Where do you go?

Where do you go when you're afraid you'll kill yourself?
By Honor Eastly

Usually when we talk about suicide, we say those four magic words "just ask for help". But it's not always that simple.

In this story Honor talks about her experiences dealing with suicide and the mental health system. If you are struggling these resources can help.
Cheese to a psych hospital is what cigarettes are to prison. To understand this, you need to know one thing: there are almost no good snack options in a psych hospital.

Besides the vending machines full of junk food (an oddly depressing detail), the main snacks on offer are individually-wrapped packets of three savoury crackers. The kitchenette drawers in each ward are full of the things, as if maybe the hospital won a lifetime supply of crackers in some late night dial-in TV game show.

The crackers also come with these tiny squares of individually plastic-wrapped cheese. But these little golden squares of joy are in limited supply, which is why there's something of a cheese-based economy in here.

A few days after I arrive, one girl tells me there are a couple of wards - geriatric and, well, eating disorders - where they're not that interested in cheese. So you can raid those wards for their supply.

I've spent the last week hiding these cheese parcels in my room, and I've accumulated quite the stockpile.

I'm something of a Cheese Baron in here.

All the things you don't say
This stuff about being a cheese baron is exactly the kind of thing I tell my family about the two weeks I spent in a psych ward. I tell them the light stuff.

'Cause, y'know, it's more fun to tell my family about my cheese proclivities. It makes for a more palatable dinner table story.

So I tell them about how the hospital's shower heads don't come out of the wall, so that taking a shower means pressing my body flat against the bathroom tiles.

I avoid talking to them about the time I thought I was going to kill myself by the side of the Princes Freeway.

Or that my two weeks on the ward are spent under suicide watch.

And it's not just the story I tell my family. This is most of the story that I tell the world. I package it into consumable chunks because the reality is a lot more sad and weary, rather than funny or witty.

Sure, I know it's serious and I want to die and everything, but also I don't want to bother everyone with how desperate and self-pained I am. It's like when you have a break up and you just can't stop hurting. Until you can't bring yourself to tell your friends about it any longer.

I've only been in hospital 10 minutes when I realise it is not the place I thought it was going to be.

In the intake interview, the nurse asks me if I would "give it up easily in here?"

By which she means: am I going to have sex with the other patients?

She then tells me that my self harm isn't "that bad" and that "usually people with my diagnosis are cut all up and down", using hand gestures to explain her point.

Given this, I shouldn't be surprised that it takes 72 hours of being in hospital, surrounded by people being paid to help me out, before someone asks me how I am, and seems like they actually want to know the answer.

Her name is Pam, she's a middle-aged woman who stops me in the hallway and asks me if I'm 25-or-under.

She is pleased when I say yes because this means I can join her group for young people.

We talk for a long time, perhaps even talking over some of her lunch break. Pam tells me it's going to be two years of work to get better.

I've been on this track for 10 years now, so I'm not entirely sure what "getting better" would be at this point.

But I do know that two years seems like an eternity when I'm crawling my way through the days.

Right now though I'm just glad someone seems to know what to do and is talking to me like I am a person, rather than a walking disease.

On the third day in hospital my twin sister brings in my ukulele for me to play, some better snacks, and a family photo of both of us when we were toddlers. Neither of us can decipher who is who.

I wonder how I ended up here, and her not. This is not a new thought. This is perhaps one of the most worn out grooves in my mind; a desire path in my brain that cuts a deep line. A wanting for an answer, explanation, redemption.

The next day the nurse comes in to check on me, and seems disappointed to find the picture frame. "You can't have glass in here", she says. "And if you self harm in here you'll be sent to public, you understand?"

That same dog-eared question rolls around my head: Why me? Why not her, my genetic identical? Why just me?

Most people don't get top-of-the-line mental health care like this. I know I am lucky to be here.

Still, I thought something magic would happen in hospital.

I thought that once I was here people would take me seriously.

That people would care.

That I'd be enveloped by the warm hug of humanity I desperately craved.

But once inside I am just someone else's job, and a potential nuisance.

So I skirt a fine line the entire time.

After sixteen days I pack all my sadness into my suitcase again, pay my pharmacy bill, and wait for my sister to come get me so she can trundle me home, to the next part of my daytime soap opera life.

The last order of business is to fill out the exit survey, which asks me if my "emotional problems" have "interfered with [my] normal social activities" in the last two weeks.

Somewhere between ambivalence and smugness, I tick "quite a bit".

The nurse hands me back my shaver and the glass for the photo frame, and tells me "I can come back any time I need to".

I'm not so sure about that.

Hospital isn't the place you go to get well, I think to myself.

It's the place you go to not die.

