The plan was to jump off the Golden Gate bridge.
It was the Ides of August. The first week of the month where I traditionally feel especially suicidal (it would take too long to fully explain the history of that). A lot of things kind of came together at once. I quit my job suddenly.
Why did I quit my job? Well, I was recently officially diagnosed with social phobia. People terrify me. They wanted me to be on the phones. I panicked so much about this that I just stopped showing up. At the same time, my car crapped out on me and I had no money to get it fixed. I was falling behind in rent. I really didn’t see a way out of that whole mess.
And then, there was the book. A few weeks prior I had a bit of a meltdown on Twitter about how I would never be able to finish it. August marked exactly three years that I had been working on this project. And there was still no end in sight. It was killing me. The book was the most important thing in my life and it honestly felt like I would never be able to actually do it.
I was diagnosed with three things recently:
1) ADHD. The mere thought of sitting down and working on something fills my heart with unfathomable DREAD and TERROR. It makes being productive in any way, shape or form a mite bit difficult. It always feels like there’s something else I should be doing even if I know there’s not. It always feels like I’m missing something. It always feels like it’s too late for whatever I’m doing. Like something’s passed me by and I’m wasting time.
2) Major depression. There’s a never ending loop in my head at all times no matter what the situation. It goes a little something like this: “I’m an idiot. I’m a moron. I should kill myself. I’m so dumb. I’m so useless. What is wrong with me? I can’t wait to die. It’s going to be great to die. I’m so stupid. I should kill myself. I’m such an idiot.” And so on. Ad infinitum. If you’re ever with me and you’re wondering what I’m thinking, that’s what I’m thinking. Always.
3) Social phobia. People terrify me. In any social situation, whether it be with friends or family or strangers, I feel incredible, crippling pressure. I never, ever feel comfortable. It’s like there’s always something I need to do or say and I never know what it is. It’s gotten to the point where even scrolling through my Facebook feed is a little overwhelming and so I avoid that, too. It’s really no wonder I’ve had no success promoting myself. Even in the slightest. I always feel like I’ve done or said the wrong thing. It’s why I’ve turned into a complete and total recluse over the past few years.
Talking to therapists recently, I’ve summed it all up thusly: When I think about the past, it’s regret. When I think about the present, it’s stress. When I think about the future, it’s dread. And nothing else. No matter what.
I’m never going to not want to kill myself. That’s just the nature of my illness. I could win the lottery tomorrow and have all my wildest dreams come true and I would still be sitting around thinking “I’m an idiot. I should kill myself. I’m so dumb. I’m so stupid. I can’t wait to die…” Etc. I would make it my business to be miserable. I wish I wasn’t like this, but there it is.
So. On August 8th, I dropped everything in my life and got a Greyhound bus ticket to San Francisco. I was so SCARED. I thought the two days of sitting on a bus with my phone in Airplane mode would help me clear my thoughts and come to terms with what I was about to do. But what I learned from this is that you never really are at peace with the thought that you’re about to die. That you’re about to not exist anymore. It’s a concept that’s impossible to really wrap your head around and so as a result, I spent the majority of the trip quietly freaking out and scared out of my mind.
Especially emotional moments included driving through the El Paso area in the middle of the night listening to Bowery Electric and Catherine Wheel…driving through the blazing, barren Arizona desert listening to Sonic Youth and PJ Harvey…and the final approach to the Bay Area in a very foggy dawn listening to the Dagons.
The long walk from the bus terminal downtown, through the financial district, through posh neighborhoods lined with beautiful homes, and through the hiking trails of the Presidio was a heartbreaking ordeal. San Francisco is breathtakingly gorgeous city. And especially through the parts I was walking through, the people are all well-to-do and healthy and good looking and…just the exact opposite of me.
It was a lovely, bright and sunny Saturday morning at the Golden Gate Bridge. Tourists were snapping smiley pictures, people were surfing in the bay, and there I was trying to get myself to a mental place where I would be ready and able to finally kill myself. I’ll never forget just how happy everyone around me seemed. I was listening to Ginsberg read “Howl” on my iPod. By the time it was over, I was on the bridge.
I kept looking down and trying to talk myself into it. I had come all this way. I didn’t have any money. I couldn’t picture a plausible future for myself. I was all alone. It was time. But it’s a scary, scary thing to look down to the water below. I needed a little more time. So I kept walking all the way across to the Marin side of the bridge.
That’s when I got a call from my old pal CPR Tony. I had called him earlier when I first got off the bus in San Francisco and it truly started to dawn on me what I had done and what I was about to attempt. I was freaking out and I left him a message telling him I was in trouble. I didn’t know what I expected him to do about it, but I couldn’t think of anything else.
I don’t remember a lot about our conversation, but essentially he convinced me to get help. It occurred to me then for the first time that I had never even considered that to be an option before. I had always just resigned myself to the idea that “This is just the way I am.” He gave me the number for a suicide hotline in San Francisco. I called it up. They sent an officer to find me. I was detained. They committed me to Marin General Hospital in the psychiatric unit.
I talked to all sorts of therapists and doctors. They prescribed me with all sorts of pills. Ativan. Lexapro. Adderall. They took me off Lexapro. They put me on Prozac. I spent a lot of time in bed just sort of thinking and clearing my head and trying to calm down. I met some real characters in what I like to call the ol’ rubber motel over the five days I was there.
Kayla. I’m not sure exactly what she had; if I had to guess it would be schizophrenia and/or Asperger’s. Something on the autism spectrum. One day she walked up to me and said “I choose you.” I didn’t know what that meant and follow-up questions were an exercise in futility. A little while later she said, “I un-choose you. You’re the one who we all trust and then kills us all in the middle of the night. I’ve met you’re kind before. So stay the FUCK OUT OF MY LIFE!” Then she stormed away leaving me amused and speechless. Then at the end of the day, she came up to me and said, “I choose you again. You have really pretty eyes.” D’aww. But weird. And she did shit like that the whole time I was there.
One of my roommates was a guy coincidentally enough named Tony who taught me a really fun card game called slapjack which I spent most of my time there playing with him while he went on about government conspiracies and a lot of classic tinfoil hat kind of stuff. My other roommate was Josh who one day exploded on me in a fit of rage, called me a “neuromancer” because he was certain I was involved in a relationship with his imaginary girlfriend. A few days later we worked it out when I explained to him that that was quite impossible.
There were a lot of really depressing group therapy sessions where I got to hear people’s tearful re-tellings of past traumas. People a lot worse off than I was. It really helped put things in perspective.
My Uncle James happens to live in San Francisco and he was the one who sprung me from the looney bin. Now I’m in limbo from an undisclosed location in the Midwest. “Do you mean Lafayette, Indiana?” …Yes.
A huge part of this book I’ve been working on is about the importance of family. It’s something I’ve been struggling with because it never really felt important to me. I never really understood it. But this experience is really making me see that I have a family and that they care about me and that I need them. So maybe this was something I needed to go through in order to really get that.
I have a problem with running away. Whenever there are problems in my life, I just run from them. It’s pathetic and I really hope I stop doing that in the future. What I didn’t realize though, before now, is that my mental illness was a problem that I was also running from. Getting help was an enormous first step in finally confronting the issues in my life.
It’s hard for me to see a future for myself sometimes. Often times, actually. It was especially hard at the beginning of August. But I know I have things to live for, things to accomplish, things I want to see and do. I know I have a support system of friends and family even if I don’t want to admit it because I don’t know how to express positive feelings.
These are all things I’m working on. And I’ll get past this and grow from it. One day at a time.
Jeremy Hurd 