Suicide, Borderline Personality Disorder, and Grief

I carried my coat and cake into room 239 on the last night of class. Placing the cake among the faculty and student contributions, I listened to the professor talk about her cousin who passed on. She told some interesting stories to the class in the past but this time, she spoke of a medium at her place of work. She spoke of listening to the medium’s encounter with a young man who hung himself. The medium told the family member, “He didn’t mean to do it.”

I hunched in the middle of a Master’s class and still standing, I sobbed. I wondered if that story was for me. I thought it must be. I wanted to know if Taylor meant to do it. She would normally persevere and I just asked through sobs, “I wonder if my daughter meant to do it.” No one really knew what to say and I didn’t need for anyone to say or do anything. They mostly ignored probably the professor’s and my story and query into the deep.

How could this be any worse? In suicide prevention trainings, they show video footage of people who attempted suicide, failed, and stated that the second they made the decision to end their lives, they changed their minds.

Maybe Taylor’s Borderline Personality Disorder took over and the abuse from the man and the lack of my presence and the psychosis added up and Taylor literally lost sense. Would it have happened continuously?  Would she have had children? Would she have suffered for her entire life? Did she mean to do it?

Brain training is sold in all forms and sorts through meditation, medication to get your mind right so that you CAN meditate or run, bike, write, draw, talk to a counselor…there’s so much I know now that I didn’t know about before she left. We could have learned together. It’s been just over 2 years now and I’m still bargaining. BUT, I trained my brain for a while to stop slipping so deeply into the questions, doubts, physical pain and psychological damage. I just used a skill from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to put a “STOP” to myself when I wanted to share stories about why it was my fault and why I couldn’t think straight enough to have her funeral cards made with a photo of her that she wasn’t eventually cremated in. Suicide is sickening.

Thoughts of suicide pervaded throughout the most difficult of my days. I chose to call around until I could find someone home to talk to me through it, talk to me while I was laying knees to chest bawling. A friend talked to me one night about a tool used in Dialectic Behavioral Therapy (DBT), and as a matter of fact, DBT is the only treatment known to help Borderline Personality Disorder. There’s no medicine, no cure, nothing but exposing yourself as a raw, frightened, confused person in pain. It is possible to work through. It is hard to reach out. But, we must or we leave a hole in the souls of too many people who blame themselves. I will never be okay without her.

My friend shared one possible solution, a thought even that helped me change course when the pain was like hemorrhaging her body and soul from mine. Grief is too much, sometimes. Grief is lonely and my friend taught me how to help myself. When I thought of taking my life, she said I used my Emotional mind. She told me to think with my Logical mind to decide if suicide would be a good decision.  I don’t share my daughter’s disability so I was able to be brought out of the core of my despair.

I did not choose not to suicide because I wanted to stay. I chose to stay because I have a son who I love as much as my daughter. I didn’t “think” he needed me, I mean look at what I did to his sister. I killed her. Of course, logically I had to know that I was not responsible wholly for her suicide. Emotion vs. Logic. A feeling vs. a thought. I chose to stay for my parents and sister who I walked to heaven. Carla asked me to take care of her as she slowly died. I stayed for my fiancé who stands with me now and loves me through the betrayal of my wanting, for a time to leave him behind in this world.

If you or someone you love is thinking of suicide, call or chat online 24/7 to 1-800-273-2855 or text Hello to 741741.

I’m back at the beginning. I’m back to the people who wanted to kill themselves to escape their pain and who decided not to. My reality at the moment is a silent depression, one for which I saw a doctor, am taking medication, and will eventually pull away from. I’m taking the steps. I don’t try to offer people my advice when they say they’re depressed. I offer to help find resources. I just don’t think I could function without taking care of myself. I can work full-time now, go for a day without crying, and tell my mind to stop and think, give myself time. If I’m too depressed, I go to bed. Going to bed is not a cure. It's buying time for you to change your mind by morning. Put your ear buds in and listen to meditations, talks, breath work, calming music and go to bed. In the morning,start researching to get help. There are free services and low-cost services available wherever you are.

We must help ourselves by reaching out for support, even when we believe the world would be better without us. It won't. She tried to call so many people…even me. Ultimately, our lives are our responsibility and we sometimes can’t fight for ourselves in our Emotional mind. But, for the taken and the ones whose ashes we sift into the ocean, they couldn’t make their mind logical and they couldn’t stop and they couldn’t go to bed. She didn’t mean to do it. I cry about it every single day. No matter whether you think you matter to people or not, I am telling you that you do. I can barely hold on, knowing that my bright and beautiful, funny, charming, smart-mouthed, water-loving daughter would have chosen to live.