3:06 p.m. - 2007-12-26
Catching Up
If you've reached here, you should have read my profile. Perhaps it's time to comment on the subtitle "Musings of an ADD Depressive"

Yup. I suffer from depression. The big Blue Monster comes and goes. Medication helps a lot. Honest participation in therapy helps a lot too. Physical exertion/exercise is also possessed of wonderful curative powers that wards off the Blue Monster. But... But these don't always work.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Yes indeed, it takes constant vigilance to stay out of the mud and keep the Blue Monster at bay. To be honest, my vigilance is quite a bit less than constant. It's tiring. Wouldn't it be nice to be normal? Wouldn't it be nice not to have thoughts and feelings of not being worthy enough to consume air, let alone have a nice life?

Yet I do have a nice life. Sometimes I let my self succeed enough to get to the next step. Little by little, I fool the inner traffic cop and actually get something done. And boy howdy! When I get something done -- Katy bar the door! (Wow. Both of those phrases in the same paragraph! It's either literary genius or just a trifle overly-cliched.)

But back to the nice life thing. I am married to a most wonderful, beautiful, sweet, smart woman I could ever imagine. She loves me much more than I'm capable of loving myself. Such a responsibility. I know that if she was not relying and depending on me, I'd be dead by now.

She made love to me the week after my first suicide attempt. She astounded and amazed me with her incredible desire for _me_. I was barely able to function and was stumbling through attempted living and she showed me just how much more she loved me than I loved myself. This lead to a seemingly normal boyfriend/girlfriend relationship.

Much to her despair and confusion I broke it off. And I didn't do it well either. I had no means of communicating that however much I cared for her, I couldn't maintain a facade that I was okay enough to _be_ a boyfriend.

It's funny. Through Jr. High and much of Sr. High I hoped and prayed for a girlfriend. Yes, I actually begged God for a girlfriend. Didn't work. Nope. Took me a while to forgive God for ignoring my pleas. Actually, I finally realized that God is not in the matchmaking business. Anyway, it's funny that after years of hoping and praying for a girlfriend, here I had one who was hot for me and my body and my head was so messed up that I pushed her aside.

Fortunately for me (very fortunately) after I came to my senses several years later and came a courtin' she didn't slam the door in my face. And the rest is history... Well over 17 years of wedded bliss. Yea us!

But back to that little throw-away line of great importance. "My first suicide attempt". Oh that little thing. Despair is a terrible feeling. Despair coupled with self-loathing is a dangerous combination. There I was, in grad school, rendered non-functional by my own psychological devices and frustrated out of my mind trying to finish up a very late course project from the previous semester. I couldn't do it. Or to put it correctly, I couldn't make myself do it. The more I tried - tried to make myself - do it, I couldn't. The more I tried and the more frustrated I became I seemed to be staring down a long black tunnel. The darker and blacker the tunnel became the feeling of having a dark core root of wrongness growing and permeating my self and my soul.

Now, upon reflection I had been getting more and more depressed yet not being treated for it. The previous summer I had "borrowed" a liter sized nalgene bottle filled with powder labeled "KCN". I also "borrowed" an identical bottle filled with liquid, labeled "HCl 10%". These I kept in my bedroom, 'to remind myself to keep from getting too bad'.

As if I had any control over the big Blue Monster.

Then it finally got really dangerous. The big Blue Monster no longer was blue, but was turning darker and darker into an all encompassing blackness.

I don't have a terribly clear recollection of that night. I do remember the feeling of utter hopelessness. I remember feeling abandoned by God; I also feeling that he was watching me, but would not step in to try to stop me. I remember the terrible anguish of knowing how smart, how capable, how able I was but that for whatever reason I _could_ not do anything about this. I felt a complete waste. And I felt completely alone.

Then I wanted to go through that black tunnel and leave all the crap behind. I didn't care what was or wasn't down that path. I do remember the enormity of that decision and the terrible uncertainty.

Why? Make it end.
Make it end now.

The bottles must have been mislabeled. I stored them on a shelf above my desk kept together in a 9x13 metal pan. I also had a spoon in the pan. I poured the crystallized powder into the pan. I stared at that layer of white KCN powder with a feeling of absolute horror and relief.

By this time I was near hyperventilating. I certainly wasn't thinking clearly. I had briefly thought of leaving a note, but I was too ashamed to even write down why. I was too much of a coward to confess my failure.

But I still had my plan. Without consciously acknowledging it I'd been formulating a plan, complete with backup contingency. For all of you who've never studied chemistry, when KCN is dissolved in an aqueous solution (and it readily dissolves) it dissociates into K+ and CN- ions. In an acidic solution (one with free H+ ions floating around), the H+ binds to the CN- making a gas HCN - known as hydrogen cyanide.

But someone had "borrowed" my hydrochloric acid to etch something or other. So I had my spoon. and my pan full of Potassium Cyanide. I don't know how long I stared at that pan. I was taking deep breaths to try and take it in through my lungs. But in New Mexico there just isn't enough humidity for HCN to form naturally in air from KCN.

So I had my spoon. Somehow I scooped up some powder in my spoon. Then I'm not really clear what happened. I stuck the spoon in my mouth. I'm sure I swallowed because I didn't choke. I must have put the pan down but all I remember is that I sat back on my bed.

Then I remember waking up and I needed to throw up. I stumbled out of my room to the bathroom, puked, and stumbled back to my bed. I do remember thinking... "shit, that didn't work. Now what am I going to do."

I'm not sure what really went on because if there really was still KCN in that bottle I should have died. Either that or it's a true miracle that I'm alive today.

I actually went to my 11:00 class the next day. I remember one of my classmates giving me a hard time for being grumpy. Grumpy! Of all that may or may not mattered to me at that moment whether I was grumpy would have mattered the least. It took me weeks to properly assuage his hurt feelings. I'll show you Grumpy!

Then I showed up at the school counselor's office, told all, and found myself being driven to the local emergency room and was admitted "for observation".

That was when I started my journey out of untreated depression.
And that is enough for one entry.

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