transitioning is harder than it seems

I did nothing today. Today is supposed to be my writing day off but I can’t stop writing what is in my head. Last night was hard for me on so many levels. My suicidality came back and it stayed with me for a good while. I wanted to hang myself off the back porch, while my sister was having a party down stairs. My biggest fear was that I would be caught in time and I would survive. I didn’t want that to happen as it would be mad embarrassing. But I imagined what it would be like. I didn’t prepare or anything, just thought and fantasized about it. It helps to calm me down when I fantasize about killing myself. It is not the best mechanism of coping but hell it works better than the other bullshit.
I didn’t want to kill myself because of the new year. I wanted to kill myself because I don’t think I can stand being who I am anymore. I don’t even know who I am anymore. I have changed my name a few times over the years to get used to being called something other than my birth name in transitioning toward being male. Can’t be any more male than Mike right? But people don’t see it as a big deal. Maybe they think that it is easy. I don’t know. I have never done this before. I just want to feel the way I feel inside and project it on the outside. I guess the incident that triggered this was that this was the last birthday that I would be called by my birth name(BN). I just wasn’t ready for it. For months I have been using my BN at Starbucks and other places. Yesterday I decided to use Alex and the idiot that took my order wrote “Alice”, nice but I am NOT a fucking female you nitwit!! That is what I want to scream to the world. I am NOT A FUCKING FEMALE!! I am not a HER I am a HIM!!!! But people just don’t get it. They see breasts and the will always think her. They don’t see breasts they see him. It is how this world is cracked up to be.
I so need to talk to my therapist this week. I am having a wicked hard time with this. I think my very life depends on it. But if I were to seek help, I don’t think a hospital will help. Seeing as I have not transitioned, they will just place me in a woman’s room or ward. How demoralizing is that. Because biologically I am female I get put into that category. I hate categories.

why the stigma in preventing suicide?

People always scramble when there is lightening but not for suicide prevention. Lightening takes less lives each year than suicide does. I think people don’t scramble because there still is this stigma that it won’t happen. People don’t want to acknowledge that suicide exists and if it doesn’t exist, why prevent it? The stigma is that you run into the old “every man has a choice”. People believe that suicidal people are just going to do it anyway so why bother preventing the inevitable. It happens to those that see it in the ER. Most people cannot fathom why someone would want to take their own life. They think life is so grand that nobody would want to take it. They believe in this bubble that if it doesn’t happen to me, it doesn’t happen at all. I have a cousin who thinks this way. She thinks that if she doesn’t pay attention to the bad stuff, maybe it won’t happen as often. She just wants to be happy all the time. There is nothing wrong with that but not acknowledging serious mental illness is a problem. They have to believe that there is always good things in their world for their sanity. Thomas Joiner, a psychologist that deals with suicidality believes that most suicide prevention would cost less if people actually believed it exists. In his book why people die by suicide, he proposes the risk of a bicyclist getting hit by a car over the prevention barrier of the SF bridge. More people die by suicide (30 per year) than someone dying by getting hit while riding a bicycle.

I think I understand why people are afraid. They still have it in their mind that suicide should not be talked about. If it is talked about then it is real. And if it is real, then something should be done to prevent it.  Unfortunately, not enough people think that suicide is real despite it climbing and it being in the top 10th percentile in the U.S.

validation and connectedness

val·i·date

/ˈvæl ɪˌdeɪt/ Show Spelled [val-i-deyt] Show IPA

verb (used with object), val·i·dat·ed, val·i·dat·ing.

1. to make valid; substantiate; confirm: Time validated our suspicions.

2.to give legal force to; legalize.

3.to give official sanction, confirmation, or approval to, as elected officials, election procedures, documents, etc.: to validate a passport.   

Taken from dictionary.com

 

This is the long version of what it means to be validated. That is what every suicidal person wants. To have that understanding and human connectedness of being validated, that they are not crazy or being patronized but what they are feeling. Without this essential human feeling, we feel we are being criticized and judged no matter how much sympathy or empathy is shown.

I recently posted a couple of vents about mental illness on my blog. I was looking for validation in what I was saying. And someone, a good friend of mine, gave me that, because she feels the same way I do about how damned the mentally ill can feel. To be validated in this sense is that she understood where I was coming from. She didn’t horseshit around the topic to try and make me feel better. She went on her own tyrant of feelings about the subject and that made me feel better.

But the best comment I got today was from a fellow blogger who thanked me for continuing to live because it gave him or her hope to do the same. That is why I write this blog. That is why I try to make this blog as painful as I feel it because I know someone out there is going to read it and feel the same way. And in that sense, he or she will hopefully feel connected to the world and want to stay in it long enough to do whatever.

another Vent

My cousin wrote on FB that there should be better “laws” for commitment of mentally ill than gun control. How pathetic. People who are suicidal can’t get the help they need and so turn to a gun for help. They don’t hurt anyone but themselves, yet she wants better commitment laws. There are more suicide in this country and it goes up every year. And she wants better commitment laws.

I wrote a rant about it. Ending sentence that I would commit suicide.  I couldn’t help it. I got caught up in the moment. How is it that I can eat, live, and breathe suicide yet I am not cured of it. How is it that I read and can quote but yet not stop myself from committing it.

I have a busy week. Meetings with doctors that are supposed to give me the help I need. Yet I don’t receive it. I’m still depressed and suicidal. There is no help for me. I just have to live because society wants me to. I am a follower of what is right and suicide is wrong. But why is it wrong? Why is taking my life wrong? I am not hurting anyone but myself, not physically anyway. I’m not threatening thousands of lives. Just one, my own. What makes my life more valuable than another’s. Do people not see that mental illness takes many forms other than violent ones?

I just posted this paragraph as my Facebook status and got 7 likes, no comments. I wanted to put the whole paragraph about my cousin but I did not want to alarm my sisters with “I’m going to kill myself”. I have many friends and family on Facebook and I bet the ones from the UK are going to be the first to respond, if they do at all.

Mental illness doesn’t always have to be violent. It can be silent and nonviolent like I am. They say that most people employers watch social media now. I don’t care. If I don’t work again because of my mental illness. It won’t be the end of the world for me. I’ll be in private practice anyways.

I got 1 like. We’ll see what else happens if anyone actually gives a shit about me.

Pdoc’s visit will be the same. Too bad I didn’t get her chocolate. I do have to get my MRI report for Hedges on Thursday. I have to be at MGH very early. Going to suck. I just hope I am awake enough to be coherent.

No one has responded yet. I just have a few likes. I guess that is better than nothing.

Just pisses me off that people who obviously don’t understand what mental illness thinks they know what to do with the “problem”. It’s not going away. I’m resistant to treatment but others are not. Why am I still alive while others are dead. I have many risk factors yet I’m alive. I should be fucking dead but I’m not. So why do people pretend to be educated about mental illness yet can’t do anything for them. Feeling pretty hopeless right now. Even if I did see my pdoc she probably would commit me. My therapist would want more sessions. My PCP would just want a promise for me to call him if I got suicidal. How does that keep me alive???? There is no magic drug that I can take to keep me alive. There is no magic talk-therapy. So what am I left with? You might as well give me a loaded gun so I can end this misery. Give me 100 seconals to die with dignity. That is what I want. Pain is up so I am going to stop here. Back is cramping all of a sudden.