It’s against my nature to be mean-spirited or evil to anyone… that is unless they push me too close to the edge. Today I did something truly awful which I’m not proud of, and for which I still find myself feeling great self-loathing for several hours now.
Don’t get me wrong, it needed to be done... for a long time now. For years, these truths needed to be said. I just hadn’t said them because to do so would sever old ties and show such disloyalty, that even I wouldn’t be comfortable with that. But today… today, I was forced to set all of that aside and do something mean, awful and hurtful for another’s benefit. In the process, well, I got bruised and scuffed up pretty bad (emotionally that is). Sigh!
What did I do that was so awful? I told a friend, who called me in a very suicidal state (as he’s done a few times before) to finally get it over with and go ahead and kill himself. I did 15 minutes of being supportive and being positive and pointing out that he needed professional help (as I’d done a great many times before), but this time I had just had it with the whining, blaming and victim complex. There was nothing left for me to lose except my own sanity, so I finally got tough and said lot’s of horrible things with one purpose in mind, to get him so angry, so enraged in fact, that he would no longer feel like killing himself and instead feel like killing me.
It took 20 min of me cursing at him in a very controlled manner and emasculating him verbally, but in the end I got the job done. Of course he’s still alive but now I feel like crap. This is a toxic friendship... It wasn’t always like this. At the beginning it was me who needed him to be supportive of my hopes and dreams. As a fellow artist he was the only one who believed in me and encouraged me. When everyone, and I mean everyone, believed I was wasting my time with singing, writing and photography, it was he who would make sure that I got out there and would also get encouraged or recognized by others. He helped me slay dragons, and I in turn did the same for and with him… that is until his own demons became too large and unearthly for me to help.
When things got bad, this brilliant painter shut the light from the love of those around him and instead turned to the demons within him to guide him to a place unreachable by everyone. So as a result he spiraled downward to the depths of darkness within his soul. Each and every time these demons have led him to only one place… death.
These demons can disappear as easily as they appear because they are clinical in nature. You see whenever he gets off his meds, his demons come back en masse and become all too real. He becomes a soul hunted and haunted by these dark and oppressive creatures.
A long time ago I reconciled with the fact that no amount of caring would change the outcome of these episodes. The problem however stemmed from the fact that he had always been the kind of person who always looked at his glass as somewhat empty. As the years passed his glass became empty. I’ve dealt with it by continuously pointing out how it was not and citing convincing evidence. But to someone who’s negative and jaded to the core, even with meds, there’s no amount of psychotropic drugs in the world that would enable him to appreciate life’s small and intrinsic simple beauty, a beauty that can carry most of us forward on a relatively bad day.
His inability to accept life’s imperfect, simplistic and abounding challenges, and turning to recreational drugs to remove the feelings of quiet desperation only served to make a bad situation worse. Every few years or so we wind up here... him turning to me for salvation… and me playing a loosing battle because I'm not omnipotent. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything to give him anymore. His last suicide attempt 6 years ago took everything out of me. So today, being brought to the same place once again I too had reached the end of my rope and gave him the ultimate ultimatum… get help or finally do what he has threatened me with all these years.
I can no longer stand amidst so much darkness. Life for me is a choice that I make every day. Each day I choose the quality and color of my day. I either walk and bask in the bright sunlight, even when it rains, or I go down the path of negativity and darkness, which only does two things… it extinguishes all my hope/dreams and surrounds me with eternal darkness. Today, unbeknowngst to him, I said goodbye to an old friend. In doing so I chose to stand in bright sunshine and eternal hope, leaving him with positive thoughts and prayers to his creator, to do for him that which I have no power to do. By writing this I’m already starting to feel the warmth from the bright sunlight I choose to stand in. .
Posted by Michele at January 10, 2006 03:23 AM | TrackBackI used to have a relationship with someone like this. I finally had to recognize that I could do nothing to help her, only she could help herself. In the process, I had done a lot of damage to myself.
Ultimately, you have to make a decision like you did today. It can be brutally painful, but it also can be the only way to take care of yourself at a certain point. Small comfort today, I'm sure.
