unearthed

The process of moving always unearths interesting things. Like check stubs that date back to 1996. Why am I keeping those again? How about the bank statements from 1994? I think it's safe to shred those things now. I finally threw out the small purse sized calendar from 1991. I'd been holding on to that, intentionally. Because it was from the year I checked myself into a psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt. The things written in there always remind me of where I was and who I was. I don't really know why I couldn't part with it. It never occurs to me to look at it unless I'm packing for a move. Then I sit down at my desk, pull open the drawer with the random selection of things I can't part with, and try to purge them out. Try to let them go. And I have. Little by little. Today I threw that calendar away. I didn't even open it. I think if I had started reading it and thumbing through the months and looking at the days I spent in that psychiatric hospital I would never throw it away. It's been over 20 years - it's time to let it go I think. I have other things from that time. I'm looking at one of them right now. It's a journal entry of sorts. Something I wrote on a random piece of paper when I couldn't find anywhere else to write and I needed to write. Badly. The things I wrote on June 16, 1991 - two months before I would try to kill myself - read like a really bad soap opera. It's all very woe is me. I try not to be too mean to the girl who wrote that shit, I try to remember that in that moment, the pain was very real. So real that just a couple of months later, that girl would put a gun in her mouth, stand at the mirror, look herself in the eyes and dare herself to pull the trigger. I did that for days. And then, in a moment of what I thought was absolute weakness, I called my therapist. But I didn't get to talk to my therapist, he was out of town. So I got the on-call doctor who did not know me or my issues. All she knew was that a 19 year old girl was standing in her bedroom with a loaded gun. I didn't really voluntarily check myself in to the hospital. Sure I drove myself there but it was only after that fill in therapist lady told me that she was compelled to contact the police if I didn't agree to get myself to a hospital. I'm not even sure if that's true, is it? I guess maybe. If it was a trick, it worked. I didn't want the police to come take me away. So I drove to that hospital and checked myself in. It would be a blip on my radar history if that was the first and last time I would try to kill myself, but it wasn't. Not by a long shot. But it set me on a path, it opened doors to places I wouldn't have known were there. So while the psych hospital didn't actually fix anything, it at least set me on a course that eventually led to wellness. And honestly, I don't even know if I'm really well, I'm just better than I was. And that's really all I can ask. I don't entertain thoughts of suicide. But I have other issues. Other things that I keep to myself because I know they are crazy. Sometimes when the hormonal imbalance created by my lady parts is particularly bad, the dark thoughts return and I wonder what would happen if I threw myself down the stairs. Or hit myself with a blunt object. So yeah, I'm not well by any stretch, but I am better.