The Moments That Change You

Here is the third post I want to share this week in support of Suicide Prevention Awareness Week:

Heidi Bryan: The Moments That Change You

The following post was submitted to the 100 Voices for Suicide Prevention campaign by Heidi Bryan. Heidi, who battled depression and is a suicide attempt survivor, founded the Feeling Blue Suicide Prevention Council after losing her brother to suicide. Among other accomplishments, she has served on the Board of Directors for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and was Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Suicide Prevention Action Network (SPAN) USA. This is her personal story about struggling with depression. 

I believe most of us have had flashes of insight or epiphanies and know their impact on our lives. I’ve had two, and they have truly changed me.

The first was after my older brother’s suicide. I was talking with a friend when it hit me. Just as alcoholism “talks” to you, tells you one drink won’t hurt or you’re not really an alcoholic, so do other diseases like bipolar disorder, depression, or being suicidal. Only these diseases tell you that you’ll be doing everybody a favor, they’ll get over it, or it will be such a relief for other people not to have you weighing them down.

I bet this is what my brother was thinking when he killed himself, and you know what? He was wrong. We won’t get over it, and he wasn’t doing us a favor. How do I know this? These were my thoughts, too. Six weeks before his death I was planning my own suicide. I had a plan and a back-up plan and a back-up plan to the back-up plan. I was waiting for the opportunity to present itself. But his death changed all of that.

So it hit me: “If he was wrong, and it’s not true for him, that it was his disease talking to him, then it’s not true for me.” I didn’t feel it, or think it, or believe it, but I now had the evidence in front of me and I knew it to be true; suicide was no longer an option.

Flash forward five years. I’m in therapy, I’m on medication, and I’m doing much, much better. In fact, I like life and living. So it was a typical evening and I was watching the TV show “Boomtown,” a short-lived but very good show set in Los Angeles that examined crime from every viewpoint — police, witnesses and even the criminals. Donnie Wahlberg plays a police officer whose wife had attempted suicide recently. In the episode that night, he came home but he didn’t see his wife right away. He raced through the house and opened the bathroom door — where he had found her when she had attempted suicide— and she was taking a bubble bath. She turned to look at him and immediately saw the panicked look on his face. She turned her face to the wall.

I couldn’t get the scene out of my mind. I went to therapy that week and my therapist had also seen the show. He thought she turned away in anger, but I told him that no, it was shame.

On the way home it hit me. I remembered a time when I talked to my therapist on the phone when I was agitated, upset and suicidal, and I hung up on him. I called him back, but still. Then I thought of my husband. Did he ever come home and not find me right away and get scared? Emotions flooded me and I thought, “How could you have put them through this? How scared they must have been. How horrible it must have been!”

I went to work the next day and asked my husband to meet me for lunch. Crying, I told him about the show, my realization, and how sorry I was to put him through that. He said that it was OK; it was just that one time. During my next therapy session, I told my therapist everything and apologized to him. He said he believed I would always carry that realization with me, and he was right. I’ll never forget those feelings and never want to put anybody through that again.

If you or someone you know is struggling please reach out. Help is available!