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I almost couldn’t believe what I was
saying when the lady in the shop asked why I’d passed out and I said that I’d gradually
been overdosing on Co-Codomol since the previous day. You’d think that if
anything, I’d be used to saying it and maybe even become quite ‘glib’ about it;
but actually, it doesn’t get any easier – it still hurts to admit that you were
so desperate to escape the hallucinations and memories of abuse that you tried
to kill yourself. And it isn’t just with family and friends; I’m also ashamed
and pained to tell Doctors, Nurses, and other professionals that I’ve ‘done it
again’ because, I know it’s a very common thought process around mental health,
but I actually wouldn’t blame someone for thinking me ‘weak’ for coping in such
a way. Some people look at suicide as the ‘easy way out’ and I don’t blame them
for misunderstanding something so scary and intimidating as going against all
human instinct for survival and taking your own life.
Telling the lady in the shop
turned out to be a mistake because she called an Ambulance and when I refused
to go to hospital with them, the Paramedics called the Police and I was told it
was either put my seatbelt on in the Ambulance or put on handcuffs in the Police
car; and so, of course, I fastened my seatbelt! Part of my refusal was because I
wanted the overdose to work and for it to kill me, but a bigger part of it was
about not wanting to upset the auditory hallucinations who were telling me not
to go to the Hospital. I’d already bartered with them to hurt myself over hurting
the people and things the voice was telling me to hurt; so, there could be no more
compromising with it. I was no longer in control; my health, my thoughts, my
feelings, my relationships… the voice owned them all. Agreeing to go to hospital,
however, was much easier when it was the result of a threat from the Police and
not my own volition.
