Killing Myself Wasn’t the Answer (though for the longest time I thought it would be)

The hard part with writing a post like this is where to begin. In June of 2014, after trying to poison myself in April and coming very close to hanging myself, I started getting counselling here in Ireland. This was a huge step for me as I’ve hated even the idea of therapy. The help I’ve had in the past was anything but.

So getting help this time was not something I wanted to do for myself, it was something I did for my younger brother (who never even knew how bad things had gotten). The point is, if you’re like me and you resist bullshit with the armour of crusaders, you probably won’t get help for yourself. I never in a million years believed I would ever say this, but get help. Get help for your friends, your family, even strangers – get help for yourself if you know you need it – get help if you think it will never help at all. At the very least, making the effort to get help might help on its own.

I need to say that for all the griping about Irish health care here in Ireland, I’ve never had better treatment. I went to a GP near my flat and spent €75 to get a referral. It took 6 weeks to get an appointment, which was a difficult time, but once I got an appointment, I was seen every 2 weeks by a psychologist and had a check-up every 6 weeks at the psychiatric office and I never paid another dime. I was seen for over 10 months and only stopped at my request not theirs. There is nowhere in America that I know of that could or would provide that kind of service and support. I can’t evaluate the Irish system for the Irish but as a Yank, this was like manna from heaven.

I don’t know how things changed. There was a lot going on in my life while I was in therapy. My heart was broken in a relationship that mirrored a lot of the issues I have/had with my father. A lot of that anger oozed out of me like lava. Lots of little professional failures were haunting me and I was exhausted and at the end of my rope. Therapy needed to work or I was done. I just couldn’t go on the way things were going. There might be something to the fact that this had to work or I had to die. In my mind there was no middle ground – not any more – and that may have given me the drive to make it work.

I started with the assumption that I should quit working in the theatre. I constantly felt overwhelmed, over-looked, under utilised, frustrated, jealous, overly ambitious and the pressure to succeed was excruciating. It was one of the first things I brought to therapy. I wanted the stress and strain to end and I felt like giving up the work I loved, but that was costing me so much, had to go.

I need to backtrack to when I was first diagnosed with hypomania. I was immediately prescribed Lithium, and the focus of the treatment was on the depression that resulted from my manic crashes. When I started treatment here, I was adamant that they not put me on medication. I don’t think they would have even if I had begged. The psychiatrist also surprised me when he told he didn’t believe in manic/depression as a clinical, observable state. I have to admit, this made me sceptical, but it’s not like I had another choice. He referred to it as an American diagnosis.

In a refreshing and unexpected approach my psychologist dealt with my mania – which I always felt was an asset. I could work up to 20/21 hours a day, sometimes longer. I could get huge amounts of work done, teach classes, direct and produce shows, do all sorts of things because I was in a constant state of panic. I existed on adrenaline. I woke up every morning afraid that the world would swallow me whole every day, that everyone was against me and with a certainty that at some point I would fail at whatever I was doing. I lived like this every day for as long as I could remember. As far back as being a young gymnast at the age of 8 or 9.

When I was in ballet, I was supposed to be a prima ballerina. When I was a gymnast, I was supposed to go to the Olympics. When I was an actor, I was supposed to be on Broadway and win Tony awards. I was good at most things (except gymnastics) and people seemed to have or put a lot of faith in me. When none of those things happened, somehow I took this on in a way that created a sense of personal failure. It was all just pressure and failure, pressure and failure.

When I looked to the horizon in the Spring of 2014, all I saw was black. Who would I be if I wasn’t striving for greatness at everything? What right did I have to breathe if I wasn’t working my ass off every single day. If I wasn’t working as hard as I possibly could, I wasn’t working hard enough. Enjoying my life never even occurred to me and so it really didn’t occur at all. (It’s strange writing this because it’s almost hard to believe how I lived like that.)

I think the first thing that began to shift last November was that I didn’t have to do or be anything to have a right to be here. I was born. That’s the ball game. I don’t have to prove I should be here in order to get to stay. That might sound absurd, but that’s how I used to think. With all the horrors in the world, all the people who starve and struggle and have a reason to live, I didn’t – and I felt a kind of guilt for taking up space that I can’t put into words. Bleak doesn’t really begin to describe it.

I had a very bad Christmas. On December 23^rd I had an anxiety attack that was so bad I walked the River Liffey for 4 hours from 10pm to 2am. I can’t access that panic again so I can’t describe it, but it was awful. The surge of adrenaline was off the charts. I was nauseous and out of my mind with panic. I spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day alone. At some point, I had this epiphany about failure. I was working so hard to keep everyone from seeing that I was a failure, so maybe I should just give up trying to mask it and let it be. Why not be a fool and a failure out loud. What was the point of working so hard to hide it?