"If someone does not want me it is not the end of the world.

But if I do not want me the world is nothing but endings"

It's been almost three years exactly since my hospital stay, and I find myself standing on a nature strip, begging my boyfriend Graham not to go to work, because I'm afraid to be alone again.

I'm afraid of what I might do.

Endings. Endings. Everywhere. Possible endings.

That pervasive thought: "Is this the end?" cuts through in a shiver of excitement at the possibility of escaping all this.

This day turns into a week, then a month. It's not all this scary, but we are limping through. I stop sleeping in my own bed. We all, Graham and I and our psychologist, decide I shouldn't be at home right now. Not alone anyway.

This is on me - Graham Panther on what it's like to love someone who is suicidal.

Graham and I agree I need to go somewhere.

But we also agree that hospital isn't an option this time.

Not just because I no longer have the health insurance to cover it, but because this time around I'm much more wary of the nature of that kind of help.

I know how sensitive I am to shame when I'm in this hopeless place, and I know how often the help, particularly at the more acute end of the spectrum, can exacerbate that shame and leave me feeling more hopeless. This leaves me without many options.

Since last time round, though, I've actually spent a few years working in the mental health system (as has my boyfriend Graham), so I now know more of what's available and how to navigate it.

I know there are inpatient services that are kind of like hospital lite.

There's nurse on staff 24 hours, and cooking classes during the day.

But you can come and go as you please, you can keep going to work and go see your friends.

And you don't even need to tell your boss or your mum that you're in there.

As luck would have it, there's one of these hospital-lite places right around the corner from where I live. A four-minute drive away. I could even pop home if I needed a jumper.

I call them and explain that I'm suicidal. They tell me I need to either be registered for National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) - which takes about six months - or with a case manager in my area, which could take up to a month.

I ask my psychiatrist if she can get me in any earlier.

She tells me that not only can she not refer me, but if I do get referred to this service I would have to stop seeing her, as well as the rest of my support team.

My life at this stage has been centred on just getting to my next appointments.

So giving up my lifeline for a service and people I've never met is not an option.

Where do you go when there's nowhere to go?

Where do you go when the mental health system doesn't have anywhere for you?

On a road trip with your boyfriend, of course. Singing Disney songs along the way.

We go to a friend's house in the country.

Graham has become something of a trip sitter for this journey.

We spend a week out there and read and write stupid songs and when it's raining all of a sudden we run outside naked and yell at the sky.

We take pictures of kangaroos and cook good food and play cards and have arguments.

We write and walk and philosophise about what it means to be hopeless, and what the value of hopelessness might be.

My sister and her boyfriend even join us for some of it. When I tell her I suspect my life may be ruined she says that doesn't make sense. I agree that it doesn't make sense, but that it is also my whole world right now.

Sometimes people don't have to understand, but just be there. My sister is remarkably good at this. Even though she doesn't understand, she is good at staying in that precious non-judgmental space with me.

The place where the answers are hard to pin down. Maybe this talent is in our genes.

It's pure, unadulterated good fortune that I am here.

That we have a friend who has a country house. And that the house is free. And that Graham is free enough to come with me.

I've spoken to many people over the years and heard them pine for something like this. A place where they can go and be crazy and also be normal. Where they can walk around and tend to plants and cry and breathe out.

"I'm about to be hospitalised, in a psych ward, again. I've cried all day every day for four months now. I feel more alone than ever in my life.

"I want to know, how on earth did you get out? Any advice at all would be deeply appreciated. It would mean the world to me. I'm terrified that I can't do this."

This could easily be something I wrote. But it's not. It's a message in my Instagram inbox from a stranger.

I've gotten many messages like this over the years, ever since I started talking about my experiences publicly. These messages are from people in psych hospital. People in France. People I haven't seen since high school who ask me how I fixed myself.

But I don't think I've fixed myself. This current trip to Doom Town has made me sure of that. But here's the thing, even now, in the thick of it, I also don't think I'm broken anymore either.

Back in hospital all those years ago, I wanted to be medicalised. I wanted someone to name my pain and for it to be a thing that was real and written down in a text book somewhere. I wanted the answer.

But now I know it's not that simple. Having someone explain your pain is not the same as having someone understand it.

Each time I go through this thing, I never know exactly how I make it through. But one thing is increasingly clear. For me, understanding and compassion, those precious ingredients are key to coming out the other side intact.

It's why I have spent hours speaking to these internet strangers about their deep existential pain. Because I know how healing it can be to find those other people that 'get it'. People who, like you, are asking perhaps the biggest questions of our human lives: why do I find life this hard? Why is my life this way? Why am I alive?

