THE RETURN OF THE BLACK DOG

The date was August 12 this year, I had been laying awake most of the night, or morning I should say. It always hits in the small hours of the morning between 1 and 3 a.m. I had been laying there planning out my suicide… my murder. My loving husband of nearly eight years lay beside me oblivious to the commotion going on inside my head - but no stranger to it either.

Nothing too out of the ordinary had happened, I’d started a new job which I was excited about, I was on my last semester at university studying public health at UNSW, and I had eventually signed up to a creative writing class with Swinburne university. But the Black Dog had returned…..and it was hungry.

And so the suicidal mind began to instruct me - as soon as I could I had to get on my computer & book a train trip to Geelong (can’t do it here - there has to be some distance), need to book a hotel room too. Have we got all the household ingredients to conjure up some homemade chloroform? Then we need to line a plastic bag with a cloth soaked in it, & make sure it’s tough plastic; then you’ll have to wrap it around your head. No! That won’t work, what about the hands? You know what it’s like, the primal survival instincts will kick in & you’ll tear it off - we’ll have to work out something to tie up those hands.

And so it goes on, this is an example of what it is like to be suicidal. You don’t just think ‘I want to die’, it is not just a fleeting thought. You truly want to DIE. And so you go about devising your plan, foolproof with no mistakes. And you know somewhere in the deep recesses of your brain that your thoughts are not rational but your suicidal mind tricks you every time into believing that you’re having an epiphany of sorts. I have to laugh when I see books or websites entitled ‘3 minutes to joy without depression’ - all I can do is laugh.

If my husband was not at home that day I truly believe I would now be dead, I have had multiple suicidal episodes prior to this but as I am getting older they are getting more frequent and more violent. I thank God or whatever force was out there that gave me the strength (the suicidal self would see it as weakness) to turn to my husband & tell him what I was thinking, cause now I’m here & I no longer want to die.