Last Wednesday
Last Wednesday R tried to commit suicide. This wasn't a feeble cry for help, this was a full on attempt -- the sort you don't wake up from. Usually there are warning signs. Things you can look back on and say "Why didn't I notice?" But not this time; not with her.

LWSRN had been going on recently about how well R had been doing. I sensed that she was hiding some portion of her life from me, but I hadn't a clue what it was. I knew that she'd stopped talking about her relationship, however distant, with K. I knew that she'd been hiding her emotional state from me -- A gate had come down somewhere, but that was almost old news.

We'd had problems the night before. We'd gone out with her daughter, V, and I'd been very irritable. Sometimes a 6 year old in public is more than I can deal with. I have no children of my own, but I have rather strong opinions about how they should be handled. R has opinions too, and they are different. I felt myself getting irrationally angry, and I decided to cancel the rest of the evening. I tried to say as little as possible about it, because V was in the car with us, and I really didn't want to lay it all on her -- my anger, my problem.

R didn't take this well. She spent most of the evening on the phone with LWSRN, I think. Eventually I called her, and it just made things worse. She pushed me to talk and every difficulty I have with her came spilling out. We hung up eventually, without solving a thing. We exchanged several long, rational, and thoughtful letters the next day. I haven't a clue what I said or what she said, but I was comfortable with the interchange. It did not feel like the world was ending.

But it must have, to her. If I've heard right, she spent about 6 hours on the phone with K that night. Sometime during that she took a couple hundred pills -- Tylenol, aspirin, some pain killers I gave her for her occasional migraine, and half a bottle of Jack Daniels. She stumbled around her studio apartment knocking things over and waking V, who just watched. At some point she collapsed naked in a pool of her own vomit on the bathroom floor.

I knew none of this. LWSRN was spending the night with me and a call at 11:30 woke us out of a sound sleep. I was groggy, waking up is kind of hard for me. S was on the phone (K's partner), she was telling me that R had taken a lot of pills. I have no idea how S got my number, she must have gone through the phone listings for all the towns near San Francisco to track me down. She and K live on the east coast. Somehow the next step had escaped her. LWSRN called 911, and we both threw on clothes and ran out the door for the 35 minute drive to R's.

We double parked behind the three police cruisers, the fire engine and the ambulance.The paramedics were in the process of carrying her down the stairs from her apartment. Grey green vomit was smeared across her face. She was not conscious. No one was saying things like "she'll be okay..." They all looked grim.

Calling R's living space an apartment is overstating things. It's a closet with a stove and a toilet. Into this space she'd shoved two beds and all the bits of her life and her daughter's. It was cramped. There were still several policemen wandering around. V was still sitting in the middle of her bed, not making a sound. I sat with V while LWSRN tried to gather everything that might be needed from the apartment. We both talked to the police.

The doctors tell us that it was the Jack Daniels that saved her. She'd drunk enough that she vomited up some of the pills. Even so, they wouldn't tell us that she was going to make it for about 12 hours. The Tylenol could have easily destroyed her liver -- it took days for it all to get out of her system.

R tells me "It wasn't supposed to be this way," and I wonder just how was it supposed to be. I ask her about her daughter. V was awake for the whole thing. Her mom stumbling around the room woke her. V was there when she passed out on the floor, and was there when the police tore the door off its hinges. This is going to be hard for her. It would have been harder if R hadn't lived. R doesn't seem concerned, telling me that V had "her own path to follow" -- whatever that means.

It's not over. I'm not convinced that she won't try again. She was pretty honest about her feelings on the matter, though once the psychiatrists got involved, she started singing a different tune. It looks like she's going to be in for "observation" for a couple weeks. What happens after that is anyone's guess.

I don't know what I should do. I feel blackmailed by the whole thing. She left a note, saying it wasn't my fault. I know it wasn't, but this has certainly messed with my head. It's been a week and I'm still numb, but it's starting to turn into anger.