Mental Health

In pieces

I feel like I am disintegrating. Like my soul has split into many broken pieces and I cannot place them back together because I don’t know where many of the pieces are, and the few that I’ve found, I don’t know how to “put them back right” because I don’t know what I’m trying to re-create.

Earlier tonight I was online and saw someone whom I put on my buddy-list because this person was only recently diagnosed as bipolar and wasn’t taking the diagnosis very well. I am familiar with the initial shock and confusion and fear. Tonight I’m glad he talked a bit, because he was suicidal and had attempted suicide twice in the past couple of weeks.

As I was frantically trying to keep him talking and not give up, my fingers shook terribly as I typed. I hardly ate anything the whole day. I didn’t want to eat because I was in a severe depression slump. When I become depressed, I go against biology even as my stomach was growling at me. I thought it funny to be terribly depressed myself while trying to convince this person not to give up and that this will pass.

I asked him to look up a crisis and suicide hotline in the phonebook - and I went to look for where it might be located on a phone book so he could find it quickly. I found that the crisis line for my city was located just on the inside front cover of the phone book, under the rabies hotline. I joked that it would be really embarrassing if I dialed the wrong number and got the rabies hotline instead. I DID get a kick out of that, even though I wasn’t sure he smiled.

If I were in his position, and I had been, I probably wouldn’t have called. But at least now I know where the number is. I asked him to have that number handy, without necessarily a commitment to call it. Have it handy, just in case. This was something I learned from my husband - doing something “just in case”. That was a good thing I learned.

Disintegration is happening to my cells. I feel the spaces between the electrons and protons and neutrons of my atoms grow, to the point where I cannot tell the beginning of one atom from the end of another. Everything seemed to be a floating mess, an oily pool, a puddle of pain. Tonight I’m trying the 3-depakote-at-nighttime dosage, but I am not sure if I will let myself sleep. When disintegration happens, even the most tired body cripple against a defiant mind. Then they both collapse.

Chatting with this suicidal man gave me a close look at what my husband saw when I experienced the darkest despair from depression. Granted, I was the sick one, but it doesn’t take away the burden that loved ones endure. Chatting with this person helped I understand what my husband meant when he told me that talking with me when I was depressed was mentally taxing for him. This experience made me appreciate that mental taxation.

You cannot walk away because you care. Then you wear yourself out caring.

© 2008 by Jane Chin, Ph.D. (email) All Rights Reserved.
Abstract logo images by Asif Akbar