TRIGGER WARNING: This post contains content about suicide, suicide ideation/attempts, major depression and familial trauma.

My mental status, in a nutshell? It’s all over the place. Kind of bleak, but at the same time, covered in love.

Ok…that sounded grosser than I meant it…..Anyway, here’s where I’m at.

I had a major setback to my recovery on Saturday, July 27th. I had extreme suicidal ideations, and horrible dark thoughts. How did I get to that point? Who knows, but there’s a couple things that I think contributed to it.

First, I’m in the middle of changing my medications for depression. My medication management specialist, Lori, just increased my Prozac dosage from 30mg to 40mg. It takes 6-8 weeks to take affect. I’ve been changing my meds for over a year.

Second, and I think more importantly, recently my mom and I had a major blow out. The argument was based on the same argument that made us stop talking to each other in 2019. This was a couple years before my sister, Leah, died of a sudden brain bleed in September of 2021.

The argument in 2019 was basically that my mom doesn’t think that it’s ok for middle eastern women to wear head wraps and work at TSA, because “it’s political”. I tried to explain to her that it is religious, but she won’t hear it. She is convinced that Al Queda is the only group forcing Muslim women to wear head wraps. This is demonstrably wrong, but…she refuses to hear anything different. I told her that she was a bigot, it got understandably heated, and we didn’t talk for years.

When my sister died in 2021, I went down to Georgia for her celebration of life. I visited my mom’s house and spoke to her for the first time in years. After we hugged, and sat down at the table, I said that we needed to address the issue that had separated us for the last few years, but this was not the time or place. She agreed, and we had a civil visit for the few days that Nancy and I were down there.

We continued to talk on the phone, but alas, we never brought up the argument that separated us so long ago. That’s on me, because I’m the one in therapy, and I knew better. I should have been the better person and addressed it ASAP. I never did, because, hey! I had my mom back, and that’s what counts, right?

Wrong.

Fast forward to the afternoon of Monday, July 22nd, and the same argument came up. Mom was at Aldi’s and told me that she felt uncomfortable when she saw a middle eastern woman wearing a head wrap. I just sighed, and asked her why. It went sideways from there. It got heated, voices were raised, and by the time hung up on her, I had yelled at her and told her she was a bigot that I could not continue to have a relationship with her.

Was this the healthiest way to address the issue? Absolutely not, but it’s what happened. I’m not proud of it. I regressed to my pre-therapy days and went to pure anger mode. I literally flipped the plastic table I was sitting at on our deck. Nancy was absolutely pissed that I’d lost control and flipped the table. It started to rain, so I went and sat on our covered front porch to have a smoke and calm down.

That’s when the police showed up.

Turns out our neighbors heard my shouting and thought Nancy and I were having a domestic event. I explained to the two officers what had happened, and they left within five minutes, completely satisfied with the explanation. I’m happy that my neighbors called them, to be quite honest.

On Saturday, July 27th, Nancy and I went to see Deadpool & Wolverine at 10am (loved it). Then we went to our favorite local bar/restaurant for lunch. That night, we went to see O.A.R. live in concert at Merriweather Post Pavilion with two of our best friends.

Sounds like an amazing day, right?

On the way to the concert, I went from my baseline mood to severe depression in a matter of 15 minutes. Nothing particular triggered it. Just, at some point on RT32, I wanted to unstrap my seat belt, open the driver’s side door and just step out into traffic at 75mph. Honestly, one of the only reasons I didn’t do it was because Nancy was in the passenger seat, completely oblivious to my feelings.

Suicide literally seemed like a better idea than going to see a band I loved with my wife and friends that I loved. I don’t know how to explain that. I CAN’T explain that.

Nancy knew something was off and asked if I was ok. I replied “I’m just in a funk”. She reached out and squeezed my hand. I bottled my my emotions because I didn’t want to fuck up HER evening.

We met up with our friends, sat in the lawn and had an amazing time at the concert. I felt better for those 3-4 hours, but once I was back in the truck heading home, I went straight back to the dark thoughts. Nancy was driving home and asked me what I was thinking, and I just told her everything. How I wanted to jump from the truck, how bad I felt, everything. It hit her like a truck.

Once home, I emailed my therapist, Jodie, asked her for an appointment ASAP, and also my meds specialist, Lori.

This was not normal, and this was not ok.

I was able to get an appointment with Jodie on Tuesday, July 30th. I told her all about Saturday night. She was very concerned, and one of the first things she asked was, “Do you have any guns in the house?”

“I have a shotgun and rifle that are pretty much sentimental items from my Dad. I don’t have any ammo for them”, I replied.

“Do you have a way to get them out of your house? Give them to a friend for a while? Lock them up in a safe?”, she asked. “When you start going down that dark road, it’s VERY easy to run down to Wal-Mart and buy some shotgun shells”.

