The Fine Line

The akathisia faded more slowly than I would have liked. Even stopping the Abilify immediately I had to take mirtazapine 15 mg once a day (okay, for those first two days of having the mirtazapine and the akathisia was still as bad as ever, I was taking about four of those suckers a day). My appointment was Wednesday and by Saturday it was mostly gone and pretty much entirely gone by Monday. I was now on Latuda 20 mg. The anxiety was breaking through now that I wasn't on a full dose of bipolar medication but I could deal with some anxiety as long as that terrible akathisia was gone. Just a little set back - tried a medication and it didn't work but now we've got Latuda and that should be much better.

I'm at work and I'm feeling good. My bosses know about my diagnosis because it seemed prudent to tell them, what with me needing a psychiatrist AND therapist appointment every week. Hard to schedule those during off hours of work, especially because I can't see the psychiatrist and the therapist on the same day for insurance reasons. So, if I'm going to need to leave a little early from work twice a week, my boss should probably know why.

Good thing I told them because when I was going through the akathisia hell my work had suffered and they'd notice. Rather than thinking I was just shirking my workload, they talked to me, checked in to see how I was handling the meds. I told them I’d had a really bad week, and my boss asked me to tell her,honestly, if my job was too stressful for me. She wasn't asking because she wanted to fire me (she couldn't, legally, since she knew about the bipolar thing) but because she cares about me (it's a small company so I have weird things to get used to, like bosses that care) and wanted to know if I was open to trying a new, less stressful role in the company. I told her I was and we made a tentative plan for how things could go (once they find a replacement for my current position) and then I left the meeting.

I went straight home and cried harder than I have since my dog died a year and a half ago. I was so sure I was going to lose my job because when you're suffering depression caused by not-fully-treated bipolar disorder, your mind doesn't think about things like legalities. Just the knowledge that they might WANT to fire me - me, who has always been a star employee! - was enough to make the pain so bad I couldn't breath.

I wanted to die.  As a kid, there were a lot of times I wanted to die. There were times I begged the god I still believed in to give me the courage to end it because I hated living so much. As an adult, there were times I didn't want to be alive but many fewer times I actually wanted to die. There's a difference between not wanting to be alive and wanting, actively, to die. Not wanting to be alive is passive. It's an ache in a soul that is exhausted by the day-to-day stresses and wants to be free of them. It's wanting to be free, however that happens, of your daily life. It's something that could also be answered by running away to Tahiti or living in the mountains.

Wanting to die, really wanting death is a different beast. Wanting to die is pain so sharp it makes it hard to breathe and you can't see an end. You can't escape it, there's no running and hiding, it will be with you forever, you just know it. You will always carry this struggle and damn it, it's not worth it. You hurt in the very fiber of your being, in the ethereal "you" and you just don't understand why you're supposed to have to put up with this when you could just stop. With just a few pills you could stop forever and it'd be so peaceful. If you're an atheist, like me, you don't believe in an afterlife, you believe in oblivion. And when the pain is crushing down all around you, that's all you want is sweet, blissful, uncaring oblivion.

You don't care if people think you're a coward because you're dead. You don't care if people think you took the easy way out because you know it's the easy way out and that's why you want it. You don't care about all the future happinesses that might come along because from your end of the world, those potential joys are more a cruel joke than a silver lining. You don't care that it's mean to the people you love because if the people you loved knew how much you hurt, really knew, could really feel it, they'd never ask you to keep going. And even if they did ask, you wouldn't care because you're tired and you're heart sick and you're just so very, very done.

Suddenly, death isn't some scary monster to avoid but a loving friend you can't wait to embrace. Sharp knives aren't something to avoid due to their danger but something to be coveted by your mind for all the lovely potential they hold for release. Cars rushing by on the street aren't something you jump to avoid but something you unconsciously lean towards, your mind eager to meet that endless sleep with one quick, final step. Pills that you counted carefully before you took them so you didn't make yourself sick, pills that you maybe avoided because you didn't like taking strong medicines unless necessary - those pills become as precious and treasured as raw diamonds. Those sweet, round and oblong little gems that will send you to a sleep that will never end.

And then...then someone tugs you. You try to resist but someone, something, starts tugging you back away from these thoughts of blessed suicide. You remember a face. A friend. A relative. A lover. A reason. In a moment of doubt, you think of them and how much it would hurt them and that thought hurts worse than the internal anguish. You slowly pull back from those delicious dreams of nothing because you realize that if there's anything you can possibly hold on to in this cold, dismal universe, it's that friend, that relative, that lover.

For me, it was Ryan. I'd like to lie for the sake of my friends and family and say it was some of them, but this is the unfiltered walk through my disease so I won't lie. I'd like to say it was just love and love alone, but even that could have been overcome if I hadn't been so worried about him. Ryan doesn't make friends easily. He doesn't love easily. He has no close friends. I honestly believed (and still do) that if I died in such a way, he would never forgive himself and would never love again. Without me, I worry he would lose touch with the world altogether and be forced to suffer in misery alone. While his family is wonderful and would try to be there for him, I think he would push them away because I think me killing myself would break him. And I can't break the thing that's most precious to me, even in my agony.

I don't worry for my sister or my best friend. They are gregarious individuals with no lack of support to help them in their time of need. They would be devastated, true. But they would not be broken. I could be okay with devastating them. And my various other close friends and family would be so very sad, but they would survive. I could be okay with making them sad. They could cry at the funeral together, maybe even become closer together, and they would move on.

But Ryan? Ryan who has been the answer to every childhood prayer? Ryan who has shown me love I dreamt of when watching romantic comedies and reading my novels filled with love to shake the foundations of the galaxy? Ryan, who can say the simplest thing to make me smile and feel so alive? Ryan, who is so vulnerable and so fragile emotionally? My Ryan? Break my Ryan? No. No, I can't do that.

So, I clawed and I scrabbled and I inched my way away from that waiting embrace of death and heaved my way to life and living. And here I remain, often teetering on that precipice between wanting life and wanting death. But when things are bad I try to remember those family and friends I before so cavalierly dismissed and wonder, “Could I really do that? Could I really cause them that kind of pain?”

There’s also the question that has kept me alive time and again when suicide beckons: What will I miss? I won’t get to see Danielle on Broadway. I won’t get to see Brandy start a non-profit organization that sweeps the globe. I won’t see my niece and nephew grow up to be the incredibly amazing people they’re already promising to be. I won’t see Alyssa gain her confidence. I won’t see Jimmy come to the realization that he is loved. I won’t see Roger find his true love and have, just, way too many chubby little babies. I won’t see baby Xander grow up to tower over his mother and yet still quail if she gives him her “you’re so busted” glare.

I won’t see my own children, yet to be. I won’t get to teach them, nurture them, love them. I won’t get to impart everything I’ve learned. I won’t get to watch Ryan be a father. I won’t get to meet the things I will love most in this world.

So, I tend to hang around on this side of the edge, tethered here by those faces that call to me. Little do they realize that every kind word they share, every joke we crack, every hug or smile makes their tether to me that much stronger and keeps me on the side of life that much more firmly.