Calculating the drop

A repost and expansion of last week's social media confession

Image by Bertsz on Pixabay

Twenty-six years ago, on my birthday, I stood at an open hotel window, calculating whether the fall was sufficient to kill me. I didn’t want to end up in a wheelchair, giving my then-husband even more control over me. In the middle of that calculation, I realised what I was doing. And that I had three little boys at home.

My husband had said he’d kill me if I left him, and I believed him. But my health was breaking under the stress; I was repeatedly hospitalised, coughing up blood, for reasons doctors couldn’t diagnose. Standing at that open window, I realised that though he said he’d kill me if I left, if I stayed, I’d *definitely* die.

So I started looking for an escape route. I had no money of my own. No support from friends and family; he had made sure of that. I had no idea how to get out, and it was dangerous. But I started planning.

The way I found was, essentially, illegal, so I shan’t document it here. It gave me an escape route. I left him on March 14th 1998. A secret flit while he was at a meeting in London. While the kids were at school, I loaded carrier bags of books and clothes and toys into the car.

It was the hardest thing, and the best thing, I’ve ever done. Better than any of the books I’ve written or will ever write. Because none of those books would have existed without me doing this first.

I’m so glad I didn’t kill myself that day. I’ve had so much happiness and love in all the years that came after. I’ve created a lot of good things, too, for others.

It can be incredibly hard to find a way through darkness. But there is so much light on the other side. I hope if you are feeling despair, that you, too, can find your escape route.

***

On Friday, I posted this spontaneously on Twitter (yes, I know, it has a new name, it’s rubbish, and you have to keep qualifying it). It started getting traction and has topped out at 1,600 likes, more popular even than the tweet Neil Gaiman retweeted. After a few hours, I posted it on Facebook, too, while neglecting you, my dear friend. The plan was to expand on it for newsletter purposes, but following this first post and responses to it, a lot more things have been coming up. So I’d better get on with it, because there is more in the pipeline.

Why did it surface now, you might ask? Last Monday, an actor friend of mine, describing how they channel their own emotional experiences into their acting, asked if I did the same.