“Remember only a very few people have earned the right to hear those parts of us & only if we want to reveal”. ~ Mary Ann Goughler

In the past I have openly discussed some of the ugliest sides of my life… Although I haven’t exactly described them in much detail I have tried to express my emotions, that is, if they were available…

I have an ‘ugly side’ I want to talk about today… but although it is about desperation, fear and sadness there is something beautiful that has come out of it…

I think I’ve mentioned it here before… and although I’ve wanted “it” before this, somehow I didn’t want it as much until then… This was 2004-2005…

I was going to kill myself…

To the outside-world I was working towards a better life for myself…

The truth was I was tired of the game of listening and thinking the opposite… I was tired of listening to my family, my treatment team and with my inner turmoil not being able to do what I was supposed to do to ‘recover’… In my mind… in my delusional mind I knew I could never ‘recover’… It would be too much risk to take…

In a way I was living two separate lives… one that focused on ‘getting better’ and which is what I wrote about here on my journal during that time… and one that focused on dying… I never talked about that side… unlike in the past… I didn’t tell anyone how I felt as I didn’t want to risk a failure… and in the process I wanted to keep a distance from all my dear friends I had made online over the years…

I wasn’t going to hurt them anymore… I wasn’t going to hurt my wife, my sister, my children or my friends… and that is why I was going to kill myself…

I needed time however… I had to make sure they would know why… They had to know I was doing it to set them free from myself… my pain… and my evilness… I needed time to write each of them a letter…

I had to suffer through it… just like in the past…. worse even… Everything that I’d done to myself in the past wasn’t enough… I spent time surfing the internet looking for ideas… methods of killing myself… I got some ideas… some from online surfing… and some just from my head…

Months passed… even a year….  but finally… it was time….

I’m not going to talk about how I did it… That is for me only and maybe the medical team that treated me afterwards… It’s too private… and it’s too ugly…

I didn’t want to do this inside my home so sneaked outside one night when the time came for me to carry out my plan… I didn’t think twice about it…

It was like I was in a trance of some sort… or like an actor on a movie screen as the ongoing story went on… No feelings… no regrets… I was going to succeed this time…

Somewhere in the “process” I passed out from the pain… or maybe it was something else that made me pass out… I don’t know…

A thought imprinted in my memory… It could have been my last thought…

…the moment you realize what you have done… that you know you are actually going to die… and there is nothing you can do about it… that’s when you know you really want to live…

I was unconscious when I was found… rushed to the hospital…

I don’t remember any of that… I don’t remember anything until maybe four weeks later… as I was in ICU being waken up… a very vague memory… tubes… not being able to move… pain …but not unbearable…

At that point I didn’t realize what had happened… That came later…. I was in and out… Heavily sedated, still connected to a ventilator and all sorts of ICU equipment… Although this time is pretty much a blur in my memory… I do remember being afraid… I remember seeing images from my past flashing in front of me… I still couldn’t move… My hands and legs were tied to the bed as at one point I had somehow managed to rip out some tubes… For a while there I felt I was back in the past… as a child… being tortured… alone and betrayed…

After “it” I was hospitalized for almost three years total… most of it in psyche-ward… under intensive care, medical observation, physical therapy… therapy for my body and for my mind…. It took a while to put my shattered, at first, still suicidal, mind back together… I had to learn how to speak again and how to swallow food and liquids again… but somehow it happened… I didn’t hate myself anymore… I didn’t want to die anymore… I didn’t feel I had to free my family of me anymore or think they’d be better off without me…

Needless to say… Mentally I’ve come very far since this time… even counting a mental relapse in 2011-12 leading to my diagnosis was changed from Major Depression with Psychotic Features to Paranoid Schizophrenia… where I was hospitalized without my consent…

I have not fallen into such a deep depression nor have I hurt myself intentionally… and I hope it will never come to that again… ever…

The physical consequences of my “plan”… my “it”… are permanent… and can not be undone… and I am still dealing with the effect this had on my body…

I already had a damaged and diseased body before all this…
I already had problems eating food the normal way…
I already had problems speaking before all this…

“It” left me with even more problems eating food the normal way… difficulty swallowing, muscle damage, scaring and deformation of my tongue and inside my mouth, my throat, esophagus and stomach…

I have been absent for the last couple of weeks… I am having some health issues… and with that my mental health gets down as well… I’m hoping things will start getting better… but until then I focus more on my family and friends… and what’s most important… myself …than this journal…. I’m always ready for an email though 😉

My fears, my demons, my….. my ” it “…
I now direct them to take careful note of…
My middle finger.
They can go to hell…
They can go to the hell they have created for me…
The hell they did their best to get me into and keep me in.
I have to believe that I CAN win the battles.
And I *do* believe that.
Noah Grey

Nov 9, 2014:
Part two is here…