As I started to let go of the Herculean efforts I had been making to keep that inevitable failure at bay, I started to find a calm and peace that I hadn’t ever felt before. It was wonderful. It took time and is still evolving but I stopped waking up every day in a panic. I stopped feeling like every day was a marathon that I had to gear up for. Most importantly, I started to let myself off the hook. If mistakes happened, they happened. People stopped being threats. Life stopped being threatening. The ground felt secure under my feet for the first time that I can ever remember – even from childhood.

The biggest hurdle was the simplest (and possibly the silliest). It was my front door. I’ve always hid behind doors. In my own space, I can just be me. Walking out of my front door always took the most effort and if I could avoid it, I would at all costs. On weekends, I would finish work on Friday afternoons, come home and not leave my apartment until Monday mornings.

I knew things had really changed when walking out of my front door wasn’t the scariest part of my life. Now it’s not scary at all. Now I look forward to getting out. Now I don’t judge myself into the ground for things I’ve said or things I’ve done and socializing has stopped being a horror and has even started to be fun.

I think it was about late February or early March that I really began to feel that my life had changed. I told my doctor I had never been in the world this way before. I was 46 and I had no idea that life could be really enjoyable for no reason whatsoever. I wanted 40 of those years to do over without the anxiety. I don’t regret my life, but it could have been a lot easier.

A lot of my life now seems new and sometimes strange. But the crux is that everything feels effortless. I feel like I’ve spent my life with 100lb weights on every limb and now I’m free. I don’t have to prove anything. I don’t have to earn the right to walk the earth.

Along the way I faced my darker, hairier demons. I won’t go into them here but the one thing that has really helped is talking to a friend about all of the things that I’ve done that I thought were terrible and that up until that point, I had never spoken about with anyone. Having someone on the planet that knows all of me and who still accepts me without hesitation has been one of the most important parts of recovering. Find that/those friend(s) and talk to them. The thing you might find is that they are just like you with very similar monsters in their closets (or at least monsters that would get along if they ever ended up in the same wardrobe.)

I don’t think it’s mere coincidence that my work since February has been good. My theatre work as well as my civilian work has been some of the most rewarding work I’ve ever done – and it has also been easier than it’s ever been – although, I sleep a lot more and though I’m not really tired, I can’t do 20 hour days any more.

I started teaching with laughter instead of anger and resentment. The revelation that I could teach with joy and still be disciplined and get to the meat of it was a game changer for me. I’m still working on this, as well as many, many other things but life is different now. I’m having new experiences in situations I’ve been in hundreds of times and sometimes I’m taken aback by the difference in what is happening now compared to how I was before. Sometimes I find myself not knowing what’s happening because I don’t feel the same way about what’s going on now. It’s all new. All of it.

At the beginning of September, after finishing teaching at PCPA this year, a former student posted a comment on Facebook about her experiences in my class 10 years ago. I was completely overwhelmed reading how the class had affected her. On my drive back to the Bay Area, I realized how thankful I was that I had never been able to kill myself when I had tried on numerous occasions. I realized that everything good I had ever done for others would have been wiped out if I had succeeded. I had not ever been glad about surviving before. I had only felt resigned to having to try again at a later time. At those times, death seemed like the only answer for me. Until I got help and until things changed, life was far too difficult to sustain and to manage. Not only is it wonderful not to be scared of the world, it’s really great not to be furious at it. I never in a million years would have thought I would ever be glad to be breathing. I was always just proud of the fact that I continued to struggle to breathe. Now there is no struggle and now there is ease and often joy and hopefully in the future grace in everything I do.

If you’ve read all the way through this and you have struggled or are struggling, with all the generosity in my heart, I offer you this: that with help, life can get better. When I was struggling, I couldn’t see that there is a different way to exist, an easier, simpler way, an enjoyable way, a way that lets me define what matters and what doesn’t, a way that does not leave me at the mercy of others, a way that isn’t full of pressure and strain and exhaustion. If you don’t believe that is possible, I guarantee you, neither did I. I’ve not been more deeply relieved and thankful to be so completely wrong in all my life.

Who Am I To Vote?

I registered to vote yesterday. It’s been a long time coming but I have had many doubts. I am an Irish citizen because my mother was born here but I never think I have the right to call myself Irish because I was born in the States and lived there for 37 years. What right do I have to give voice to my values in a place in which I was not born? I live in awe and admiration of the Irish and the culture here. I love it more than anything I have ever loved but I have not felt it appropriate to add my voice to its shape or its colour. I feel like an inferior American, red-headed step child.

