined to feel bad, I guess, while people that don't believe it's wrong are inclined to feel not-so-bad about it.
When I was leaving the hospital, finally wearing my own clothes, a guy saw my Starfleet Academy sweatshirt.
"Starfleet Academy! Is that where you went to school?" He asks.
"Yeah," I responded, "I graduated, class of 2382."
"Say hello to my future self for me!" He replied.
"Will do."
It's funny, because the conversation went exactly how I thought it would in my head. When I got the sweatshirt, I told myself "I'm going to tell people I went to Starfleet Academy if they comment on my shirt." It felt good to have that interaction. I hope I have more interactions like that. I think Lower Decks is set in 2385, which is ten years after the events of Deep Space Nine. So I put myself comfortably between the two series.