A year ago, before this current existential black hole, I realised that I couldn't keep up with all the people in pain who were reaching out to me. That's why Graham and I started The Big Feels Club.

We describe it as a "philosophy club for people who are sad or scared a bunch of the time".

The very first meeting of the Big Feels Club happens in our living room. It's a smattering of 15 or so people who identify as having big feelings. Some are friends, some are strangers. Almost all of them brought snacks without prompting.

Since then it's gotten a lot bigger, and quickly. We now have thousands of people in our little online community, sharing those big questions together.

The Big Feels Club is my way of making that sacred space I wished I could find when I was back in hospital.

It's not a fix-all - it doesn't make the day-to-day realities of scrambling for life any less exhausting - but it does help me remember something vitally important. That there are many ways of making sense of these experiences, and that I'm so very far from being the only one who feels this way.

Who knows if all this will happen again, or what I'll do if it does.

But I know this, that whatever services or supports I lean on, I hope they help me feel like I belong on earth.

I hope they help me see this stuff for what I now believe it is: not a sign of weakness or illness, but a desperate struggle for meaning and existence.

A human struggle. One I'm never alone in.

About the author
Honor Eastly is a writer, podcaster and professional feeler of feelings. She is the co-founder of The Big Feels Club and previously created the cult-hit podcasts Being Honest With My Ex, and Starving Artist. Her latest podcast, No Feeling is Final, explores the same experiences as this piece and is produced by ABC Audio Studios.

Credits
Words: Honor Eastly
Photos: Honor Eastly and Margaret Burin

Suicidal

My girlfriend told me she was suicidal. Here's what happened next

ABC LIFEBy Graham Panther

Updated about 5hrs ago

 

"I'd known for weeks she was struggling, and I'd been worried, but I thought I'd understood the shape of it," Graham writes. (ABC Life: Luke Tribe)

Just a heads up, this article is going to be heading into some 'heavy feelings' territory.

My girlfriend and I have a strange new nightly ritual.

She'll close her eyes and sing a little song, while I retrieve her sleeping pills from the latest hiding place. Then I hand one to her and hide the rest.

The songs are usually pretty good — she's a singer after all. Over a borrowed pop song melody, her made-up lyrics will riff on the weirdness of the situation:

Where do you go when you're afraid you'll kill yourself?

Writer and podcaster Honor Eastly talks about her experiences dealing with suicide and the mental health system and the lessons she's learnt about herself and those around her.

Read more

My boyfriend is fetching the sleeping pills,

I'm not allowed to keep.

'Cos I may be suicidal,

but a girl's still gotta sleep.

Catchy, right?

We both laugh as we perform this nightly task. It's a moment of silliness, of connection, during what has become an extraordinary time in both our lives.

You see, three months ago she told me she was afraid she might try to kill herself.

We were standing on the nature strip outside her house. I'd been loading the car, about to head to work.

Graham says when they first got together, they'd bonded over the fact they had both "spent time in the darker parts of our minds". (Supplied)

As she said the words, I noticed the passers-by on their morning commute, stepping politely around the couple engaged in a deep, tearful conversation. I remember thinking, "Gosh it's a sunny day, isn't this strange?"

Her confession wasn't a complete shock. I'd known things hadn't been great for her for some time.

I even knew she'd been thinking about her own death — in an abstract way.

When we first got together, we'd bonded over the fact we had both spent time in the darker parts of our minds. When she mentioned abstract thoughts of death, I thought, "Oh, she's in the hard place. I'll be here for her while she works it through."

But that day on the nature strip she gave me new information. Those abstract thoughts of death? "They're not so abstract anymore. I'm thinking about actual ways I could do it. And I'm scared."

You know that moment when an optical illusion 'clicks' for you, and you can finally see the duck (or is it a rabbit?).

This is kind of what it felt like, hearing my girlfriend tell me she was suicidal.

Have you supported someone through a dark time in their lives? What helped you stay strong? We’d be honoured to hear about your experience. Email life@abc.net.au

I'd known for weeks she was struggling, and I'd been worried, but I thought I'd understood the shape of it. I thought I could see what the problem was.

There was so much I hadn't been seeing.

And I had no idea what to do next.

'This is on me'

 

"We are responsible to be honest with each other, to be present, but we are not responsible for each other's actions." (Supplied)

This isn't the story of how my girlfriend figured out how to live again. She tells that much better than I could.

This is a story of what it's like to walk alongside someone doing that hard, hard work for themselves.

In the months that followed, the thoughts of death didn't stop, the cloud didn't lift.

We asked for help, from many parts of the mental health system. We both work in this system, so we know what the options are — but that didn't help much.

No Feeling Is Final

Usually when we talk about suicide we say those four magic words: "just ask for help". But Honor Eastly knows it's not that simple.

