A Rage Episode. (approx. 6½ - 7 min. read) *Trigger Warning*

It’s been over a year since my last suicide attempt and I thought now would be a good time to share what it was like for me. Please read with caution because it may be a trigger for some of you...

A lot had been going on at the time; way more than one person should have to handle. Shit, who am I kidding? More than any person could handle! My good friend, Caroline, was weeks, if not days away from dying. She had been fighting cancer for over 4 years and although she fought valiantly, the cancer had won. I had been going over to Caroline’s place every day to see how she was doing and to find out how her husband, Rob, was handling this horrific stage of his wife’s battle.

Then there was my good friend Annette, who suffers from depression and was extremely stressed out about her kids. Her son was involved with the wrong crowd, had gone down a really bad path and was sitting in jail awaiting sentencing. Her daughter had been diagnosed with a cancer that didn’t exist in people her age.

Next, we had my friend Cheryl, and she thought her daughter was suffering from Bipolar disease and it turned out to be anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis (an incredibly rare disease), and her prognosis wasn’t good either. She was in the ICU at St. Joseph’s, had just had a pace maker put in, but still was not breathing on her own.

To make things worse, my oldest daughter hadn’t spoken to me in months and for the first time since she was born 33 years earlier, I didn’t get to talk to her on her birthday. I can’t tell you how much that hurt my heart.

Then, to top everything off, we were in the process of fixing up our house because we had to sell it. Gary, my husband, had been forced into retiring 7 months prior and we couldn’t afford the crippling mortgage we had.

We had purchased a small bungalow in 2009 but had lost so much in our previous marriages that we were only able to put down 10%. So, the house payments took up over half of the money we had coming in, which comprised Gary’s pension and my disability cheques. Sure, things might get better, but we had to figure out how to make ends meet until Gary could find someone that would hire him at the age of 55.

Needless to say, I was completely overwhelmed and so when Gary walked across the carpet without taking his shoes off - shoes that had just stepped into a pile of dog excrement - I lost it! I started yelling that he never takes care of anything and that he has no respect, and then I turned into a mad woman!

I grabbed a bucket out of the closet, filled it part-way with hot water and cleaning solution I had just yelled at Gary not to use on the carpet, and proceeded to scrub at the smelly brown stains. All the while, screaming horrible things at this man that I love so much ...saying that living with him was like living with a little child and I’d had enough. I was totally fucking done. All I’ve ever done is take care of everyone else and I just wasn’t going to do it anymore!!

...yet I kept cleaning...

I finished scrubbing the dog shit out of the carpet, headed for the bathroom to dump the water down the toilet but then thought better; the water was really hot, and so I headed for the front door to pour it outside instead.

As I walked towards the door, it opened and I almost walk right into Gary; we dodged each other like we had cooties, or something. I thought that I must look like a mad woman; tears pouring down my face with my hair all dishevelled and this detached, yet frightened, look on my face.

The next thing I knew, we were yelling at each other again. Gary was saying he was done and I was telling him that was fine. But when he opened the front door and told me to get the fuck out, it was more than I could take and I turned into a raging fucking lunatic.

I started yelling - screaming, in fact. I’m not sure what I was saying but I was yelling something at him. The words spilled out in a scream almost as if it were one long syllable. Gary looked at me stunned, said he was leaving and went out the door, slamming it as hard as he could.

That reaction was more than I could handle and I took the mop I had in my hands and started smashing it against the front door. It was one of those Vileda Bee mops that had the ergonomic handle for wringing. The first couple of times it hit the door, it held up; then it started to bend and each time I hit the door, it started to fold in on itself and then pieces of it were flying everywhere.

After I had destroyed the mop, as well as the door, I realized what I had done and I broke down sobbing.

...What the fuck was wrong with me? I felt like I had completely lost it and in a haze wrote, “These thoughts going through your head are truly fucked up. Why is that you feel that way? You have so much going for you...” on a slip of paper for later and then I was sobbing again...

I’d had enough. My life was so fucked up and always had been. I didn’t ever see that changing and I just couldn’t live with this pain anymore. The one person who stood beside me through thick and thin, had finally seen the true me and told me he was done; if I didn’t have him, I had nothing to live for. So, I headed towards the bathroom.

When I got there, I closed the door behind me and locked it. I plopped myself down on the toilet so hard that I cracked my tailbone on the seat, but that didn’t stop me. I was on a mission and when I reached down to get the razors, I pulled the drawer so hard it came off its rungs.

I was angry; angrier than I’ve ever felt in my life, and for some reason the drawer hadn’t made a loud enough sound for me, so I picked it up and dropped it again but I still didn’t feel satisfied. Maybe I was hoping Gary had come back and I was trying to get his attention, who knows?! All I knew was that I needed to quell the anger I had boiling inside of me, so I picked it up again but this time I threw it, it broke into quite a few pieces.

I reached down and grabbed one of the razors and ran through the steps I’d read in order to make suicide successful. I was sobbing, truly believing that this time I was going to do it because I knew I couldn’t continue living like this.

My head hurt so badly I felt like it was going to explode and I just wanted to get away from the pain that had become my life. I wasn’t thinking about being selfish - I was merely thinking about self-preservation - if that makes any sense? I just couldn’t handle any more rejection from anyone because I couldn’t “get over it,” and I knew from all the researching I’d done, that I was stuck with this illness for life...

But then the door burst open and Gary (my saviour) was standing there, tears streaming down his face, and I realized he was crying because I was sitting there with the razor in my hand and he knew he had just saved my life.

Stay safe and stay strong. Thanks for following.