300 mgs: Have to Be Careful Anyway

A few weeks ago I wrote about how bad I've been feeling lately.  Then, the next day, I did something to make it worse.  I went to Brian Copeland's show The Waiting Period.  It's a darkly comic one-man show about the ten-day waiting period that California requires when purchasing a handgun.  Copeland was purchasing that handgun in order to commit suicide.  The waiting period probably saved his life.


The show was great, both funny and poignantly sad.  But I shouldn't have gone to see it.

It wound up being really triggering.  Copeland's character moved between today, in real time, and the person he was when he was suicidal.  The suicidal character described so many things I felt, and am feeling.  What particularly resonated was the repetition of the phrase, "everything hurts".  In his case, the pain was felt physically: "Even my hair hurts!".  In my case, the recurring thought is "my life hurts".

Watching the show, I remembered all the times I've been at a stop sign or a crosswalk and thought, I could just step into traffic.  I remembered by recurring thoughts of cutting myself, thoughts that started when I was a teenager.  The recurring, frustrated thought, I should just shoot myself in the head.  Copeland wanted to shoot himself in the heart, because that's where his pain was.  I guess I think of shooting myself in the head because it's just been so useless to me -- the learning disabilities, the ADHD, the consequent underemployment, and of course, the crazy.

Lest you be worried, I don't have a suicide plan, and I don't even own a gun.  The point of this post is that, when you have a mood disorder, no matter how medicated you are, you still need to be really careful about what you allow yourself to listen to and see.  I thought I was doing well enough that I could enjoy the show without adverse consequences to myself.  I wasn't.

The only upside is that seeing the show made me realize how much I was in denial about how bad I was doing, and now I'm seeking help.  And that, as it happens, was Copeland's message:  if you're feeling really bad, tell someone.  Get help.  Don't suffer in silence, alone.