Tuesday

 On Tuesday first thing I saw my psychiatrist for a regular appointment, I had not seen her since before my pact with the devil back in December. While I am honest with her, I have never shared the way I separately identify with the different parts of my personality with her, (that’s way too private, so I have only shared that with the entire internet, lol) but this session I accidently let something slip and then tried to cover it up. I think it’s ‘Suzi’ that she talks to. She looked at me for a minute and asked if I had been disassociating more often lately, I said ‘kind of’ and she just nodded slowly but didn’t comment. 

She remarked that I seemed happier within myself and I admitted to her that I felt like I had been free since I had chosen a date to end my life, she said that made some sense as I wasn’t having to deal with the pressure of spending each day deciding whether to live or die. 

I refused to give her the date as she would have been compelled to act on it somehow and besides as I tried to reason with her, for all I knew my state of hypomania would just allow the day to pass like any other anyway – then there would have been a big fuss for nothing and people would have had to know, that would have been as embarrassing as hell and as a people pleaser from way back, embarrassment is a far worse fate than death.   

She wasn’t happy about it and I saw tears in her eyes at one point, but for all she knew ‘the date’ was months away so locking me up now would be futile. We have discussed my persistent suicidality issues numerous times before and she has tried every trick in the book, but over time I think that she has had to face the reality that no matter how hard you try, some people just can’t be saved. I told her that she had done everything in her power to help me, and she already HAD helped me so many times before; she told me to call her if shit hit the fan and she would drive the hour and a half out to my farm if need be, she is truly wonderful. 

After my appointment I put on my generally disorganised but loveable “Katie” hat and went and picked up my Dad and took him to the National War Memorial, I really wanted to spend some quality time with just him. We had a nice lunch and looked at the exhibits. Dad teared up a bit while we were watching a movie about “G for George” a bomber plane from the second world war, he was a toddler living in Denmark during WWII and told me that his earliest memory is of the sound of bombs dropping and the terrible shaking of the ground. 

We had some wonderful deep and meaningful discussions, he is spending much more time living in the memories of his past now and is opening up about things he never normally would have, his stories are amazing and I am so glad we had the opportunity to connect that day.

Then Suzi had to reign us in and try and coordinate picking up child number 2 from a soccer day in town, collecting children 1 and 4 from the school bus 1.5hrs away and depositing them at home before taking child number 3 who is in yr7 next year to a high school orientation night 50min away.

I don’t recall much of the evening, but the business of the day had messed with me and I was only half present in any conversation. I kept noticing myself responding to something mid-sentence and having no idea what the topic actually was and then had to try and cover up my vagueness. 

As we were leaving I checked ‘Katie’s’ Facebook feed on my phone and suddenly saw the profile of  “A” a close friend from high school who is featured in my book, there was no nice way of sugar coating the fact that he now looked like a total crack head and it suddenly hit me how easily I could have followed that same path, but here I was at an event with my third child starting high school and I suddenly had no idea how I got to this place in my life. I’m married? When did I have kids? I could intellectually remember their birth dates and what they looked like but I felt like I was watching a slideshow of someone else’s life. 

I scrolled down further and suddenly saw the tributes flowing in for a friend, M.R, a local lady and prominent member of our small town community whom I had spent a lot of time with on the show committee had died that morning after a battle with cancer. After my breakdown in 2015 I had abandoned all my community projects without explanation and I had not seen M.R in over 12 months, I didn’t even know she was sick until a few weeks ago and I had been meaning to contact her.   

A voice suddenly said “What’s wrong? Mr 11 was looking up at me. “You look like someone just died…” but then Suzi smiled back at him, changed the subject and bought us greasy hot chips for dinner and we sang along to music on the car ride home; Bel didn’t say a word.