I almost killed myself and why (how?) I chose to stay alive

Last year, I almost committed suicide. I had it all planned. And then, I changed my mind. Here's what happened.

If you read my posts titled The Real Reason I Went On Sabbatical (parts 1 and 2), you know how devastating 2022 was for me.

Me these days - decidedly less devastated

Going from 500% energy to 20% is hard enough - but not having a sense of what went wrong or what to change… to put it really simply, I lost my faith in process.

I no longer believed that putting in effort or time or even intention could lead reliably to a result. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome doesn’t follow the rules. In fact, trying and pushing dig you into a hole that can be hard to get out of. And there doesn’t seem to be much logic to it.

Also important to note: at that point, I didn’t yet have a name for what was wrong with me. In retrospect, this was also part of the problem.

After all, you can’t “come out” and announce an illness that’s devastating, but also kinda vague and without a clear name or label. I wouldn’t get my diagnosis until December 2022 (a full 3 years after my decline began).

As I wrote in part 2 of the Sabbatical series, the lack of belief in process started to bleed into all areas of my life.

For the first time in my life, I felt completely without purpose, without drive. I had no idea what habits were healthy and which ones were harmful. For a Type A overachiever, this is basically like losing your entire identity. I had no idea who I was or what I even wanted. And I had no get up and go.

Dark thoughts began to crowd my mind at that point.

Also, I told no one. Not even Pat (my husband).

I journaled a ton and allowed myself to write whatever came to mind, including detailed ideas for how I would off myself. I planned it in such a way that my family wouldn’t be the ones to find me (I could spare them that trauma at least). And of course, I had a huge life insurance policy on me, so that would be my way of continuing to be a provider.

But as I explored the darkness, little rays of light kept permeating my pages.

Since I’d been so burned from being accomplishment-oriented, I couldn’t imagine having a big goal. Goals felt toxic to me at the time.

Instead, I found myself pondering a rather different question. I’ve written about it here.

If failure was guaranteed (and so accomplishment was taken off the table), what would be so fun and so fulfilling that you would be happy to wake up every day and die trying?

Something I could have full control over (so I didn’t need anyone else’s permission or participation).

Something that was pleasurable in the mere doing of it - so no outcome was necessary.

Something that I could see myself being fascinated with for the next 20, 30 even 50 years.

I encourage you to ponder this idea for yourself. When you take achievement and outcome off the table, it tends to kill 99.9% of your ideas. At least it did for me.

My answer?

I want to write.

And I want to learn to write books.

I’ve been fascinated with writing since I was 10. I’ve been doing it professionally (i.e. getting paid) since I was 12. It’s my oldest love.

For me, the sheer joy of being in flow and wrestling the perfect sentence onto the page is bliss. So often, I’ll read my work and think, “Dang! That’s amazing. I wish I could write like this!” Except I did! I wrote it but I have no sense of ownership of it. No sense of where it came from or that I could recreate it on command.

Writing is the ultimate alchemy for me - I put in time and attention and I get… delight! Words that somehow capture and name the roiling emotions inside me. Little word pictures that make me laugh or sigh or cry.

Pure delight.

So I vowed to become the sort of person who would write for the sheer pleasure of writing. I would write what pleases me. Books, poems, essays.

I began to write to give words to my pain. To find the little flecks of wisdom that were also buried in there.

I began to write to make sense of the profound absurdity I was experiencing.

I began to write… with delight.

And it saved my life.

Meet one of our new kittens - this is Frida

This year, I went back and took some of the most delight-inducing pieces and put them together into a mini journaling course which I’ll make available soon.

I think I’m going to call it Me-Search: A journaling journey to reclaim joy and delight after devastation.

Something like that.

Right now, I’m writing two books. Yeah, I know.

This isn’t an overachiever thing, I swear! It’s more that my main project is one a memoir tentatively named Mad, Sad and Ultimately Glad: How I found joy and purpose after chronic illness stole my identity.

But memoir is hard and I find myself sometimes struggling to figure out what order to put a series of events that feel overly connected to each other in my head. I’m working through it. But I do find that I get stalled often.

Since my goal is to give myself more of what I love (i.e. writing), I gave myself permission to start a “procrastination project”. You see, I have a list of 38 other books I also want to write. So I just picked one off that list and started writing.

It’s been flying off my fingers and is probably 3/4 done! In just under 10 days!

I’ll share little snippets of it with you if you like. I’d love to get some eyes on it to tell me if it makes sense outside my head.

In the meantime, I had a few questions for you:

Would you be interested in me sharing my creative process with you here on Substack? I formed a writers group and Scott Anthony, one of my writing buddies is also writing a book. Our goal is to have our drafts done by Sept 30.

What has been fascinating is how similar our creative journeys have been. From the first rush of momentum to the stalling, the wrestling with discipline vs flexibility, starting “side books” - all of which happened organically and that we shared with each other after the fact.

I’d love to share what I’m learning about writing joyfully and prolifically with you despite life’s challenges (kids, business, chronic fatigue, meal prep, etc).

Is this something you’d want to read about? Please tell me in the comments.