Nosedive

It was Wednesday and I was scheduled to return to work that Monday, but first I had an appointment to see Dr. Adena (not her real name) on Friday morning. I was extremely anxious about both events. I knew that they were both going to be difficult to endure in their own way.

I saw Dr. Adena at 8 AM Friday morning. She wanted to know what the events were that led up to the overdose and why I hadn’t taken precautionary measures like taking myself to the emergency room or calling 911 before I had actually swallowed the pills. I tried to convey to her the sense of desperation I was feeling in those early morning hours, the sense of aloneness and isolation I was experiencing and how the suicidal thoughts had just kept pounding at my brain and it didn’t seem like there had been any room for logical and coherent reasoning. We also talked about how angry I had been at her following that last session where I had felt humiliated and shamed by her as she had recited a litany of all my wrongs. I left the session not knowing if I had been able to get across to her how broken I had felt and in some sense was still feeling.

Now over the weekend I had to psych myself up to go back to work, be able to focus on the tasks-at-hand, face questions about my absence and just deal with feeling awkward and out-of-place where I’d once felt so comfortable. I showed up Monday morning at 8:30 AM. I didn’t especially pay attention to my outfit, I didn’t wear makeup — I was still too depressed. But I was there and ready to work. I resumed some of my prior responsibilities with trepidation, more cautiously than before, but soon the familiarity of them returned to me and the anxiety faded a little.. It didn’t entirely abate — I was still concerned about interacting with my colleagues and also about my ability to concentrate for extended periods of time, and my stamina as well. Over the first week, these issues continued and I came home each afternoon and collapsed, mentally and physically exhausted. I was only working three days a week for a total of 20 hours, and it felt like too much. I wasn’t sure I could continue; the effort required seemed too great.

On top of everything, Dr. Adena was going to Europe for the Passover holiday for a three week extended vacation. She had told me about it several months in advance so I was aware of her planned absence, but with all that had just happened, it felt as though the timing couldn’t have been worse.

A week-a-half later little had changed. Everything was still an effort and Dr. Adena was gone. I had no one to turn to with my thoughts and my feelings. The depression was back, pushing its way into my psyche and I couldn't stop it. I was hesitant to call the psychiatrist who was covering for her because she charged much more than Dr. Adena did and working part-time my finances were tight.

I had an hour commute to work one-way. Three weeks after I was discharged from the hospital, on a Wednesday morning as I was driving on the parkway, through the blare of the music coming from the radio, the suicidal thoughts began to eat away at my brain once more. Only this time the plan wasn’t to overdose. I live on the tenth floor of an apartment building. One floor up, on the eleventh, is a small sun deck with a waist-high railing. I thought I could easily climb over it and jump. I was terrified of my thoughts only I couldn’t escape them and the tears began to fall. Hard and fast until I could barely see where I was driving. I saw myself letting go of the railing and then falling into space. Hitting the ground and smashing into a million pieces.

I knew that I would have to pull myself together by the time I got to work.

When I got to the office, I tried and tried to put the thoughts about jumping out of my mind and concentrate on my work. At times the thoughts got softer, pushed a little to the back, but they never went away. When I was alone in my office, I closed the door and cried. Finally it was time to go home and I did the same commute in reverse.

When I got home I was scared enough to call Dr. K., the psychiatrist who was covering for Dr. Adena, but it was already after 5 PM and I expected that she would have left the office already. I knew what I had to do. I called my brother and through heavy tears I asked him if he would be angry with me if I told him that I was having “bad thoughts” again and needed to go to the hospital.

“I called the psychiatric hospital and they don’t have any beds tonight,” I told him through the sobs. “I need to go back to the ER.” He offered to have me stay with him. I declined, not wanting him to feel responsible for my safety.

“I’ll just take a cab over to the hospital. I’m sorry.” I was trying to stop crying which just made me cry harder.

“Don’t apologize,” he told me. “Just let me know what’s going on.”

The triage nurse told me she was glad that I came before I acted on my thoughts. I couldn’t stop sobbing. They took me back to the area where the security guards could watch me and the psychiatrist stopped by to find out what was going on.

I told him what had been happening all day, what had been coursing through my head and how I couldn’t get the thoughts out of mind. I let him know that Dr. Adena was away and how scared I was.

“I don’t think it would be safe to send you back home right now,” he decided. “But I don’t want you languishing in the ER all night. We’ll try to get you over to the psychiatric hospital tonight.”

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“They don’t have any beds. I already called. Before I came over here.”

He just looked at me. “They have beds. The ambulance will be here in about an hour.”

As he left, I began to bawl again. Everything that I thought was over was about to start again. Another hospitalization. I would have to call work in the morning. I thought I would lose my job this time for sure and Dr. Adena as well.

I should have just jumped. The thought ran through my mind as the paramedics strapped me into the stretcher for the ride over to the hospital. I imagined being wheeled into the evaluation center again with gawking eyes on me and sitting in that small room for hours. At that moment, I wasn’t sure I had made the right choice by going to the ER.