Warning for very frank discussion of suicide and suicidal thoughts and tendencies.
When I walked into my doctor's office last week for a baseline, it was the first time I had been able to see one outside of an urgent care center for the last decade, because I did not have and could not afford proper insurance. Before enrolling in a Marketplace plan earlier this year, the last time I had insurance that even covered doctor's visits was when I was still on my parents' policy. Which meant that I could not see a doctor without one of them in the room, and that one was usually my mother.
This was unfortunate, as my mother has always believed, and still largely does, that certain fields of medicine are strictly quack. Lies and bollocks, meant to fleece patients out of their money by treating medical conditions that don't really exist. She believes this about one certain field in particular: mental health. To my mother and millions of people who think like her, deficient mental health is nothing more than a moral failing, and the only help a mental patient needs is a swift kick somewhere sensitive.
The first time I ever considered suicide, I was seven years old. The first time I attempted it, I was eight. I figured out the hard way that a telephone cord makes an awful ligature.
I do not remember much from when I was that young, except for how I felt like an instigator of terrible things, even if I had no idea how or why I caused them. I felt guilty and responsible for everything around me.
I also remember being too ashamed to say anything about these feelings to a doctor with my mother in the room. Because I did not need reminding that I was a moral failure.
But when I walked into my new general physician's office last week, my mother was not with me. I could talk about anything I wanted. I originally was not going to mention the constant guilt and worthlessness and hopelessness, and how every time I talked about "the future" I got this sick feeling inside because I did not think I had one. I was originally not going to talk about how I was shopping around at funeral homes to get the best deal on prepaid disposal services so that my family would not have to worry about cleaning up a body when I killed myself later this year. I was originally not going to say that my birthday a month ago was the last one I was ever planning to see. I was originally going to keep that moral failing to myself.
But fortunately for me, I was wearing a t-shirt. A shirt which exposed my arms, and the scars on them. Places I had scratched skin off my wrists. Places I had taken razor blades to them, when merely biting the inside of my mouth until it hurt to eat no longer did the trick. Most of those scars were old, but not all. In particular, three prominent gashes from a razor blade that I had given myself just last month. That I blamed on my cat when anybody asked.
The doctor noticed these. Started asking questions. Goodness, that looks painful, how did you get that? But with that look, that tone, that made it obvious he already knew the answer. But in order to do anything, he needed to hear that answer from me.
I was originally going to shut up and keep it to myself. I didn't.
While I did not tell him everything, I told him enough. For the first time, I did not blame the cat. I owned up to the scars. I told him I shouldn't exist. When he asked why I believed that, I didn't have an answer. When he asked how long I had felt that way, I told him I couldn't remember ever feeling different.
There was more to that conversation than could ever fit into a blog post without becoming a novel, of course. But the important part was that for the first time in my life, it was made apparent that my mother was wrong. I wasn't a moral failure. I was simply a sick person with messed up brain chemistry, and there were ways to treat that.
I was told, for the first time ever, that I did not have to suffer anymore.
I walked out of that office with a prescription that cost me no more than a $5 copay at the pharmacy.
But I also walked out with something else. Something free and at the same time priceless. I walked out of that office with hope. With the knowledge that it did not have to end with me at the bottom of a gator-infested canal around the corner from where I worked. Or with me hanging from the old mango tree in my backyard. With the knowledge that it did not have to end, period.
I would not have had this opportunity without the Affordable Care Act. Without my own doctor and my own insurance, without the ability to receive treatment without my mother in the room, without the ability to talk about this and not be judged a failure, I would still be planning to die instead of apartment-hunting.
While we still have a long way to go on mental health in this country -- nobody should have to suffer in silence when help is literally sitting three feet away, because they're too ashamed of what they're feeling to speak up -- but making it part of standardized healthcare rather than a Cadillac feature you have to pay for with a blood sacrifice and your firstborn is a huge step in the proper direction.
Thanks, Obama.
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