Hi.
I'm Jamie's Mom and I don't care if anyone else reads this or not, or if I do it wrong - whatever - but I have a LOT of stuff just mucking up my head and need to get it OUT!
Journaling is probably the best way to do this, but then again, I got to thinking "maybe I could get some feedback" and decide on a blog.
So, if anyone is out there reading this, my apologies to you. Sincerely.
Jamie committed suicide in October.
He was my son and he was 29 years and 129 days old.
I am still reeling.
And I cannot stop thinking.
Thinking, thinking, thinking.
Why was my son so despondent that death was preferable to life?
Why wasn't he more resilient?
What qualities do I have that have kept me alive for 51 years that he did not inherit from me?
Obviously he inherited the Major Depression and suicidal tendencies from me.
I attempted suicide at 14 - or was it 15? - years of age.
I planned it out perfectly.
I collected pills of all sorts for months until I had over 100 prescription tablets and capsules.
You name it.
Valium for my anxiety attacks.
Tagamet (which was prescription at the time) for my ulcer.
Something the doctor gave me for my headaches.
And others that I do not recall anymore.
I carried on through my day like it was any other ordinary day EXCEPT that when I went into my room at bedtime, I intended to die.
I told my parents goodnight and went to my room.
I closed my door.
I put Elton John on the stereo and put on my headphones.
I laid down on the floor and turned Elton up really loud so that he pounded in my head, louder than my heart.
And I began to write my goodbye letters to everyone.
One for Mom and Dad, one for my grandmother, and one for each of my friends.
When I finished, I put each into an envelope, sealed it, and wrote the intended recipient's name on the front.
Then I started taking the pills, washing them down with a large glass of water.
I started off counting - because I am obsessive compulsive and I count everything - but for some reason after I got to 73 I quit counting.
But I continued taking the pills until they were all gone.
I had already gone through several Elton John LPs on the stereo, but wanted to make sure that the last thing I heard was Elton singing in my ears, so I flipped them over and re-stacked them on the spindle in the center of my stereo turntable and started them over again.
Meanwhile, outside of my little world, a friend of mine was having a fight with her boyfriend and was upset and wanted to talk to me.
It was too late to call our house unless it was an emergency (10 PM) - but of course, it was an emergency to her!
So she called.
She woke up my parents and whoever it was that had answered the phone knocked on my door.
No answer.
"Sorry, she's already asleep" - or so I was told later.
Well that was not good enough for the "Emergency Girl" so she drove over to the house and began knocking on the door.
Someone finally answered and let her in.
Then she barged into my room, all hysterical, with mascara all down her tear-stained cheeks.
Does anyone else remember Great Lash before it was waterproof?
Anyway, she barged into my room and turned on the lights and began to cry and tell me all about how her boyfriend was a jerk when she realized I was unconscious.
Of course, she told me this story because I WAS unconscious and oblivious to everything going on.
Next thing I remember was being at the hospital getting my stomach pumped and the doctor continually shaking me and demanding that I wake up and answer questions.
Dammit!
So close, but not quite.
Shit, shit, shit!
Then came the drive to my home to gather clothes and throw them in a small suitcase, then the drive to the Mental Hospital in the next town over.
I don't remember much about it except my mom crying, then yelling at me, then crying again.
I don't remember if my dad said anything at all.
And somewhere along the way I do remember sitting up in the back seat, still VERY STONED, and asking someone to turn up the car radio, just to have my mom snap at me that the radio wasn't even on.
I fell back to sleep or lost consciousness because the next thing I remembered I was being taken to a hospital room in a wheelchair and put to bed.
All very dramatic.
From what I gathered, my parents did not want me to go to the hospital OR the mental hospital, but their hands were tied.
At home, they could not wake me up, and they found all my suicide notes, and there was that annoying friend who was a "witness".
As far as my parents were concerned, If she had not come over no one would have found out about "it".
As far as I was concerned, I had successfully committed suicide and that stupid bitch had screwed it up for me.
I never forgave her for that. And she thought she was a HERO! omg...
Back to my parents...
If they had not been forced to, they probably would not have taken me to the hospital at all unless I had actually stopped breathing. Really.
Then, once they got me there and the doctor asked me if it was an accidental overdose and I told him "no", the law required 72 hours at the looney bin.
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.
Whatever.
The stay was uneventful.
No one asked the right questions, so no one ever really found out what was going on or why I had committed suicide.
I screwed up ALL the tests they gave me, including the MMPI - which later I found to be very entertaining.
It was very similar to going to a fortune teller and having them tell you all about yourself.
But I intentionally screwed it up by answering the questions every which way but true.
I bet the staff at that place hated me.
So the 3 days went by.
When my parents came to pick me up the doctor did not want to release me.
But my parents insisted.
So then the doctor agreed, but he insisted that I come back weekly for follow-up visits.
My parents agreed to it just so they could take me home but I don't remember if they ever took me back for any follow-ups???
Maybe one or two, but that was it.
The day they picked me up from the hospital, I remembered them being all cheerful and saying stuff about how "we never had to talk about it again and no one needed to know what I had done" and how the teachers at the school thought I had missed school because I was sick.
THEN they took me out for dinner at my favorite restaurant and to a store where I got to pick out a new stereo!
WOW. Hush money?
I got the message.
They didn't want to know.
So I didn't tell them.
And they NEVER asked me, ever, what had happened that had caused me to want to kill myself.
So here I am, 37 years later, and my son is dead and I am still alive.
What the Hell is wrong with this picture?
LOTS.
