Anxiety is rising diminishing the results of every heavy breath you struggle to take. You start to sweat as panic sets in and you’re left with the fear of this being who you’ve become against all your fighting. You begin to question everything you’ve been told as if they were intentional jokes made to make you feel like a hopeless lost soul lacking purpose and the love of another. All the while you’re sinking deeper into depression giving in to the voices in your head telling you how pitiful you are and cheering you on as you decide to quit. You feel the pull of the hands dragging you down to the depths of your soul telling you that you’re better off because nobody cares for you as it is.
I had never been so confident in a decision my entire life. Self doubt and no self worth had plagued me for so long and the power I felt was so peaceful and so right. There was no questioning the reason or the outcome because I knew it was the first time that I was making a decision for me, about me, and only me. I had gotten what I needed and put them in my pocket and drove home. When I got the steps of my porch I pulled them out of my pocket and held them in my hands while I unlocked the door. Everything was so right, so perfect, so calming while I entered the house. I put all my belongings down and checked my hand to notice I had dropped some. Shit, I can not believe I did that. I scrambled looking for them in my shirt, in my pockets, everywhere and nothing. I retraced my steps as the anxiety was building and I started breathing heavily as if I had just ran 10 miles walking out to my car. I opened the door and carefully searched frantically as my anxiety was soaring, but no luck. Fuck, now what I thought to myself. I followed my exact steps examining every blade of grass and every tiny crack in the walkway so that I didn’t overlook them. I needed them and the thought of failure was exacerbated by the terror of not having them. I walked back into the porch, bingo I found one. Then another and another. Oh thank God I told myself as I picked them up and blew them off entering the house once more for the final time. I laid them out like a child does showing off their ribbons and trophies perfectly on the table along with the rest of what I needed. I had no doubt that I was finally going to finish something and I smirked as I gazed upon the table as if to say ” well done Zac”. There was no fear or unsettling thoughts leading up to the final dinner and as I smoked my last cigarette I asked God to forgive me for what I’m about to do.
I wanted out so badly. I got 3k mg of Seroquel, 24 mg of Ambien, and a bottle of Tylenol pm and ate them all. About 5 min in, I felt it, death coming. My heart was going to stop. I couldn’t move my arms or legs because of how high my pulse was. I went to the shower and decided that I would lay there til the end. As I sat there waiting, I remember thinking about every miserable day of my life. How if there was a god, he was nowhere to be found. He’d left me praying to deaf ears. If God wouldn’t help me when I needed him so badly, how was I to go on? Everybody I loved had left me, and I had never felt so alone, so deserted, so abandoned.
When the first responders arrived on scene I was so ashamed because I knew one of them. They looked at me sitting in my boxers on the couch, they noticed the cuts on my arm, they noticed all the empty pill bottles laying about and asked me how I was doing. I remember when I said I was just trying to sleep that I actually believed it. I noticed the quite talking and the hand gestures they made to each other, but I thought they believed me. On the table among the pill bottles was my loaded gun, I told them that it was in fact loaded and for their safety I asked them to remove the weapon from the room. ( good job Zac, now why would they think otherwise since your gun was right there) upon arrival of the ambulance it was clear I was in trouble as my heart rate approached 220 beats per minute and they ordered a med flight.
The paramedic advised that he was administering IV fluids and giving me 3 minutes to slow my heart rate or I’d be airlifted as critical. I thought ” great, the last flight cost me 8 grand” but by some miracle it slowed enough to call off the life flight. They showed me my pill box and asked if I was trying to die by suicide? I couldn’t say yes because they would commit me so I said I just wanted to sleep. They rushed me to the er knowing full well what I had done and passed me off to the doctors.
We can’t always control the situations we find ourselves in. Life happens, love fails, our mental illness throws us off kilt. We are left in a seemingly helpless/hopeless place. Self indulgence of negative energy that accompanies these emotions attached to the situation create an illusion of permanent placement in a temporary state. We focus on the negative energy that encompasses us and often don’t recognize what’s going on in our backgrounds.
I’m just a man that once lost hope, gave into the demons with no way to cope. Tormented and abused I struggled to see a way out, I wore the pain on my shoulders but it wasn’t to clout. Who I was and and who I had become were two perfect strangers both unwilling to coincide. I’d hide the scars but they were easy to see, everyone would question what had happened to me. Barricaded inside were the evils within me holding me hostage with no plans to release me. I’d cry out to God yet get the devil instead, all of his angels filling up my head. The anxiety set in and I’d tremble and sigh, for the devil was winning there was no God and I. I’d hear his voice in the distance but it was never very clear, I guess my hearing was silenced by fear.
Hopelessly I fought to find a piece of ground that wouldn’t give way underneath me. Shattered and torn I’d given in and entered into a place I’ve never been before. I saw a sign that I’d lost hope in yet knew no other way as I seemingly without cause found myself walking through the doors to a Church Of Christ. Tears falling from eyes I approached the pulpit, fell to my knees and cried out ” please won’t somebody help me”.
What happened next is harder to tell than any letters mixed into words could spell. Strangers without saying a word put their arms around me and told me that I’d been heard.
The Wandering-Mind 