I registered to vote because I know my voice is needed to say yes to the marriage referendum – even though my personal convictions don’t entirely agree. I don’t believe in marriage of any kind. I think marriage is a relic and a tool of governments to keep and consolidate wealth among certain bloodlines and for society to impose the absurdity of monogamy. The lunacy of basing societal structures on something as irrational, expirational and absurd as love is beyond me – but the alternative I have in mind isn’t ready for public debate.

One thing I am certain of is that marriage isn’t about the children, children can be a product of marriage, but no one in their right mind would ever tell anyone in this day and age to get married 'for the children,' or to stay in a bad marriage for the sake of the children so the 'it's about children' crap is just that, crap. I'd have given my eye teeth to have been raised within the walls of a loving marriage - I don't care if that marriage was between a baboon and a kitten.

I came from a heterosexual home. It did not improve my circumstances. Thinking that a heterosexual couple is an advantage in child rearing is like thinking that because you’re in a boat on the Atlantic you won’t die of thirst.

If we are really going to bring up child rearing then lets address the real issues about child rearing and put laws and social structures in place that will appropriately address the sexual abuse – by both males and females – in one man one woman families; let’s address physically and mentally abusive parents in one man one woman homes; and let’s take a hard look the dysfunctions of one man one woman households including alcoholism, drug abuse, mental illness, physical illness and so many other issues plaguing families who were granted marriage licenses solely because they were people of the opposite sex. I am not demonising any parents or any issue in any family. I am merely saying if we’re going to talk about child welfare, let’s really address the issues and look for serious and effective solutions. I’m actually surprised more people aren’t offended that the no side has taken a really important issue, like child welfare, and tivialised it to gain political points without any real or honest intention of following through and doing something about these very real issues.

The passing of the marriage referendum isn’t going to undermine the sanctity of marriage. The sanctity of your marriage is in your hands not someone else’s. If you think another’s marriage imperils your own, it’s already too late. - and I’m one of the people who did it. I am a bi-sexual woman, who has been married twice. There was never a question of whether I could get married because both marriages were to men. There was no question of how those marriages would manifest because as far as the State was concerned, it didn’t matter as long as my partner was of the opposite sex. My second marriage was open and completely out of the closet. So if your marriage withstood my marriage, then it can withstand all marriages. And at the end of the day, allowing all kinds of marriage actually gives your marriage more merit if that is what you value because you chose to conduct your marriage in ways that were morally valuable to you. Having moral value thrust upon your marriage because there is no other choice, makes your marriage nothing more than a union that followed pre-imposed, unbreakable rules.

So let’s address one of the real issues. Marriage gives couples permission to have sex and to have sex in a way that society accepts. If we allow gay marriage than we are agreeing that gay sex is socially acceptable – and since we’re calling a spade a spade – what we’re really talking about is accepting oral and anal sex. Now why conservatives believe that hetero couples aren’t having oral and anal sex is beyond me but they do seem to believe that given the choice heteros only choose vanilla. (They obviously haven’t met any the straight boys I’ve dated who at least want to try chocolate and who expect strawberry on the first date.)

The paradox of anything socially acceptable is that it makes whatever it is nobody’s business – and this is a point I want to get to. We should get to grow up as a culture and a society and be adult about this. What anyone does sexually is none of your business – and prying into what others do to make yourself feel righteous and superior is adolescent at best and dangerous at worst. Shame may have been something imposed on you/us by the Church but it's been far too over and misused. If we could celebrate sex, instead of being ashamed of it, there would be far less abuse and rape in the world (but that's another issue). 

When no one can be systematically, politically or socially discriminated against because of their sexuality with regards to marriage, those who continue to see themselves as more ‘worthy than” will be on their own, unprotected by the law and no longer able to cast aspersions without being personally responsible for what is said and done. (It is very hard to be righteous when superiority is taken away.)

The funny thing is that a yes vote really won’t impact straight people and yet they will be the deciders. It almost seems counter intuitive that the people who will be affected least, if at all, get to have a voice in what will have a huge and lasting impact on most of my friends and the people I consider to be my family. It probably won’t affect me. I’ve never asked for society’s permission to do anything and I won’t start now – and if I’m being honest, that’s what has made me apathetic about voting in the past – and there is a part of me that wants to revolt about having to give my permission on a ballot so one of my best friends can have permission to marry the woman she loves – especially when my friend will honour and value her marriage more than I ever did with either of my husbands (not that my husbands didn’t want me to). 

Who am I to have this power? Who am I to have been granted the right to marry because I chose to marry men? Why is my 2 month marriage to my first husband more acceptable than a commitment between two women or two men? Who am I to get to decide whether someone else can marry at all, when my second open marriage never had to be scrutinized by anyone? 

So I registered to vote and I will vote yes - yes I said yes I will Yes! But I wish I didn’t have to. I wish I weren’t among the privileged that have to give an allowance to those less fortunate – but in this case, far, far more deserving.