I'll come back and tell you more after I've slept.
My son has been dead 6 weeks and I am still a basket case.
I sleep almost 16 to 20 hours a day.
I barely eat.
And I cry all the time.
I can't seem to stop crying.
And I MISS HIM more than anyone else alive can even begin to imagine.
He was a part of me, a tiny little egg that grew into a child in my belly, and came out screaming 9 1/2 months later at 9 lbs. and 3 oz.
He is the only blood relative I had in this entire world.
I am adopted and my youngest son is actually a step-son and my daughter is an "adopted-in-the-heart" child.
I've never been able to find out anything about my birth parents, or if I have brothers or sisters, or other blood relatives, and the older I get the less likely that becomes.
Kellie, my "adopted-in-my-heart" daughter, had found her birth mother and several half-sisters (and other misc. relatives) just by snooping around on the computer!
But I was born in 1961 and they took closed adoptions VERY SERIOUS.
She was born in 1977 and her adoption was an open adoption - more or less.
Her adoptive parents knew her birth mother AND adopted her as a toddler instead of as an infant, so it was a whole different kind of adoption.
And with me being 51, the odds of me finding living birth parents get smaller every day - unless they were teenagers when I was born!
This brings up another question.
Are either of my birth parents mentally ill?
When I got pregnant with Jamie I did not know that my depression was hereditary.
I had always assumed that my depression and self-destructive tendencies were environmental - not a result of biology.
If I had thought for even one second that my son would have major depression, destructive tendencies, suicidal desires, and basically want to die every day of his life, I NEVER would have had him!
I would have been more careful with my birth control when I was young and then gotten my tubes ties as soon as I could talk a doctor into doing it.
I also think - I cannot be 100% certain - but I think I would have aborted him if I really thought he was going to go through the same Hell I went through my entire life.
Would I have really done it?
Yeah, I think I would have.
Knowing now how much Jamie was suffering and how long he was in pain and how beaten down and discouraged he was when he finally took his life, I wish I had.
I would have done ANYTHING to spare him that pain, to take on his burden.
He never opened up to me before like he did in the months preceding his death.
He finally opened up and showed me all the scars and the twisted, broken bones, and the crushed, wounded and bleeding heart.
He was just a shell.
A shell of a person filled with nothing but hopelessness, pain, suffering, self-loathing, and a strong desire to make it all stop.
Just make it GO AWAY.
My heart ached for him.
I cried, I hugged him, I held him while he cried, I listened, I did everything I could possibly do.
If the Devil himself had popped up with a contract, offering to lift every bit of the suffering up off of my son leaving him whole and happy with nothing but blue skies and sunshine ahead of him, I would have gladly sold him my soul in exchange.
I would have made any deal, made any trade, exchanged my life for his, anything to spare him from one more day of pain and suffering.
His pain was palpable.
I could see it in his eyes, in his posture, hear it in his voice.
It was killing him and it was killing me that I could not do anything but watch.
I wanted him to go to a shrink, but he refused.
He said that taking medications for my depression and OCD (and misc other "problems") had changed me and turned me into a passive dish rag with a memory that had huge holes in it and could not retain anything from one day to the next.
And it was true.
Meds have changed me. A LOT.
But at least I did not want to die every day the instant I woke up.
I also wanted him to go to either counseling or a support group - or both! - but he refused.
Individual counseling, group counseling, and support groups are one of the things that I credit with keeping me alive all these years.
An awesome shrink, lots of medications, and good counseling & support.
But he didn't believe in even "the concept" of counseling - and he has a Bachelors Degree in Psychology!
He thinks it's all hoakum and voodoo.
When he was a child in first grade he wrote his first suicide note.
He told a teacher at school that he didn't have any friends, no one liked him, they all made fun of him, and he wanted to die.
Thank God she took him seriously!
She told the principal and the school called me and asked me to come in for a conference.
I did, and "all was revealed to me" or so to say.
They showed me drawings, showed me the note, and told me about what all was going on up at the school.
Of course it was the 80's so bullying was never discussed.
All the talk was about Jamie and what we needed to do to get him help.
I don't remember which came first - but I took him to my shrink AND I admitted him to an in-patient mental hospital with a program for kids.
But, like I said, I don't remember if I took him to the hospital first or to my shrink.
Turned out the program sucked and basically they warehoused kids and the primary goal was to keep them "mellow" by any means and to keep them from falling behind in their schoolwork.
He came home feeling even worse and more depressed and more suicidal - if that is even possible.
And he DID NOT want to take any pills.
Forget medication.
He would either refuse to take it until we wanted to shove it down his throat OR he would pretend to take it but not really take it and throw it in the toilet later and flush it away.
It was a crapshoot.
I never knew if he had taken it or not, but was pretty sure nothing was helping him.
And I took him to some of the best psychologists in the area, but he would not let them in.
Remind you of anyone??????
14 year old me.
But for the love of Christ!
I KNEW he had not been molested.
I KNEW he had not been raped.
I KNEW he had not been tortured and brainwashed for 13 years until he was a crumpled bloody mess just wishing to die.
That had been ME, and I had guarded my child from ALL of THOSE THINGS!!!
I had watched him like a hawk and kept him away from the people who had abused me, away from situations that I felt could be dangerous, away from people I felt might be dangerous.
I had watched over him like a wild animal watches over her young and protects them from predators.
And I was NOT a deer or an antelope. I was a LIONESS, huge and heavy and dangerous.
So WHY was he so depressed and why did this little boy - my little boy - want to die?
