Patricia is recovering from her confirmed fifth suicide attempt/gesture in the last four years. The actual number may be seven attempts/gestures since April 2003. Read my blog “Suicide is a Social Event” outlining my feelings about discussing suicide attempts.

            Patricia entered the hospital early Sunday morning after an overdose of prescription drugs. She spent almost twenty-four hours in a coma, awaking early this morning. I will attempt to obtain the police report today and this may provide more details. I will ask the department to blacken out Patricia’s address. I do not wish to know where she lives.

            The survival rate if the individual reaches the hospital alive is ninety-seven percent (97%) but it is the leading form of suicide among women Patricia’s age. The mechanism is identical to Patricia’s attempt in April of 2006.

            I simply do not know where we go from here. My meeting with the probation department a few weeks ago convinced me that this attempt was forthcoming and five to seven gestures/attempts over four years removes the surprise and the shock.

            I always give Patricia the benefit of the doubt as to the difference between gesture and attempt, but I am beginning to see a pattern. Over the years gestures have become attempts.

            A great deal of my time with probation a few weeks ago focused on the extent of Patricia’s mental illness during our sixteen years of marriage.

            Let me make this clear to the Beast Machine that has destroyed our lives over the last five years – the lawyers, the judges, the mental health professionals, the social groups with their own agendas to push, the Department of Corrections that ignored any possibility of treatment until a week before Patricia’s release, and the probation department that made the reintroduction of Patricia’s imaginary demon (the avatar Steve) a matter of bureaucratic laziness.

            Here is the truth – The growth in the severity of Patricia’s mental illness is indescribable since she filed for divorce, since she mounted the Beast Machine. Look at my description of the first suicide gesture in 1986 in the first chapter of my book, it does not even seem that Patricia actually put herself at risk in this first gesture. The April 2003 attempt resembles this earlier attempt and the other suicide gestures during our marriage.

            This latest attempt does not. This latest appears to be a genuine attempt to end her life.

            The change from gesture to attempt illustrates the increased severity of Patricia’s mental illness over the last five years.  Patricia’s mental health was always fragile, but when the Beast Machine began to tear away at her life, she did not stand a chance.

            As I work with other victims of the Beast Machine, I realize that while Patricia journeyed where few people journeyed before, she passed a lot of bodies on the path.  There are millions of families whose mental health has been damaged or destroyed by the Beast Machine. The Beast Machine that tears at you the moment the paperwork is filed.

            I may never know how much responsibility Patricia holds, but despite assertions otherwise, she is not really the point. I reserve my anger for the Beast Machine.