Choices in the Dark
Brandon & Angel Tellez Wedding Day - June, 2019.
Disclaimer: This article is going to be raw and real. It is going to talk about graphic subjects, some people will find this triggering.
Written for Shoot the Breeze Magazine: Volume 00 - July 2024
It’s hard for me to understand people a lot of the time. In my life, I feel just about everything is a choice. I chose to watch Netflix for an hour before starting this article. I choose to be nice to people as often as possible. Is it the same way for everyone? Are those people who seem like they are always rude, always in a rush, and always putting others down making active choices? When my relationship started she was making great choices, we both were. She quit drinking, we moved in together, we went to the gym almost daily. We prepped our meals, brushed the cats, and binged Netflix. Life was normal.
I didn’ t really understand her Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), but I did understand things weren’t great anymore. Sometimes, you don’t have a lot of time to make choices. “You shouldn’t have done that.” Out of context, this could be a meaningless text message. I know the following texts led to me having to actively choose to pull the car over. Having to actively choose to call 911. “I’m.. yeah, my wife just texted me saying she was going to cut herself all over.. I um.. I don’t really know what to do.”. I chose to call my supervisor, to turn around and go home. I chose to say nothing to her, handcuffed in the back of a police car. As a spouse, apparently, you can choose to have someone sent to the hospital to be evaluated; that’s a hard one to make. I also chose to stick around. Regardless of her choices, I chose to love the hell out of her. The next few months went alright. We chose to get into therapy; we chose to keep doing the right things, eat healthy, work out, and travel. We lived a good life from the outside. I wish I could tell you where the turning point was, where things started to crumble and fall apart. We tried everything we could think of, we had a weekly therapist in Edmond, we had a special therapist for her BPD, we tried getting her back into Alcoholics Anonymous, we still worked out, and we still ate healthy. We were doing the right things. Little did I know it, we were in the deep end.
I’d love to paint her in a beautiful light for you, but there wasn’t a lot of beauty in our world. Borderline Personality Disorder causes people to see things as very black and white, with no grey space. Yes or no, never a maybe. They often put people they love on a pedestal; I was my wife’s angel for quite a while. The dark side of this is when the pedestal collapses. Love and adoration quickly turn into hatred and malice. A good day could turn gloom in an instant. This day started off relatively normal; as far as I remember, I made my way to work in the morning, looking forward to a typical day. We had been messaging a bit throughout the morning, and the conversation eventually turned south. If I said something she disagreed with, it was often by now for her to block me. She liked to have control. This morning was no different; around 10:30am, I saw the familiar banner, ‘You can no longer send or receive messages with this person.’. I noted this but had to go about my day; the military is about give and take. Another 30 minutes passed, and her best friend messaged me, worried; my wife blocked her as well. This was abnormal. I remember 11:23am as I drove past the gas station; I thought about filling up on my way home. I didn’t have much worry; this was new territory. Skipping the gas and arriving home, it was quiet. December 5th was the day, a week after my birthday. The leftover cake is still on the counter, with blue and white icing catching the sun.
We had just returned from a Thanksgiving/Birthday road trip the night before, visiting our families. By now, she was taking anti-anxiety medication often to get through the day. She was a zombie while I opened presents from my parents, but the doctor gave them to us, so that’s fine, right? She had surgery recently and also had some leftover painkillers stashed away in the medicine cabinet. The night before, she assured me that mixing the painkillers she had with her anti-anxiety medication wasn’t fatal. I wasn’t worried. When I say we tried everything, I mean everything. Our last attempt was a new ‘ketamine infusion therapy.’ The Oklahoma Ketamine Center assured us this was the latest cure for depression. It felt formal; the intake forms showed she was seriously depressed. A quick web search will find this “Medical Center” permanently closed. Diving further, you’ll find a few reviews left by unhappy patients and their families. The clinic wouldn’t let us talk to the doctor unless we took ours down.
It was a small two-bedroom apartment; a few quick steps had me in our bedroom. *Breath In.* Thankfully, she was asleep and must have had some of the cake. her lips are blue. As a precaution, I searched for the medications she was taking, bottles still in her drawer, and lids on. *Breathe out.* A moment of peace for both of us. her lips are blue. I shook her foot to wake her up and checked to make sure our dog Charlie was okay. “Hey.”. Peace turned tense. her lips are blue. “H..”, panicked I climbed on top of her “HEY. WAKE UP.”, her lips are blue. “fuck”. The CPR training I took a few years back did not prepare me for this. Chest compressions, sure, uh, breaths, yeah, 911. I ripped the drawer back open, and the bottles were empty. It’s impossible to prepare for moments like these.
Life challenges all of us every single day. It’s up to us to make active choices. Active choices to make the world around us better. She chose to leave a note this time, the handwriting getting progressively worse as the drugs kicked in. Everything from here was uncharted territory. She convinced me the facility she was sent to, was worse for her mental health. What do you do when someone starts talking about creating a last will? What do you do when someone tells you what kind of casket they want at their funeral? I chose to push through every moment and to love her unconditionally. March 8th, 2020, was her 3rd and final attempt. There will be many difficult choices you have to make, some of them in an instant. Sometimes, you will have all the data sitting right before you and still have no clue what to do. All you can do is move forward and believe you are doing the right thing. It’s easy to get caught up in the past, to overanalyze every decision you made. You have to choose to let go. Choose to prevail.
