Full Tilt

My Dear, Anberlin Grace, Can You Hear Me?

"My treehouse is on fire, and for some reason I smell gas on my hands"

I tried to drown myself a few weeks ago.

I almost succeeded.

I hit 185 ounces before vomiting it all up, and I ended up vomiting for the rest of the night until around 4 am... I called in sick two hours later.  

I don't know why I did it, I just felt like doing it out of curiosity.  I completely ignored the people who reached out to me trying to get me to stop or talk me through it all.  When I threw up the first time, I felt like doing it again, finishing the job so to speak, but I thought about my "wife" Emily, the man I love David, and my best friends Ryland, Jordan, and Erist... I knew I couldn't leave them... ever.  I was being selfish and I felt horrible for scaring everyone the way I did.

I called in sick at 6 am, I couldn't face a work day with that weighing over my head.  I took the next two days off and ended up spending that time thinking through my life... I thought about everything, including the events that led me to that point.  Later in the week after the attempted suicide I discovered something more about myself... something that made a lot of the past month or so make sense...

I had a miscarriage in the bathroom at work.

I didn't know what to do, so I kept trying to do my work and helped customers the best I could.  But I was frazzled, tense, and stuttering a lot.. I couldn't breathe.. it felt like something had sat on my chest and put me in a choke hold.  I ran to the walk-in fridge in the back and just started screaming in the floor.  I couldn't keep it in any longer and eventually Danielle and Josh found me crying in there... I had refused to tell them what happened for some time... they had written it off as me on my period... but it was so much more.  Danielle came to check on me in the office a little while later and she started asking me what was going on... I kept saying I didn't want to talk about it but pretty soon I was laughing.  I was fucking laughing.  I started crying again and told her what had happened... she told my GM Margo and they sent me home.

In my time of grieving... well... I had cried for 4 days... nonstop.  I named the baby.. I know that's not a good idea, but I think it helped me move on.  I named it Anberlin Grace... I think that in retrospect that's really what helped me.  It's been several weeks now since I lost it, and in that time I've had a lot of up and downs, but the common theme is that the baby was a wake up call.  I stopped doing what I was doing, the self destruction... I reached out to others and tried to help them the best I could.  I quit my job, and got a new job doing landscape drawings, which is much more agreeable for me.

I've started thinking about my life in a bird's eye view.  And I can only hope that I'll be able to clean up my act and start focusing on the important things in my life.  I've been spending time with Ryland, and I went to see his brother play hockey, which despite of the fact that Air Force lost it was incredibly fun.  I've started saving up for a car, and I've even put aside a little travel fund that I dubbed the Gremlin Fund (my friend Emily's nickname is Gremlin and I want to be able to see her soon).  I've spent more time actually putting into effect the self help tips I wrote in a previous chapter, and in all honesty, they've helped a lot.

I've really come to take Anberlin's passing as Fate.  I was meant to lose my baby in order to become better of a person, and honestly, I don't think I would have been ready for a baby at all.  The baby was a wake up call, and I can only hope that from wherever they are, I'm doing what they would have wanted me to.

I'm changing, that much is certain.

I just pray I'm doing the right thing.