tw:suicide, mental illness, etc. Big personal post, but for those concerned the tw is not about me, just feelings about someone else’s stuff with that.

So. There’s a thing that I very hard to say, but I’ve been
told to talk about.

I don’t want to
talk about it. It’s this whole big thing, it’s complicated, it’s too simple, and
it’s just too much. I like keeping it to myself. Or maybe I don’t but—what else
is there?

I don’t know how
to talk about it.

What do I say? “How are you, Sam?” “Well, aside from the fact
that my wife has been outside in my car for four hours because they’re not safe
if I leave them at home, I’m fine.” “What did you do this weekend?” “I spent
eight hours in a mental hospital waiting to see if they were gonna take my wife
as inpatient. But they decided that an intensive outpatient program would be
more helpful, so then we got Chipotle!”

My in-laws keep offering to talk to me, but I know I’d just
get frustrated with them. We come at it from different angles, see—they had a
baby way back and they expected that baby to be healthy, and a frightening few
years later the baby started telling them it wanted to die. I met someone in a
bar and on the way back to their place, they mentioned being bipolar. I thought
it was fine because it didn’t matter, I was trying the whole one-night stand
thing, but then I gave them my number and then my heart and then my hand in
marriage, so it mattered a lot. But I knew what I was getting into. The nights
they still lived on campus and I rushed onto late night trains to get to them
and keep them that little bit safer weren’t unexpected. The days when they can’t
eat or only sleep or need to forgo all plans and get out of the apartment aren’t
either. Even going to the hospital this weekend was something I knew I’d
probably have to do sometime, I was just grateful they self-admitted. I’ve
known since very early on what loving them means.

I don’t think I can talk to my in-laws, because I don’t
think they’ll understand that. They’ve been concerned about me since Saturday,
when we went in. My mother-in law texted me that she knows it’s scary, and it
was, but it also wasn’t. Not knowing what might happen is scary, but god, being
there meant for a little while, I knew what wasn’t
happening. And to me, when there is a thing to do, I do it. It’s a simple,
maybe stupid philosophy, but it gets me through. It wards off despair. I have
to do the thing before I give in, and doing the thing usually gets me past
whatever it is. Waiting with my wife to see doctors, waiting while they saw
doctors, that was something to do about the whole thing.

I guess that’s part of why I don’t talk about it. Once they’re
past the moments of danger, once I’ve done whatever thing I can to keep them
safe or distracted or whatever it is I can figure out to do, I don’t need to
talk about it. Like, right now, they’re fine.
We joke that the hospital food made them realize they really didn’t want
to be there. Their mood is good, they’re planning on being here a while again—why
would I talk about the bad stuff now?

But I know I should, because it’ll all happen again. Not the
hospital, necessarily, though that’s likely too. The fear, though, that’ll come
back. The fear is the worst part. I don’t know how long I have with them. They
haven’t had any attempts since meeting me, but their last was only a few months
before that. Some days, I’m cocky enough to think I’ll make the difference. Not
that I’ll fix them, cure them, however you want to say it, but that I can be
there enough and be attentive enough and just give them at least one reason to
put it off one more day, every day. Other days, I know it’s not possible, not
every time. And I don’t know how to deal with that. It’s a big and craggy fear,
I’ve thought the whole thing through so many times it makes me sick. I feel
like I shouldn’t think about it, I want to be the person who refuses, who won’t
let the thoughts go that far because she refuses to let it happen, but god, I
can’t stop the whole thing from playing out sometimes. And you know, it’s
funny, because you know what I know I’d do?

Not talk about it.

That’s another part of why I don’t walk about this—if something
did happen, I could just. Omit the whole thing. Never mention it to anyone. Without
this context, if someone said “Sam, weren’t you married?” I could say I didn’t
want to talk about it, and they’d assume a messy divorce or an unrelated
accident, something else, anything else. It wouldn’t be that I loved someone so
much and it wasn’t enough to keep them here. That could be my secret.