How I know I’m not dead (or hallucinating all this in a coma)

There’s a timelessness to the hospital. It’s either day or night, the actual time irrelevant. Someone takes care of your every need: food, meds, fresh sad girl pajamas. Now that my mom left, it’s just me, in this room, with this stranger babysitting me, and oddly the cable TV plays everything I like.

So I’m starting to think I’m dead.

Possibly in a coma, in some ICU.

Because this is all too good to be true.

Feel like you missed something? Let me catch you up.

It’s been one week since I tried to kill myself by Elizabeth Barone November 22, 2024 I turned me off and then back on again, and it actually worked by Elizabeth Barone November 24, 2024

I’m glad you’re all caught up. Back to Saturday afternoon…

I can’t really have survived. I can’t really be in room 9010, my biggest problem that someone has to watch me poop.

PCAs are so undervalued.

My first one-to-one sitters are shadows in my memory. I’m sure I had one with me since that morning. I don’t remember them, which sucks because I tried really hard to learn everyone’s names (a skill I struggle with). Their whole job is to watch me and make sure I don’t try to kill myself again. Totally understandable, considering what I did.

It’s weird—no one will say it. My mom asked if it was okay that she’d told one of my aunts.

“It’s not a secret. It happened,” I said. “I want to talk about it. I need to talk about it. Not talking about it is partly what got me here.” I motioned to the hospital room. “Besides, you need to talk about it, too. You need support.”

Since I have a sitter, that means I’m on a psych hold. No one explicitly says this, and I don’t ever think it, but I realize it nonetheless. Someone watching me poop, having to earn back everyone’s trust—that kinda sounds like hell.

Now I’m thinking I might’ve died.

Because hell? Is psychiatric services in a Catholic hospital.

Back in 2015, the second time I’ve been on a psych hold, the doctor on that unit diagnosed me with bipolar disorder, “Because you’re an artist and a lot of artists are bipolar.” I wanted to ask her if that was in the DSM. Instead, I fawned, nodding along and agreeing to take the lamictal because I’d already realized that in order to get out of there, I needed to do exactly as they said.

I needed to get out of there immediately; I wasn’t supposed to be there.

My psych meds provider, an APRN who looked up everything in a book, had taken me off Abilify and Wellbutrin without weaning me, even though I was already having an adverse reaction, even though he knew my history with these meds. In the days since I came off, I became even more of a zombie, physically unable to move from the couch, completely unmotivated.

That? Is not me!

I might be collecting chronic illnesses like they’re Pokemon, but I’m still always creating something. Cooking, writing, inside jokes and bits to use with Mike, our family, and friends—always something. My rockstar romance series was taking off and I was working on the next book. I was also struggling.

I’d lost my job that I loved because even after cutting my shifts down to four hours a day, two or three days a week, I limped out of work. When a supervisor tried cross-training me as a cashier, I explained that I preferred to remain a merchandiser—what I’d been hired for—because it worked around my condition, gave me access to plenty of water and bathroom breaks, and allowed me to focus on just one thing, while still earning some money. They refused to listen, and the manager suggested we end my temporary holiday position early. They loved me, she said, and I could come back once I got my mystery autoimmune disorder under control.

Without that income, I’d thrown myself into writing and publishing. Mike worked full-time but they only paid him just enough to cover our rent. My book royalties took care of our electricity, internet, and groceries. I ate microwaved “baked” potatoes for breakfast and homefries for lunch while he worked, often with no meals, and we shared chicken, rice, and green beans for dinner.

My UCTD wasn’t diagnosed yet, otherwise I would’ve applied for disability immediately after losing my job that Christmas 2014. Looking back, it makes sense that I was burning out. The medications gave me a final push into hell.

We were supposed to be the crazy ones, but my experience in that Catholic psych unit was crazy. I saw an old friend get forcibly tranquilized. He’d only been walking the unit in circles, softly talking to himself. He’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia, yes, but he wasn’t violent or disturbing anyone.

So I agreed to take the lamictal, and hoped I wouldn’t be there long enough for it to work its way into my system.

Psychiatric medications help many people. That’s why I wanted to get genetic testing, to ensure I’d get the right medication, rather than continue trying meds at random (and winding up on psych holds). When the wrong meds mix with your unique chemistry, the results can be fatal.

I do everything my sitter says, leaving the door open while I pee for the first time since Friday night. It burns like hell, and I make a face. If this is heaven or a hallucination, I wouldn’t be in pain. And if this were hell, I’d have pleurisy, or something even more painful. Probably pleurisy with sciatica from an endometriosis flare. I knew those two pains intimately, and yeah, together that’d be hell. Throw in some urinary pain, too.

Once my flow is going, though, the burning disappears—as it should; this is my typical daily interstitial cystitis pain. Instead of feeling exasperated or defeated, I’m elated.

Pain lets you know you’re alive.

I must be very alive, because a couple hours later, my fingertips, the pads of my toes, and soles of my feet both burn and are tender to even the lightest pressure—classic fibromyalgia. Instead of wanting to die, I’m fucking grateful that this familiar pain is back online. It means I must be okay.

The EMT wasn’t bullshitting me, not at all.

The half-life of amitriptyline is 10 to 28 hours, so I know this is only going to get worse. I don’t care. I know damn well later I’ll be wishing I had weed and Tylenol, and still I’m just so relieved.

HGTV plays a constant loop of reruns, which makes sense since it’s a Saturday afternoon. HGTV is my guilty pleasure, the ultimate napping TV. The cadence is stable, perfect for gentle snoozing. I learned that a long time ago, and it cemented in 2020 when I started Benlysta infusions. It’s Benadryl for white women.

I doze between fresh waves of pain and coats of paint, resting while I wait.

Just as much as I needed and appreciated my mom with me all that morning, I need to see Mike. I need to look him in his eyes and apologize to him, too, for putting him through that. I need to tell him how much I love him. I can never go too long without him in my immediate vicinity because as much as I recharge and thrive on me time, there’s something that is just right and balanced when we are near.

I hate that I hurt him, that I scared him, that I deceived him when he tried to get me help that night. Even trapped in his own hell, he saw something wasn’t right and he fought for me.

Life has already been so cruel to him. If I’m given the chance, I just want to smother this man in love and goodness for the rest of our lives. We both deserve it.

Every time I hear a man’s voice with a certain depth to it, I perk up, hoping it’s Mike about to walk through the door to 9010. Except time after time, it’s not him. When we worked at the store where we met, I’d hear his voice or his laugh clear across the store, and it always sent my pulse racing in the most delicious way. I know eventually it will be him, and I fight to stay awake so I don’t miss him. The stress I put my body through and the HGTV lull me back into sleep, my survivalism in full control regardless of what my heart wants.

I’m a light sleeper, though—always have been—so even from the depths of REM, I’m listening for him.

Author’s Note

Yeah, definitely writing that memoir.

Things have to change. People with disabilities cannot drown in silence anymore. Look what happened to Robin Williams, the way the media twisted his story. We need to talk about this stuff, to own our stories, to change the way we’re doing things.

Today I’ve been discharged for almost two weeks. The change taking place within me, in my life, rippling outward is profound. By telling my story, the pressure and pain that have been in my chest for the longest time are gone. I’ve reclaimed my voice. Even though I’m physically exhausted, I feel a vitality I haven’t possessed in decades. And I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Starting with telling my story.

So it’s official: I’m writing a memoir. It’s got a title and everything now: Can’t Be Killed.

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