29. The End of The Road

A clarity of epic distortion and the destruction it left in its wake

Hello Beautiful human,

It’s been a whirlwind of a few weeks launching Mental Health is Cool and volunteering extensively for Foliage Retrievers. This week, I found myself gravitating to a more mindful approach to my days. Whether it was the result of my exhaustion, or my intention to be more present in my body these days, it was the exact medicine I needed. 

I’ve always known the little things are the big things. Of course, our world doesn’t make it easy to remember this truth, nevertheless live it. The digital platforms that helped build this very community perpetuate the seemingly endless myth that we need to be louder, more unique, and more extreme to be worthy of being seen. But the good of the world — the true beauty of it doesn’t lie in an extravagant trip, the perfect New Year’s Eve outfit, or someone’s follower count. No, the true beauty lies in the moments we live, wherever we are with our people.

For me, this week the beauty was the beaming smile that Waffle gave me when I told her we were about to go on a mommy/daughter drive to pick up her birthday no-hide chew. It was the crunch of the snow under Tuggie’s dynamic snowmersaults down the hill and how Dave hugged me close and let me cling to him like a koala as I wept after a particularly bad bout of night terrors and morning flashbacks. It was also laughing hysterically with my mom, sister, and baby nephew on a dog walk about nothing at all, and Facetiming with my older sister as we reveled in the size of a hotel bathtub. It was my Dad sending a check-in text one early morning as I wrote the difficult chapter I’m about to share with you.  And lastly, it was dork-dancing to Whitney Houston with my dear friend Sarah as we lovingly tied up your Mental Health is Cool orders with a bow made of neon pink string.

Yes, those were the beautiful moments of the week and none of them will make the news, show up on social media, or even come up in common conversation as things to celebrate. But they are the things that filled my cup — my very soul to the brim. 

So this week, before sharing the chapter we’ve all collectively dreaded about my suicide attempt, I invite you to join me in this practice. I invite you to call out the little things — to write them down, to share them with a friend, or to daydream about them while you sip your morning coffee. 

Yes, this week, as the holiday madness kicks up to an even wilder degree, I invite you to slow down and do so because when we practice this — the little things really do become the big things, and the noise of the world quiets for a moment and we remember that

We are still here and that — yes that — is enough.

Wishing you all a weekend.

With love,

Kindly,

Kate

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A FEW REMINDERS 

• This newsletter is about normalizing serious mental illness. This is not comfortable work and the following chapter exemplifies the undeniable discomfort and suffering that serious mental illness brings to life. If you can read about suicide and stay well, please read the chapter and sit with the discomfort for the 5% of us who live these realities. However, if reading about suicide will hurt you, please skip this chapter entirely. I mean it. Choose YOU.

• I will be taking my annual two-week holiday break from December 23, 2023- January 6, 2024. This means next week’s newsletter will be the last of the year. I so appreciate your understanding and support of my need to do a digital detox twice a year. Please know that you deserve one too! Our beautiful minds were not meant to be endlessly attached to these devices :).

• I recorded a beautiful podcast with my father that got lost in the Thanksgiving shuffle. My Dad offers so much in the episode and I would be honored if you took the time to listen.

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And now, one more time, I remind you to choose YOU today. If that means skipping this chapter, please do so. Please.

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29. The End of The Road

I never wanted to die before that Tuesday. Rather, I always found a reason to live.

Throughout my many years fighting serious mental illness, I lived through many seasons of suicidality. Some were short-lived — bouts of psychosis so consuming that death seemed like the only way out of the horror movie I was inhabiting. Others were not so short and those were the scary chapters. They were also the quiet chapters when my life shrank into nothing — when I begged over and over again for fewer hours in the day so I could just be done with life entirely. That kind of suicidality is the kind you hear about — the kind of escape — of reprieve — of being so unbelievably isolated and heartbroken by a world that never loves you back that you “choose” to leave to find the place where the light comes back in, where all of you is finally welcome, exactly as you are. 

But as simple as that storybook kind of suicidality is, the kind of linear choice, the kind that drives society to believe suicide is selfish and the responsibility of the individual instead of society’s collective choices to ostracize us for our pain — that is not the suicidality of most. The suicidality of most is a battlefield — a state of relentless indecision — of weighing the pain of one's own life against the pain of those you hold most dear. That kind of suicidality is D-day of the mind — and it is one where there is no right answer or right side. There is only suffering. There is only violent darkness. There is only the immense toll of pain on you and everyone around you.

Those bouts of suicidality are the bouts that consume and torture. They are the realities of many who live with serious mental illness — a constant fight to decide to stay for others — to choose a world that never changes its systems and standards to help you or support you or even accept you as you are — or to leave and choose yourself, to choose an end to the suffering this world relentlessly hurls upon you.

