The New Year Begins With A Look Back (part 5) ~ Late Evening Thoughts

Life is a journey not for us to be lowered into the grave all pretty and looking rested. It is a journey for us to slide into the grave broadside at the last minute ~ banged up, used up but still proclaiming ~
Wow!!! What a ride...WOW!!! What a RIDE!!!

(You can read the previous posts here ... >1<>2<>3<>4<)

At this point in the story, I was finally in a hospital bed. There were bandages for the gash in my forehead ~ for which, since I was hanging by my neck in a looped belt, there is no explanation. There were bandages running up the operation incision (running from just below the ear almost to the collar bone) in my neck ~ which was closed with butterfly bandages to reduce the scarring. There were no bandages on the slits I made in my neck ~ those, I was told, would heal by themselves with no visible scarring. So far ... I was able to absorb that much information. I was also introduced to "the watcher." Basically, there was going to be someone sitting at the foot of my bed 24/7. While people think that it's only to keep someone from trying again, it actually provides much more than that.

There was constant monitoring (and recording) of what I was doing, my mood and my activities. They were also expected, during the day, to engage me in conversation.

They were supposed to, but I really didn't want much of that. I discovered that the day watchers loved "trash TV." If you are not familiar with that term, it covers all the reality (supposedly) type shows from Jerry Springer to Divorce Court and everything in between. So I would turn the TV (which I didn't want to watch anyway.) toward the foot of my bed and they could watch to their heart's delight.

The statistics are a little frightening. Someone of my..um...age who is depressed, is very likely to make a suicide attempt (there had been three half-hearted previous ~ I'd posted about one of them in Poison to Medicine) and what I did before was not more than an overture for this event. The most frightening statistic is that those of my age who make an attempt are probably going to make another one ~ and succeed without life skills retraining and/or serious intervention and/or continued therapy, help/support system. And so, the real journey had started.

--- more tomorrow