Grace

No, I don’t mean physical grace (Lord knows I trip going UP stairs!). What I mean is that you should give yourself grace, that you should extend yourself the grace you probably give everyone else around you. You probably regularly give people the benefit of the doubt or put things in perspective when choosing how to treat other people’s actions. So, my question for you is: why don’t you extend the same courtesy to yourself? Because it’s simply not fair to treat yourself in a manner you wouldn’t treat your best friend – or anyone in your life, for that matter.

So, you ask: why this subject now? Unfortunately, the Beast that is suicidality is reigning supreme at present. Why, I don’t know. I just finished showing my horse, which is my greatest love, and we moved up a division and were champions in our new division. The struggle with the Beast began a few weeks ago, and showing my horse two out of the previous three weekends gave me a reason to hang on.

Mood shifts are part and parcel of my illness, and my mind causes me to blame myself for my illness. Yet no matter how much blame I heap on myself, there’s a tiny part of my addled brain that knows that mood episodes aren’t failures – they’re just part and parcel of my disease. Self-blame and self-criticism are neither deserved nor warranted, and they’re incredibly unfair given that there’s nothing you or I did to give ourselves mental illness. Would you blame someone for getting cancer? Didn’t think so. Point made.

A treater near and dear to my heart gave me something to chew on earlier today: he said that “Feelings aren’t to be trusted in a depressive episode.” Hmm…. So, according to him, all the self-hatred and self-directed anger I am feeling is not to be relied on. He is very kind – and very pragmatic. While his words don’t make me feel happy, exactly, they give me pause, and that pause is what keeps me from the proverbial ledge. His words help insulate me from the Beast.

Empathy and understanding are two very important skills to have in life. They help us relate to each other and give each other a soft landing when things go wrong. They are also incredibly important skills to learn to apply to ourselves. Yes, we are deserving of the empathy and understanding we extend to others – maybe even more so at times. Unless we are sociopaths or narcissists, we are most often harder on ourselves than we are of others, and that shouldn’t be.

Look – I have battled the Beast for decades. It’s always at its worst when I’m mired in a depressive episode, and I have had enough therapy to realize that. Unfortunately, all the therapy in the world hasn’t changed the fact that I still assign blame to myself when the Beast comes calling.

I can tell you on the one hand that the Beast attacks at will, especially when I’m depressed. What I cannot do in the midst of a bout of major depression is to tell you that I want or deserve to live. I don’t hold out a ton of hope that this will change, but then I never thought I would make it past the age of thirty, and here I am, so all bets are off.

For now, I will take comfort in the people I have surrounded myself with who take the reins when things aren’t good; they offer the empathy and understanding that I need and cannot extend to myself. And that, my friends, is what will allow me to see another day. If you fight the Beast, surrounding yourself with people who will be your champions is – literally – what can make the difference between choosing life over suicide, in beating back the Beast to live another day.