What became apparent very quickly is that of all the options — GPs, psychologists, psychiatrists, hospital — none of them had 'the answer'. If you're lucky what they suggest might eventually add up to the answer, but you have to do that math yourself — something which can take a lot of time, energy, and money to do.

It can be done. You can even do it alone. My girlfriend has made it through more than one suicidal crisis without me, without any supportive partner. People make it through this stuff every day. It's just really, really hard.

Even with someone in your corner, it is very easy to feel overwhelmed, lost, and all on your own here. And as I watched my smart, resourceful, persistent girlfriend get more and more frustrated with her attempts to find something that would help, one scary thought began to work its way into my brain:

I'm all she's got here. This is on me.

From boyfriend to carer

Three months after that nature strip conversation, things haven't gotten any easier. Every morning at 3:00am my girlfriend wakes up, filled with terror. I tell her, "You have to wake me up, I'll sit with you."

So this becomes our other nightly ritual. At a party one night, a friend starts describing to me the trouble her new baby is giving her and I quietly think, "I can kind of relate?"

Loving someone with a mental illness

Depression. Schizophrenia. Anxiety. It can be hard to separate the person you love from the disorder.

Read more

It's in the little everyday decisions that I shift from partner to "carer". "Do I skip that much-needed night out with friends? She says she'll be fine at home alone, but what if she's not?"

And that shift in roles doesn't go unnoticed on her side. She stops waking me at 3:00am, because she's tired of making me tired. She stops telling me when things are bad.

It's over coffee with a friend that I have something of a breakthrough. I tell him how exhausted I feel, how desperate it all feels. He simply says: "It sounds like you think you're responsible for keeping her alive."

Oof. Yep.

Honesty is harder than you think

We talk it through with our therapist.

This isn't working. I'm paranoid she's not telling me how bad it really is, so I'm second-guessing her, putting my life on hold.

She sees me doing that, hates feeling like a burden, and so doesn't tell me how bad it really is.

A lovely, vicious cycle.

How to support someone who is suicidal

If you are not a trained professional, trying to support someone who is suicidal can be confronting and can easily leave you feeling out of your depth.

Read more

Where we get to is this: we still don't know how she'll get through this — that's her job, and I'll help in whatever ways I can.

But there's something we do know: if our relationship is going to make it through this extraordinary time, some things need to change.

Here's what we decide.

We've both got to be honest. She needs to tell me when things get really scary for her, so I can do what I can to help. In turn, I need to tell her when I'm feeling worn out, so she can make other plans.

Don't have it all figured out. This whole time I've been thinking, "I'm supposed to be the one who has it all figured out". I'd started to think I really did have all the answers (because the alternative was much more frightening). But the truth is, I've been acting just as much on instinct and fear as she has.

My girlfriend has one particular mental health professional who always seems to make her feel worse. She's been coming home in tears from their sessions. So I'd told her, "You shouldn't go back there, it's not helping".

The thing is, my telling her that didn't help either. She just felt more trapped. She knew that professional wasn't helping, but she also knew she was desperate, and that starting all over again with someone new could leave her feeling even more lost.

We agree that instead of saying, "This is what's best for you", I could say something more honest like, "Hey, I'm scared about you going back there".

This doesn't fix the problem, but neither does pretending I have all the answers.

Responsibility to, not responsibility for

 

"A few months after that day on the nature strip, things shifted. Neither of us knows the exact moment when." (Supplied)

Having tried all the obvious options, we get creative. We spend a week at a friend's country house. We call it a "hospiday" (a hospital holiday).

We even do a week-long course on "alternatives to suicide". We learn how to have more present, honest conversations about the scariest things our brains can throw at us.

My biggest takeaway from the course is about responsibility. We cannot be responsible for other adults. We can only be responsible to them. We are responsible to be honest with each other, to be present, but we are not responsible for each other's actions.

In some ways, this is the lesson we all have to learn to make any relationship work. You can't control each other.

When one of you is suicidal, that lesson becomes far more urgent, and a lot harder to navigate. But we muddle through.

A few months after that day on the nature strip, things shift. Neither of us knows the exact moment when.

One day my girlfriend feels like sleeping alone at her house. She doesn't even wake up until morning.

Not long after that, our relationship slips back into the easy rhythm we had before all this happened.

This strange and tender passage in our relationship fades from view, but it isn't gone. It's this profound shared history. An extraordinary time.

Graham Panther is a consultant in Australia's mental health system. He runsThe Big Feels Club, a global club for people with "big feelings". He co-wrote No Feeling Is Final a new memoir podcast from the ABC Audio Studios about mental health, identity, and why we should stay alive.