CHAPTER FOUR
Moments of Confusion
The darkness didn't take me for long, and as I started to feel consciousness, my body seemed to automatically rise from the cold floor. I took hold of my phone with a trembling hand and dialled a number. A man answered the phone, and I asked for Christopher (the counsellor I would see on the 2nd of April).
Christopher came to the phone and said hello. His voice was like an anchor that suddenly brought me to tears again.
"It's Mattie." I sobbed, the tears suddenly coming back again, almost as if the time passed on the floor hadn't happened, and I was right back at square one. But the moment's pause allowed me to reach out with more logic, reaching out to someone in real-life who, I hoped, could guide me, direct me. Help that I had to urgently get before the suicidal side took over again and tried to end it all.
"It's been a bad day?" He questioned, his voice trying to calm my aching heart and emotions.
I gave him a sad laugh and replied softly, "You could say that."
He asked me to explain, to tell him what had happened. I explained my problems and my fears. I told him I was quitting. "I don't want to fight any more, I don't want the pain," I cried.
He asked men, "How. How are you going to end it."
I wasn't going to tell him as if telling him would allow him to tell me I was wrong or find flaws in it. But my want to live was starting to see the fountains it needed to stand up for itself and try to live. My words came out almost without control; they told him what my plan was, they told him I was scared. They told him I was honest. My own words betrayed me in my hope to end this suffering.
A cold, chilled attitude came over me as I explained to him. My crying slowed, and my breathing became distant. It was like being a passenger, listening to someone as they described the perfect crime. There was silence on the other end of the phone while I methodically stepped Christopher through the method of my madness. All the way through this, the realisation that I had the upper hand and could still do it before they could send help made me feel stronger and more in control.
However, no sooner had I asserted that control, Christopher started asking question's that instantly brought me to tears again. My emotions were rushing around my soul like a yo-yo. I couldn't help it. I felt like I was causing everyone else problems, and I should just disappear. I knew how to disappear, but why couldn't I just go do it!
I was lost and confused. I couldn't live any more. I had killed my link with my friends in the USA/Canada. I had said, "Goodbye." I was about to do something that was my last act. My exit from this terrible stage called life. Yet, here I was, my hands to the phone, my ear to the receiver, talking to Christopher. Why? I could have done it, I didn't need to call him and cry, and I didn't need to tell him I was scared. I WANTED TO DIE!
HANG UP! I screamed in my head. I begged myself hundreds of times to just hang the phone up, but I couldn't. I couldn't move. I just stood there and cried. Christopher finally told me he would call the crisis centre and get someone out to me right away.
He asked me a question; I remember the surprises he would ask. "Do you want me to do that?" He asked, referring to calling the crisis centre. I also remember that I couldn't answer him. I could no longer think.
I was lost, beaten, ended. All that should have been left was just disappearing, but something wouldn't let me. Something held me on; it kept me talking to a man I only knew was a Transgender Council worker.
He finally decided for me and said he was calling the crisis team. He told me that he would ring back after reaching the crisis centre, and I just agreed. I couldn't think. I didn't even really know what he was saying any more. It felt like my mind was shutting down again and was being replaced by this almighty headache.
He broke the connection and, in so doing, my lifeline. I collapsed to the floor and sat (lay?) there crying, with the phone receiver in my hand.
I don't know what happened after that; it was like my mind shut off. I can't remember if I went back into my comfortable black oblivion or if I had just been there on the floor for god knows how long crying.
My next memory was of a woman holding my shoulder, leaning down to wipe away one of my tears. I looked up at her, and she smiled, telling me that I would all right, that it was okay for me to cry. She introduced herself as PJ from the crisis team, and she was here to help.
A man walked up behind her and smiled down at me also. I looked up at him, my mind was still fuzzy from the tears and the pounding I had given my head against the floor. He reached down and took my hands, pulling me up to my feet.
Both of them helped me out of the study and up to the house. They sat me down on one of the sofas, treating me like a china doll. As if any kind of rough treatment would break me in two. Or was that just the way I felt?
They asked me to explain what had happened. "How do you feel?" PJ had asked.
I couldn't answer.
I couldn't feel anything as my mind and body were numb.
When they asked again, I just couldn't think.
I seemed to just float in and out like my mind was finally giving me the chance to just let go in warm, insulating darkness. I wanted back into that void that I had just been bought out of, one where nothing seemed to matter, where I was just gone.
They asked me if I wanted to go with them to the hospital or stay at the house. They wanted me to think about if I wanted to stay at the house? I couldn't answer them. I felt lost, and somehow I was already destroyed inside, and didn't they realise they were talking to a corpse? And, what does a corpse care about where it is... it is dead.
They finally made all the choices for me. They told me that I wasn't safe to be by myself and wanted a doctor to look over me, and still, I couldn't say a thing.
It was like everything was happening to me from outside my body. I would just scream away inside my mind that I desired to leave this place. This place was hurting me. I wanted to escape this life.
They escorted me to a white vehicle. Strange, but a funny joke rushed into my mind at that moment. There I was, about to be taken away, feeling like the walking dead, and I laughed inside about the irony that the vehicle wasn't a white van or even an ambulance, but a white Ford Telstar - so New Zealand.
I entered the opened back passenger door like a zombie and sat on the firm seat within. A hand grabbed the seat-beat and placed it around my chest. There was a click, and I was locked into place. I didn't really care; I wasn't active any more. Everything the two people in the front of the car said seemed distorted. Nothing was getting into my cotton wool mind any more. I screamed inside myself for release.
My wish was granted somewhere along the way to the hospital, as I must have passed out again because I know that the trip from my house into town was almost forty-five minutes. And, yet almost no time had passed before I awake again, finding myself on a bed.
I looked up from where I lay and found people looking over me and talking. At least, their mouths were moving, but somewhere between their mouths and my ears, the words were being lost.
Finally, the words started to fall into place, and I heard them talking to me instead of talking at me. I was so scared. They were explaining that I wasn't fit to be on my own, that I was in a significant state of depression, and it was causing major psychical and mental effects to me. They explained that they would be admitting me into ward 21, the psychiatric ward.
Needless to say, the part of me that was thinking was now bloody scared. I was still crying and unsure of what to do. Thinking back to it now, I had spent multiple hours crying; where the hell had all that water come from!
Nothing seemed to want to work. Talking was impossible. My mouth refused to say no, and I couldn't shake my head in negation. I just lay there as they placed a needle into my arm, and I quickly felt the power of their drugs take effect.
As my eyelids grew heavy, I wondered what would happen. I wondered if, this time, I would never wake up again; the loudest part of my mind really wished, with all its might, I wouldn't.
