Category: mental illness

Trans joy is real

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression, FTM, gender dysphoria, grief, mental disorders, mental illness, PTSD, suicide attempt, transgender

TW suicide

I am experiencing trans joy!! Much better than euphoria. I am finally me. I attended a transgender conference about gender affirming care and I resonated with the speaker. As I walked I kept looking down at my chest and wondered where my boobs were. Top surgery has been so wonderful for me. I realized I am no longer a bearded lady but a true man. As sad as I am about my mother’s death, I know it was a blessing as she was so against top surgery and I know I would not be able to handle her negative comments. I am finally happy with who I am. I may not have a perfect chest but I think the surgery went well. Last year at this time I was recovering from a suicide attempt due to dysphoria. Amazing how things can change in a year. Trans joy is real.

I vaguely remember how confused and psychotic I was. I was admitted for 30 days to a hospital on the north shore. About 2 and half weeks into the stay, I found out my surgery was postponed and I was bullshit. I wanted to die and I know if I wasn’t in the hospital, I would have tried again. As the social worker told me, this was life- saving surgery. It was so hard to believe this when my mother was dying. Too much was happening after my surgery. My mother never saw me once the bandages were off. It is just as well as the night they came off, my scar became open and I bled. I had to pack the wound for weeks. The scar isn’t pretty but I am hoping it will fade with time. I know my mother would bitch about it with her sarcastic comments that would hurt me. I am glad she isn’t around to hurt me anymore. She didn’t like me being trans and she didn’t like me getting top surgery. But I had to be me and have this surgery that was so important to my mental health.

Today was the first time I was looking for my boobs and was happy that they weren’t there anymore. I felt more confident in myself. I didn’t really meet anyone at the conference. I was way older than even the speaker of the gender affirming care presentation. I’m lucky my genes have me still look like I’m in my 20s. I’m happy I got up early for this. I was nervous because I am not a morning person and I woke up at like 330. Luckily I fell back asleep without a serious hangover effect. Otherwise I would be kicking myself for missing today’s events.

It was really hard to feel euphoria after my mother’s death. The sadness I had felt for months continued for several more months. She has been gone for six months and I am post op 6 months. It’s a happy and sad predicament. Grief is something I don’t always control. It comes in waves. Not only am I grieving my mother, but the self that was dysphoric for so long. The teenage me who didn’t understand why I had breasts in the first place. It’s a lot to process. It is especially hard with depression that has been bad all week. I never thought I would feel joy until today. I know it may not last long but I have the scars on my chest to remind me of it.

Sunday Musings

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression, mental illness, mood disorders, psychache

Sunday musings

I am still reading Linehan’s memoir. I am learning more about DBT this second go round than I did the first time I read it. I seem to be more accepting of DBT as I am realizing that there is evidence DBT works with highly suicidal individuals. The trouble is, it take a lot of work as there is so much to learn. The two takeaways I am getting from this second reading is the two skills radical acceptance and STOP. STOP stands for stop, take a step back, observe, proceed carefully. I am finding I need to practice this skill as otherwise I get angry and nothing gets accomplished. I also need to radically accept that I have depression and trauma issues.

I woke up late this morning. I didn’t get up till after 12. I kept getting severe headaches, like migraines. They would go away if I just stayed still. It happened three times after my alarm went off to take my morning meds. I thought I would have to take a migraine medication to get rid of it but it seems to have gone away on its own. I had started getting these kinds of headaches while in the hospital. I thought they had gone away but the last two nights they have come back.

My cousin texted me this morning saying that Ohio State has made it to the playoffs and they are playing Georgia. That is going to be a tough matchup. Georgia just won yesterday. They killed LSU by a big number. This is what I love about college football games, they score big numbers.

I am thinking about mailing out a card that I wrote out and then getting pizza for my late lunch/early dinner. Problem is that I have no energy to get moving and I know if I force myself to do it, I will have to take a lot of breaks to go around the block. I found my sunglasses but I still am unable to find my transition glasses. I have no idea where they went to. I know if I find the case, I will find them. I hate when I misplace things. It drives me crazy.

I miss baseball. It doesn’t look like the Sox are going to sign Xander Bogaerts. I just hope he doesn’t end up on the Yankees. I still don’t know if JBJ is still with the team. I watched a baseball game while I was in the hospital and he was playing for the Blue Jays. I don’t know if this is true or not. I will be sad if it is. I have no clue how the season ended because I was so sick in the hospital.

Yesterday, I listened to Taylor Swift’s 1989 album. Today I am listening to Rob Thomas’s Someday on repeat. I love this song so much.

I am feeling suicidal. Nothing really happened in the last half hour or so. I just feel like ending my life. I see no good in it. I have imagined how I would do it two different ways. I won’t act on it, though I do want to. I just don’t want to end up back in the hospital. There is no guarantee I will end up back on the same unit I was in. I could end up somewhere else. That keeps me from going to the ER. I know I spent a few days in the psych ER before I was transferred to the unit I was in. I don’t know how long I was there as I wasn’t myself. I was in a confused state. I don’t remember if I had my phone or not. If I did, I know I wasn’t using it. I was much too paranoid about it. I am working through the feelings of distress I am feeling. I am distracting myself by writing about them. I have therapy tomorrow and will tell my therapist about this. I want to die so bad that it is almost like nothing else matters to me, not even top surgery. I have hit a new low in my life. I try to keep telling myself life will be different when I have the surgery but will it? I thought about going back to college while in the hospital after I recovered from surgery. It seems impossible right now but I want to make an effort in the next couple of years to earning my degree. I want to finish it at UMass Boston. Trying to make goals helps defend against the darkness, least for a little while.