Posted by: Eric at January 10, 2006 01:19 AMI may not be the best person to give advice on this subject, but I'm going to spout off anyway. I think you did the right thing, I'm a firm proponant of the "strong kick in the pants" method of dealing with people like that. Sometimes what they need is the wake up call and that will do it.
Posted by: Contagion at January 10, 2006 08:42 AMYou did what you needed to do for you.
You are more important to me than him.
I support you. :)
You have described my ex- to a T. Once, during one of her "fits", I asked her why she refused to take her meds. She asked me, "Why can't you just love me for me?" She thought she was losing some of her true self by taking meds.
Also, I think that by not taking them she became more and more unwilling to help herself and, so, more unwilling to take them. In "our endtimes" (as I call those last couple of years) she stayed cooped up in her apartment reading books about persecution of the Jews. (She's Jewish, btw.)
She was an artist, as well. She would criticize my drawing and painting style because I didn't have any formal art training. (She had a full art scholarship to Carnegie-Mellon University.) "Shadows on white are blue, not gray. Blue!" she'd scold.
Then one day she told me that she envied my drawing style. "Whadda ya mean," I asked, "I can't draw!"
"You're drawing have real emotion in them. Mine are so sterile," she said.
I thought about that and looked at her pencil drawings. She was right. She had her technique down pat. She knew all about proportion and shading and whatnot, but her drawings weren't engaging on an emotional level. You said that your friend is a gifted painter. I wonder what you think is the best quality of his style. Can he evoke an emotion with them? Just curious.
Anywho, sorry to yammer on and on, but I know how draining it is to have to deal with those suicide attempts. (Yep, I cut her down from my ceiling once, and once drove her to the hospital at 4am to get her stomach pumped.)
The last time I heard from her was about five years ago. She called me from the hospital (again) and left me a message that she wanted me to call her. She then left a second message saying that she DIDN'T want me to call. She left a third message that she DID want me to call. I never called her and I haven't heard from her since, or tried to contact her directly.
I don't think that your scolding of your friend will change him. Hopefully it will, but I doubt it. People like him do not want to make themselves better, they want the people they love to make them feel better by accepting them as they are: doomed.
When he calls to tell you that he is feeling suicidal, he wants you to tell him that he is beautiful just the way he is. He refuses to believe that his problem stems from the fact that he IS just the way he is -- off meds and doomed because of it -- and that you hate to see him that way. You can't help him and, sadly, he refuses to help himself. At times like this he is, because of his inate chemical imbalance, nearly powerless to summon the wherewithall to do what he knows he must do.
If he IS like my ex- then he is mad at the world and perhaps -- just perhaps -- a part of his world that he loves, being mad at him, may finally show him that it is he who must change, not the world. If not, then he may very well commit suicide. It does happen, and it is very sad. The best you can do is pound it into his head that he can't come to you for help. The help he needs isn't here. It's, first, transcending the addiction (even if for a day) to self-destructive thinking and, second, going over there to where the help is.
Hopefully he'll take the time and really really think hard about that and finally come out the other side with a clearer head.
Posted by: Tuning Spork at January 10, 2006 08:03 PMWhat you did was hard, but the right thing often is. All we can do is point the way, to offer a hand in the light. They must choose to come into the light, and we must not let the offer of our hand be taken as a means to pull us into the dark. May the light warm you and wrap you in its love, and may your friend one day allow himself to step into the light as well.
Posted by: Laughing Wolf at January 11, 2006 08:57 AMOne of the things I love most about you is how your strength comes out in times of trial.
You're an amazing woman, and I'm proud to know you.
Posted by: Harvey at January 12, 2006 10:47 AMAs you know, this subject is near and dear to my heart, but I'm reminded of a time, many years ago, when one of my soldiers had locked himself in his car in my presence, putting a knife to his wrist, seemingly straining to cut himself.
I recall punching the car window with considerable force and barked that if he wanted to kill himself he'd have to do it at another time and place because if that knife were to cut his skin I explained that I'd easily break the window, patch him up and all he'd have accomplished would be soiling his car with a now broken window. He stopped and came out.
I of course took him to counseling and in just a few months he transformed into a stellar soldier.
You done good Michele and I'd echo what Harvey said, I too am proud to know you.
Posted by: Sgt Hook at January 12, 2006 07:28 PM