Of course, amidst both those manifestations of suicidality, I always wanted to live a different life — to rid myself of the one I was living and find one without the pain and terror I experienced relentlessly. The truth behind that desire — although it initially originated in a passion for my own existence and a desire to help others like me —  stopped being about me and my passion for advocacy by that point in my life. By that afternoon, living and fighting to live actually had nothing to do with me.

Instead, living and fighting to live was about the look of harrowed relief on my parent’s faces when I walked in the door hours late to a dinner party. It was about the tears my mom suppressed every time she visited me at my apartment and found me out of bed. It was about the way my dad’s voice cracked as he sang me to sleep with his guitar when he was on suicide watch. And it was about the way my sisters climbed into bed beside me and sandwiched me between them as I wept inconsolably through a rom-com.

Yes, life for me, at that point, was about surviving for them. And up until that day, I knew in my heart of hearts that killing myself was the one thing that would break my family’s heart more than the pain I lived. 

But that afternoon, after Atlas’ unintentional outburst, the very reason for my fighting disappeared. Atlas had proved — in a matter of miscommunicated moments that I was, in fact, THE problem and that how I lived  — who I was — everything I had become — was the source of everyone’s pain. It was a thought distortion of epic proportions and yet, I believed it wholeheartedly. I believed with every single fiber of my being that I was the reason for everyone’s pain — that my existence on earth was the entire problem at hand. 

So, without a doubt in my mind — actually, with a pristine clarity I had never felt before — I cleaned my entire apartment, retrieved my medications, and drove out to my parents’ house. My plan was simple — make it as easy and kind as possible for them. I didn’t want them to have to clean any dishes or pick up my truck or wonder where I was, not even for a second. I wanted them just to know — with the same clarity I felt that afternoon — they were finally free of the pain — of the problem of me.

The sun was beginning to set as I drove up my parents half a mile long driveway. Pinks and purples covered the heavens and as I got out of my truck, I savored it for a moment, breathing in its beauty in a way I hadn’t in many years. It was so beautiful. The deep blues of the Green Mountains and the canvas of the sky painted in all my favorite colors, even neon pink.

I breathed in the beauty of the view for a few minutes. I breathed in its true splendor. I was finally at peace, entirely. There was no apprehension or overwhelm in my being. There was no fear left — and no pain either. There was only ease and it was nothing short of perfection.

After taking the surroundings in fully, I grabbed my tin lunchbox full of medications and the Gatorade Zero I had stashed in my survival tupperware. Surveying the grounds of the house one last time, I took in the porch my dad had built, the gardens my mom had tilled, and the yard I had mowed every summer.

After walking into the house, I meandered through it one last time. I smiled at the sponge-painted walls that my mom and I had done together years earlier. I beamed at the family photos scattered across the countertop and the smudged New Yorker cartoons pinned to the refrigerator. So many happy memories — so many wonderful moments that they would have for always. 

My eyes lingered at the window seat where I had spent so many afternoons and I then paused at the kitchen table, the place I had learned to read and write and had played countless games of Diet Coke rummy with my sisters. I took it all in with love and then, without a second thought, I walked upstairs, wrote a brief love note setting my parents and sisters free — entirely free — and took all my psychiatric medication before falling peacefully into a deep, deep sleep.

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I woke up in the psychiatric ward three days later.  I couldn’t place how I had gotten there. I couldn’t place anything actually. All I knew was that my head pounded with vengeance and my eyes couldn't see right. The world seemed to have a hazy veil draped upon it. Everything was blurry, pixelated, and bending to the beat of my racing heart.

When I finally mustered the energy to leave my room hours later, I stumbled to the nurses’ station.  Swaying in nausea and weakness, I leaned into the counter to steady myself as I asked what had happened to me. How did I get here? Did my parents hospitalize me? Did I lose time again?

The attending, the one who had overseen my care through every single hospitalization — all twenty-one of them — raised his head from reading the chart on his clipboard. Telling the nurses that “he would take this one,” he stepped from behind the desk and ushered me to a seat in the entry, the exact seat we had sat in months earlier when I had shared the news of my new job. 

Head bowed, hand on my hand, deep genuine sorrow in his eyes, he told me that I had stumbled into the emergency department covered in my own vomit and feces three days earlier. He said that no one knew exactly what had happened to me. All that they knew was that I kept repeating that “I didn’t mean to do it” and all that he knew was that he wished I hadn’t either. 

Then, he paused and took one long heartbreaking breath. Tears welling in his eyes, he picked up both my hands and held them in his.

“Oh Kate,  

Oh, Kate, I am so so sorry.”

And just like that, as tears streamed down both our faces — we knew —

It was finally time.

This was the end of the road.

This was the end of my freedom.

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If this piece triggered you and you are currently experiencing suicidal ideation or suicidality, please text HOME to 🇺🇸 741741 • 🇨🇦 686868

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That’s it from me this week. I am so proud that we are still here.

Yes, I am so proud that we are still here.

I love you and wish you a weekend.

Kindly,

Kate