When you're up, you're up, and when you're down... you want to slit your wrists with a kitchen knife

Bipolar, hormones, the devil, bad timing; one, two, all or none of these things may be to blame for yesterday's events. I thought I was past all the suicidal thoughts and worthless, not good enough to be alive feelings, but yesterday proves I'm not. It was really sudden and really bad. At least when I had these thoughts and breakdowns regular I wasn't caught so off guard. I had an episode a couple of weeks ago that was triggered by one phone call from a stranger, but suicidal thoughts were quickly pushed away. But Thursday and yesterday were little things building up and then one more thing broke the camel's back, and my heart. I'm not sure when it started, I knew I was feeling less and less competent and successful in my projects, mothering, house-wifely duties and social experiences. I'm used to my forgetfulness, inability to concentrate, and my general human-ness that I have to let go and not let it get me down. But when these things happen all at once, over and over, and the elements I listed before come into play, it's the perfect concoction for a hurricane of my heart and mind. Majority of my days, I'm happy. VERY happy. I feel very blessed, loved, and all over good about myself. I mess up, try to figure out what went wrong and try to do better next time. Yesterday I just reached a point when that wasn't working anymore. I rationalized that I wasn't any better or closer to being better than the way I felt as an abandoned child by my dad and most times, my mom. My heart was broken. I couldn't see anything I did as good enough. I saw myself as danger to my children because I forget to put away scissors and craft supplies, even knives after using them, often, and though Andrew reminds me over and over again I keep doing it. There are many more things that I won't list, but some are worse, and some are petty, all together they brought me standing over the silverware drawer fighting the urge to cut my wrists. I had already made red welts from using my thumbnails to slice the insides vertically. I hated myself so much for failing to be who I wanted to be, for trying so darn hard and falling so short of my self made mark. But even though I went so far as to press the cold edge of the chef's knife to my skin, I thought of Evey. I have seen enough Hollywood movies to know that a child who finds a parent after attempting suicide appears worse than if the parent had stuck around. I had a guy friend tell me once that suicide is a most selfish act. I was furious at him. Suicidal thoughts aren't foreign to my imagination. At that time I was just teenager and didn't see how right he was. As a mother of two and seven years later, I agree with his assessment.
It took a long while, a lot of patience and love on my husband's part but I calmed down. Today I'm not euphorically happy like I was a mere 2+ days ago, but I'm not sitting at rock bottom digging my nails into the rock underneath too. If 10 were euphoria and 0 seriously suicidal I would say I'm at a 4 right now. A little numb, a lot of humble, and my feet on the ground.