Jodie then recommended that I seek out help with Intensive Outpatient (IOP) mental health support. This is where I would go into an office for 3 days a week, about 3-4 a day, and get intensive mental health support.

That scared the ever loving fuck out of me. As soon as I was done with the appointment, I contacted a friend and we set up a meet to give him my guns. I then reached out to our local hospital system that we are part of, and tried to get information about their IOP program.

That afternoon, I sat down and emailed my mom for the first time since our blow up. Here’s the email in it’s entirety:

Dear Mom,

I needed to email you for a few reasons.

First, I am absolutely disappointed and saddened in your view on burqas. You view women wearing them as a political statement (your words, not mine). This is not true. Muslim women are required to wear them according to their religious beliefs. It’s the same exact thing as Jews wearing yarmulkas, or nuns wearing habits.

You said that you had no problem with a Jew in TSA wearing a yarmulka, but had a problem with a Muslim woman wearing a burqa. That’s bigotry 101. There is no other way to explain it.

Having said that, that is only part of why I exploded last Monday. The other part is because this is the same exact argument that led us to not talking before Leah died.

When Leah died, it forced us to reconnect before we were ready to do so. We had never addressed why we had drifted apart. Sitting in your dining room, we said that we would eventually address it, but we never did.

That’s on both of us, but more on me because I’m the one in therapy, and I knew better. I should have addressed this issue 2+ years ago, but never did. It was easier just putting my head in the sand and pretend that that shit never happened.

I had my mom back, and that’s what mattered, right?

Wrong. I can’t go on like this anymore. I won’t suffer bigotry in any shape, fashion or form. If this is what you truly believe, I cannot have anything to do with you. It truly pains me to type this, but I will not have anything to do with anyone that has hate in their heart/mind. I have a friend, Professor REDACTED, who lives just outside Macon, that is a religious scholar/teacher that specializes in Middle Eastern religions, who would absolutely LOVE to help explain stuff to you if you were willing to learn. I’ve told you time and time again what I thought about Larry, his beliefs, and what I’d have said to him. I hold you to the same standards.

The other reason I needed to reach out is that I had a major suicidal ideation event on Saturday. You can see what happened on my FB post, but bottom line, out of no where, as I was driving down RT 32, I wanted to unbuckle my seatbelt and step out into traffic at 75mph.

I’ve reached out to both my medicine management specialist and therapist, and we’re looking at making some changes. First off, Don is coming down on Friday and taking my guns from the house for a spell. Second, I’m looking at outpatient mental health therapy in Annapolis, 9 hours a week.

I’m not telling you all of this to make you feel guilty, or to make you feel bad. On the contrary, I want you in the loop. I just don’t feel comfortable talking to you on the phone right now.

I’m having a pretty rough time. I would love to have you back in my life, but that’s on you. You will probably be angry or hurt reading this, and I’m sorry if that’s how you feel. That was not my intention. I just wanted to let you know what’s going on, and how it can be fixed.

I love you,

Dan

Then Nancy and I went out to dinner, hoping for the best. Sadly, it was probably the worst. She replied at 9:13pm.

I’m not going to post my mom’s response, because it’s private to her and I, but it was not want I needed to read. It was seven paragraphs long, and six of the paragraphs were her defending her position on head wraps. The final paragraph was merely a token mention, in the grand scheme of things, about my mental health, and my suicidal ideations.

I replied emotionally, and without thinking, at 9:41pm.

I’m so fucking glad you focused on my mental health, and the fact that I didn’t commit suicide last Saturday night. 

Really big of you.

Dan

No, I’m not proud of what I sent, but if I’m being 100% transparent here, I have to be honest, and show y’all my dirty laundry too.

It hurt me that she spent so much time focused on HER, and defending HER viewpoint. I’m not a parent, but I’d like to think that if my child came to me, after a major argument, and said “Hey, I was close to killing myself”, I’d have said to myself “Well, let’s put our argument on the back burner, and let’s figure out how to help my kid!”

I had to re-read the email about three times to make sure I was understanding it correctly. Unfortunately, I was. I had Nancy read it, and she just hugged me. We then went to bed.

The next morning it got worse.

Mom had emailed me twice more again, at 10:05pm and then again at 11:42pm. Both emails were focused more on defending her than on my issues. At one point she said that I was required to respect her. What the fuck.

I can only think that she read my initial email and was upset. Naturally. I think she lashed out. I think she had had a couple glasses of wine when she got my email, and was just blindsided. I don’t know how I’d react if I got an email like that, so I can’t even to begin to understand how she would react.

Thankfully, I had a therapy appointment at noon that day, and I laid it all out to Jodie. She said that it is apparent that my mom doesn’t have the emotional capability to deal with issues like this. Jodie brought up multiple examples of what I’ve told her in the past.

For example, when I told mom about a major traumatic issue that my sister did to me as a teenager (that I cannot get into here), my mom refused to talk about it, and simply hung up the phone. Who does that?

