Tag Archives: death

Surviving September

September is kicking my butt, and we’re only 4 days in.

It’s so bad that I’ve switched to drinking chamomile and decaf orange pekoe tea, so as not to pour gasoline (caffeine) on the fire (anxiety).

We spent Brock’s last aware day together in bed, him napping and me reading a book about dying.

In September 2017, my life partner Brock got a septic infection that almost killed him, and then I held his hand as he died from his advanced kidney cancer. Last September I co-planned a memorial service, went to that service with our four-year-old son, and then starting packing up our apartment the next day so we could move across the province.

This September I will finally unpack those boxes and re-discover all the mementos from our 11.5 years together. I will arrange them in a beautiful, new house that I built using Brock’s life insurance money.

This month, Isaac and I will wake up in our new home and start our new life without Brock. For the first time in four years, we will have a life we can settle into. We will plan long-term and use the future tense: we haven’t done that since Brock got sick in October 2014.

I’ve read a lot about grief and attended the support groups. I know that anniversaries and significant dates can knock the wind out of a person.

My own birthday in April was surprisingly hard.

But this is ridiculous. I cry at the playground, my brain can’t keep track of all the things I’m supposed to get done each day, and my body is telling me to run away, to fly to Vancouver and help Q and Taylor unpack into their new love shack, or to lock myself into a room and go to sleep. My monkey brain longs for flight, but I have too many responsibilities this month to do what it wants.

Brock got out of bed to accompany Isaac to his first day of preschool in September 2017.

Isaac starts kindergarten tomorrow. It’s his birthday this month, and he’s now old enough to notice if I skip the party.

I need to finish tiling the back-splashes in our new house. I’m supposed to learn how to grout and caulk and seal.

And then there will be the big clean up, and then moving all our stuff from the storage locker into our home. Opening up all those memories.

Brock was always good at figuring out where to put the furniture. I don’t know where to put the furniture.

Survival Strategy
  1. Auto-pilot through the to-dos.
  2. Ask for help and delegate when I can.
  3. Lean on friends when I need to be sad.
  4. Give myself fun times and distractions and try to enjoy the little moments.
  5. Take care of myself: have mini dance parties and book a massage.

Here we go.

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25 Alternatives to Suicide

I’ve told a few friends about what I’d say on a suicide crisis help line to people considering death as an option, and they’ve said it’s a helpful approach, so I’ll share it with you here too:

The Right to Die

I believe everyone has the right to die. I don’t judge people who choose to end their own lives: that’s their call, and if it eases their suffering (physical or emotional or mental) then I understand why death is a tempting solution.

But given that death is final — the most final option available to us — I propose we list suicide as our Plan Z. It’s something to try when all the other less-final alternatives have been attempted, and haven’t worked.

That leaves us with 25 alternatives: Plans A through Y.

25 Alternatives

The Easiest Alternative

Plan A (the easiest plan) is to do nothing: to not change anything in our life. But usually Plan A will fail because the person who is considering suicide finds their current life or mental state intolerable.

So Plans B through Y involve making some sort of change.

The Extreme Alternative
Prozac saved me in my 20s.

The closest I’ve ever been to considering suicide was when I was in my 20s, but my depression/anxiety never got bad enough to make me want to die. I just craved numbness: the world was overwhelming and too rough for me. I didn’t want to feel anything anymore.

That’s the closest I’m been to understanding the wish to die, so we’re going to work with that desire for numbness.

Obviously death provides that numbness, which makes it a good choice for Plan Z. But drugs (alcohol, meth, heroin, etc.) also are super at numbing us to the world.

So Plan Y = drug-induced oblivion.

Alternatives C through X

We now have three potential courses of action (Plans A, Y and Z), which leaves us with 23 others.

Those alternatives include (in whatever order you choose to place them, from easiest to most intimidating):

  • quitting your job
  • moving
  • breaking up/separating/divorcing
  • estranging yourself from your family
  • exercising
  • calling a suicide help line (numbers are below) or calling 9-1-1
  • travelling to some faraway country
  • choosing an impossible dream and abandoning everything else in your life to pursue it
  • retail therapy: max out those credit cards and buy the X you’ve always longed for
  • plastic surgery
  • putting your kid(s) up for adoption, or leaving them with a friend or family member for awhile
  • going to school or learning a new skill that interests you
  • eating anything you want
  • starting a blog where you write down your most personal experiences and thoughts
  • adopting a pet
  • anti-depressant medication
  • sharing photos of your life on Instagram or etc.
  • telling person X what you’ve always wanted to tell them, even though it’s super embarrassing/scary/painful/awkward

Et cetera.

If you’re able to make a plan to end your life, why not use that small reserve of energy to try Plan B instead? And if that doesn’t work out, Plan C. Plan D. And so on.

The Fallacy

The problem with my 25 Alternatives approach is that when someone is depressed enough to consider suicide, they might not be able to dig themselves out of that pit enough to see the logic of this approach.

So it’s best to consider these alternatives before you’re that sad, and then maybe someday, when you find yourself considering death as a viable option, you’ll remember you have 25 less-permanent options to try first.

Suicide Crisis Help Lines

9-1-1

In Canada: 

1-833-456-4566 (24 hours/daily)

Resources on this webpage.

In British Columbia specifically:

1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433)

Click here for online chat lines from noon to 1am.

In the US:

1-800-SUICIDE (784-2433) (yes, the same number as in B.C.)

text MATTERS to 741741 (24 hours/day)

Resources on this webpage.

Internationally:

Via this webpage.