Most of what has happened to me in my latest depressive episode is outlined in My Story 2016 and gives you an idea of what I went through in May 2016.  It’s not been my only battle but it is the one that has focused me on death more than any other.  I don’t know why I did what I did in May but I sometimes sit in a quiet place and try to work out what it was that I was hoping to achieve.  The obvious conclusion is a “cry for help”…but…I admit that since then I have thought about death more and the peace that it brings to an anxious mind.

When I was parked in Coast Road I ran through all those things (See Back to my Past).  I remember looking at those pills in my hand and running through my mind just how many I should take.  I knew exactly what I was doing and for a few seconds I thought about taking a lot more.  Eventually I lost my balls and I realised that I just wanted to close my eyes and get some rest from the powerful thoughts that were over-throwing my mind.  I didn’t want to close my eyes and not wake up…I just wanted rest with the hope that with sleep depravation cured I wouldn’t be clouded in my judgement.  As I have said earlier I now have a lot more thoughts about death, and most of them have occurred since my time in respite care (See post Ouch Finally).  Since respite I have been climbing out of a dark hole and its taken me 9 months to get half way up it.  I’m still months, if not years, away from getting to the top but I know I have to look forward.

Now I’m not a religious person and I don’t believe in the after life.  I’m agnostic, and people continue to tell me that I’m a fence sitter.  I’m not a fence sitter,  I just don’t care because when you have an anxious mind you can’t continue to torture yourself with stuff you can’t control.  Back in the early 1980’s I was living in England when I lost my Grandad in New Zealand to bowel cancer.   I don’t remember him as a religious man but I was told that when he realised he was dying he asked for a priest to visit him by his bed.  I don’t know if he was religious so I’m unsure why he wanted somebody from the church.  The one reason I think he wanted a priest was because he was scared of the darkness and he wanted to believe that he was going somewhere and that he would be with others.  Maybe he thought that it would make the closing of his eyes a lot easier  to handle.

I don’t know what its like for others with depression but for me my thoughts about death have taken place when I have struggled to control my thoughts and I think things are bad and I can’t cope with the pressures that explode inside my head.  Those pressure’s can be trivial to someone else but to me they are immense and as a result I can’t function because they chip away at my sanity.   At times I sit in a world of my own trying to find a space in my head that would have me at peace.  A place where my thoughts weren’t bouncing around like a pinball machine.  I remember staring blankly at nothing and people would ask me “what are you thinking about”.  I wasn’t thinking about anything, I was just trying to find a place in my head where my brain would stop pummeling me into submission and I could get some rest.

So the thoughts of death started to encompass my thoughts a lot more as I started to believe that it could be the one place where I could find some tranquility.  Death for me was the only thing that could release me permanently from the turmoil.  Sleep was just a temporary vacation and just meant that when I woke I had to face it all over again.  So when I thought of death I thought of it as a finite end, not a transition to another world, not a transition to another place with its own pressures.  I wanted everything to stop !! and a toe tag to no-where was something that could do that for me.

What of the others in my life ? Well I was selfish when I was at my worst because I didn’t think about Katrina, my daughters, my family or anybody else.  Self control of my brain and subsequent peace was all I wanted and all I could think of.   Its hard to explain why those thoughts drove me and I feel embarrassed about not thinking of others, but, my head dictated my life and my life had been swallowed up by depression.  Maybe that’s why people take their own lives,  because death brings them peace….I now think I understand.

One of the things that I think about now is: “what happens if I was to dive back to where I have just come from?”  The constant thinking of death, although not serious, may have embedded itself into my subconscious and could play havoc with my decision making if I ever visited that dark place again?  Maybe if my depression gets worst then maybe it’s where I might end up, in a box.

It’s those thought patterns that make me realise that I’m  no where near recovery because I shouldn’t even be thinking like that.. but thats what people like me do…they over-think everything instead of concentrating on the positives.  Live or Lets Die is why I am still under Waitemata Mental Health, why, because, I’m not ready to cope with what life has to throw at me…. just yet.