When I called her and told her that I had just made an appointment to get a vasectomy, she started crying about not getting grandkids, and hung up on me. We didn’t talk for months after that.

It took my therapist to make me understand that there are people out there in the world that just cannot understand or cope with trauma. They shut down. It seems that my mom is one of those. It sucks that it took my 50 years to realize this.

This is not a dig on my mom. She’s just not built the same way as I am, or the same way Nancy is. Sometimes I feel like I have too much empathy. Certain situations will affect me more than other people. I will cry at the drop of a hat. My mom used to say that I was sensitive as a child. It turns out that I’m just super empathetic to my fellow human being.

I just simply assumed she was the same as me, and she isn’t. Again, this doesn’t make her a bad person. I just need to understand that this is how she is, and she loves me regardless.

They say you cannot pick your family, but you can pick your friends.

I disagree.

I have family that I have picked, and they are friends. These friends are what I consider family. As for my blood family, I’ve pretty much removed a lot of them from my life for my mental health. I don’t need those toxic people in my life. I have decided to pick which blood family members to stay in contact with, and am more than happy to completely cut out the racist, homophobic, hateful pieces of shit from my life. Once I realized that was an option, right after my dad died, my life got so much better.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love a bunch of my blood relatives, but I can honestly count on my hands how many there are compared to the ones I’ve cut out. The ones I’ve kept around? They called me when they read my Facebook posts about suicide. These are the keepers.

I started drafting this post on August 5th, 2024. It’s now August 18th, 2024. A lot has changed since I started this post.

I’ve almost completely quit drinking. It’s not that I had a problem, it’s that alcohol is a depressant and actively works against what my meds are trying to accomplish. I’m tricking my brain and have been drinking non-alcoholic beers and I have to say, there are some pretty good ones out there.

Lori, my meds specialist, got my insurance company to pay for the original medicine that worked for me. That’s great, but that means that I’m about to start another 6-8 weeks of another med change. My brain is about to get…soupy… again.

I sent Mom another email, on her birthday (August 15th), laying out everything that I felt in regards to her replies, and how it made me feel. She finally replied today, and it was a good start to our possible healing.

I’m still waiting on hearing back from Anne Arundel Medical Center (AAMC) in regards to the outpatient therapy. Lori sent the referral letter a couple weeks ago, so I should hear something very soon.

Depression is a liar, and an asshole. It makes you think things that just simply aren’t true. It tells me that I am a burden on Nancy. I am a burden on my friends. I look back at my Facebook posts and think “Jesus fuck, Dan…QUIT BITCHING! No one wants to hear this shit!!!”

Then I get FB messages, text messages, emails, and phone calls from so many people. From close friends to people I haven’t spoken with in almost 20 years. They are reaching out and saying that I am valued. That I’m special to them in some way.

I haven’t cried this much in I don’t know how long. It’s both a happy cry and a sad cry. I am absolutely crushed with the overwhelming love from friends and family. It makes my soul just soar.

Unfortunately, my brain’s chemical imbalance doesn’t like it…it twists the good and turns it into a fucked up belief system.

“They’re only saying this because they have to, Dan…they really don’t mean it.”

“They say this just because it makes THEM feel good to say it…not because they really MEAN it!”

Is this rational? Absolutely not…but this is how my brain is an asshole. I have to actively fight my own fucking brain…at EVERY THOUGHT.

THIS is why one of my best friends looked at me at lunch and said “Dude, your Facebook posts aren’t you.” He was right, they were due to my med changes, and my chemical imbalance that I’ve been living with for over a year.

Hopefully, with going back to Trintellix, this will come to an end in the next 6-8 weeks. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and this time, it’s not a freight train coming my way (thanks, Papa Het \m/).

Why am I writing all of this? Why am I possibly nuking a bridge with my mom? I want to share with the world that having mental health issues isn’t uncommon, and that getting help should be normalized. I don’t do this to get validation from anyone.

If ONE person reaches out to a mental health professional based on this post, I will consider this post a success, regardless of how it affects my life. I would rather put my personal life in jeopardy and deal with that fallout in order to help friends and family.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read all of this. I sincerely appreciate it. I cannot thank my wife, Nancy, enough for all the time and effort and love she’s put out to help me in the last few months. She’s the real MVP, y’all.

To all of my friends and family that have reached out via text, phone, FB messenger, etc: Thank you, even though sometimes I wasn’t in a place to talk, I cannot thank you enough. Some of you talked me off a ledge, and didn’t even know it.

If anyone doesn’t have readily available mental health help, I would recommend https://www.betterhelp.com/ Also, if you need immediate help, please call 988 for the National Suicide hotline.

You are loved, you are cared for, and you are wanted here on this place we call earth. I learned this recently…People love you.

I love you all, and I’ll keep you all updated as I can,

Dan