I am feeling worthless right now. My psychache is high. I am a little perturbed and my press is at least a three. I spoke how I wrote the book Darkness Always Wins while I was in the hospital. I was and still am in a dark place. I don’t know if I am going to recover from this episode of depression. Meds have made little improvement to how I feel. I know realistically, it could be a year or more before I recover. It is the way recurrent depression is. I don’t buy that I have bipolar disorder. My depressions are too dark and stay dark for periods that are much more similar to major depression. I really think I am misdiagnosed. Fortunately, the treatment is the same: antidepressant therapy. I need to take an antipsychotic because I am prone to hearing voices otherwise. I have done well with Latuda, though it is causing some dystonia for me.

I just read a blog that I wrote a more than a few years ago about Shneidman’s psychache theory. I was trying to think about it while in the hospital. I remembered the three P’s, press, perturbation, and psychache. A 5-5-5 indicates imminent suicide. I was a 5-5-5 in the hospital at times. I tried to remember the psychache scale by Ronald Holden. I couldn’t remember his name or if I had it on my blog for staff to look up. My memory has been so much affected by what I have been through.

I had dinner with my family tonight. It helped a little being around them but at one point I wanted to tell my sister I needed to go back to the hospital. I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her though so I kept quiet. I will talk more about this with my therapist tomorrow morning. I really feel like shit. It is like the song going down in flames, “Falling into this, again.”

Guest Podcast

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, CRPS, depression, disability, mental illness, mood disorders, physical pain, psychache, PTSD

I am featured today on the PTSD and Beyond Podcast for PTSD awareness month. Here is the link

https://ptsdandbeyond.podbean.com/e/episode-69-share-my-story-with-g/

High levels of pain and new development

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, cauda equina syndrome, CES, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, CRPS, depression, disability, medical, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, physical pain, psychache, transgender

My pain level for most of the day has been a 14 since 4 am when I woke up to pee. Ankle/foot have been either together or alternating with the pain. Either my ankle joint is being hacked with an axe, foot bones are being crushed, or now an “L” shaped pain has started which totally prevents me from moving the damn thing. I just want to die and I am racking my brain on how to do it seeing as how I was going to do it didn’t pan out and didn’t work.

Today I found that I have diminished feeling in my privates. I can get slightly aroused but either have a weak orgasm or none at all, which is frustrating. I know I don’t talk about sex that much on here but the disc that is doing whatever to my bladder nerves also controls the nerves to the other parts of my genitalia. Although I wish to have no relationship with it, I have no choice because nerve damage will make phalloplasty difficult so I’ve choose not to have bottom surgery. However, now that this stupid disc is wreaking havoc on these nerves, I might as well not have a sex life of masturbation or with someone of my choosing. Thanks Cauda Equina Syndrome for really fucking up my life, and not in a good way.

As the compression seems to be causing slow diminished effects it is hard to know what level this injury is coming from. It is making me so damn suicidal. But like I said I need to find a way to do it. I still have the ginger plan. It is just finding the ginger to do the trick. I am going to try ginger beer next. Or a ginger shot that I found on Amazon. Sent a pic to my therapist and she got upset with me. Oh well.

I emailed my psych to let her know what was going on. She wants to know what my neurosurgeon says. I am thinking I probably will have to get a new MRI with contrast. I am going to suggest that an IV be placed so access is there. Otherwise, because I am a hard stick, it might be difficult to administer the contrast. My only worry right now is what effect this is going to have on my bowels. Right now I am backed up so I am kind of grateful for that but I need dynamite to get the shit out. OT has suggested Miralax so I am trying that. I am also wondering if the back pain is being masked because of the pain meds I take. Today while looking for a book my back flared up but sort of settled down. Then I was standing doing something when pain said to sit. I’ve been sitting with pain since then but it isn’t above a 4. If it was higher, then surgery would be next on my mind.

I really like my therapist (ptx) even though she is a hard ass. She pushes me and I like that about her. Also, I really didn’t think I had bullshit but she says I do. She wants to keep me on track of what we talk about and stay on it, not derail because I am feeling emotions about it. I am driving her nuts with the text thing. So I’ve decided to send the worrisome stuff to my alt phone so it is out of my system/head.

I can’t really the last time I had a number 2. I was going good for a while now I’ve stopped again. I hate constipation. You might think this is gross or maybe something not to talk about but this is what I deal with and shit I deal with goes on my blog. You don’t like it, find something else to read. I am scared of this development. The whole purpose of not going through phalloplasty was cause I liked my clit a lot. If it is no longer going to work then I am not sure what I am going to do. A sex life isn’t important to me but I’d still like one if it should present itself. If I should find a female I like and we hit it off i don’t want it to end because i can’t function. I never dreamed of having someone long term in my life but i do want someone to cuddle with.

If you are reading this and it cause discomfort due to issues of sexual abuse or something, please let me know and I will place a trigger warning so someone else doesn’t.