Category: mental illness

In the thick of the Abyss

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mental disorders, mental illness, suicide, suicide attempt

I don’t know why but the past few days have my mood going down and down instead of in the opposite direction despite the changes in my circumstance. I now know how Poe felt when he wrote I am wretched and know not why. “My feelings at this moment are pitiable indeed.  I am suffering under a depression of spirits much as I have never felt before.  I have struggled in vain against the influence of this melancholy-you will believe me when I say that am still miserable in spite of the great improvements in my circumstances.  I say you will believe me, and for this simple reason, that a man who is writing for effect does not write thus.  My heart is open before you if it be worth reading. Read it.  I am wretched and know not why.  Console me-for you can. But let it be quickly or it will be too late.  Write me immediately. Convince me that it is worth one’s while -that it is all necessary to live, and you will indeed prove yourself my friend.  Persuade me to do what is right. I do not mean this- I do not mean that you should consider what I now write a jest-oh pity me! For I feel that my words are incoherent- but I will recover myself.  You will not fail to see that I am suffering under a depression of spirits which will [not fail to] ruin me should it be long continued.” edgar allan poe

 I truly think that I am a bad person who just deserves evil things to come at me not good. I can’t understand why though. People say that I write good but I think it’s crap. I am supposed to have this editorial position but yet I don’t think I should have it despite the person who wants me to have this job thinks I should. I know she is a better judge of character. I just can’t see anything but darkness right now and for someone to tell me that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, well let’s just hope they don’t because I know I will dope slap them. There is no light as far as I can see. Today is a dreary day and it should make me happy but instead it just eases my gloom because it’s how I feel. I started feeling down Sunday and it’s now Tuesday. I don’t see my mood changing. What is worse is that I had an impulse to put a rope around my neck this afternoon soon as I got home from forcing myself out. It quickly went away but the thought unsettled me. I guess it doesn’t help that I can do this at anytime, anywhere I choose. It won’t take much to do. I just need the guts to do it. I am going down this road and it is horribly painful. I had another incontinent episode today so that further brought me down. You would think I would be used to pissing my pants but I am not. Yesterday I got awarded being disabled and I can’t help but think that I am been demoralized because of it. I no longer feel like I have a right to anything, much less life. It is the price you pay with a damaged nerve and damaged mind. I can’t go back and change things but I can at least appreciate things more. I just hope I am fit enough for the task ahead with this writing that I am doing but I am not so sure.

Writing has always been something that I do to pass time and it has worked well. When I am not writing, I am deeper in the abyss. There have been studies on it but I can’t think of who the guys are right now. Not that it really matter to you, my reader. I have wondered always if I am too smart for my own good. Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. I don’t know anymore. I just know my heart is broken and I don’t know what caused it to be this way. I am just so damn downhearted and it is just getting worse.

A Drunken Ramble about fear of suicide

by Midnight Demon, posted in mental disorders, mental illness, suicide, suicide attempt

Most people have fears of death, but for those that are suicidal, they tend to want death because they believe death is the only way out. I emphasize the word only because according to the father of suicidology, Edwin Shneidman, “it is a very dangerous word in the world of the suicidal mind”. These people generally will only think of fear due to what Marsha Linehan calls fear of suicide, which is the belief that failure, cowardice, or fear of death that prevents someone from committing suicide.

Aside from these reasons for attempters to try, there is the fear of loved ones and friends of losing someone by death that has not been talked about. Mental illness in some form will affect someone you know more than you think. Even the most upbeat person can suffer from depression but no on knows this because they keep it hidden.

Most people shy away from suicide talk. They don’t want to hear it or will make stupid comments such as “people who commit suicide are selfish”, that “it’s wrong to take one’s life because only God can do that”. Despite these statements, hundreds of people attempt suicide every day. Suicide is the 3rd top killer of Americans more than heart attacks and cancer combined. How can people take their life is a puzzling question. It’s very difficult to kill the human body due to the fight/flight response. I know because on many occasions where I tried, my fight/flight kicked in and I made a call for help, much to my chagrin.  Prevention starts with seeking help but very few people in desperation will call for help before an attempt. They may call for help after or if they survive and don’t want to go through the survivor bullshit (the stomach pumping, hospitalization, stitching of wounds, etc).
Even therapists are fearful of suicide attempters or of the suicide talk. Most clinicians will actually pawn the client off to another therapist “more qualified” or outright refuse to see them. I have had this happen to me ten times while trying to find another therapist within a five mile radius of my house. 10 therapists!!!! TEN professionals refused to treat me because of my history of suicide attempts and current suicidal thinking. I could understand that they did not want to take me on as a multi-risk client and would have liked them to make at least one session with me before I lived up to their presumptions of me. But instead they decided to chuck me off to another therapist who referred me to another therapist who, well you get the picture. So for my therapy at the present time, I have to have phone therapy with someone who is thirty miles away from me because I do not have a car. She took a chance on me and we have been together for eleven years now. She stuck through the depths of my suicidal plans for the past eight years, my nerve condition, and my overall mental illness, which can at times include psychosis and delusions. I don’t know why she puts up with me but she does. Same could be said of her because she is the only therapist I ever had that talks more than I do. I have called her on it so many times that I lost count. Nothing like the analytical consultant I saw. He was strictly Freudian.

religion and faith

by Midnight Demon, posted in mental illness

I am not a religious person in the least. I lost my faith years ago and more so when the Catholic church turned out to be a hornet’s nest of pedophiles. But when it came to suicidality, I remember asking the priest to ask for forgiveness for me because I didn’t feel remorse about wanting to take my life. I was pretty messed up and just a teen but I felt that I should die because I was an evil person.  The priest did not condone me on wanting to take my life but I was still asking god to forgive me for I wanted to take my life and break one of his commandments on “thou shall not kill”. I have tried to wrap my head around it but after several weeks of going to church and praying for forgiveness, I finally tried to take my life. Fortunately, I didn’t succeed.

I was thinking about how faith can affect someone. Who are we really putting our faith into? Is it a god that we believe in or a higher power?  Most people believe that there is a god, even if they do not go to church every week/day. As you get older you tend to follow church more closely. We may even decide to talk to the pastor or priest or reverend to find the answers we are looking for because everything happens for a reason, so they say. Maybe by me telling god that I was going to kill myself, he intervened and I did not end up dying like most people would have. If I didn’t throw up I doubt I would be here today.

Why do we put a god or other higher power in our trust? Could it be that we are looking of the whys of what is wrong with our lives or for a bad thing that has happened to us? When a sick child has cancer, we tend to punish the god for taking the child away. When I was in the 7th grade, my priest said that if I went to church for a year, faithfully, that good things will happen. My life was going poorly. My parents were arguing every day and it hurt to see them fight all the time and it made me mad but I didn’t have anyone to talk to about my problems. I kept it in and became depressed. I excelled in school because it became my escape from my troubles. I went to church, sometimes two days in a row on weekends and went to confession, the whole kit and caboodle.  When my year was coming to a close, disaster struck, WWIII in my house happened and my parents split up in the biggest fight they ever had. I was traumatized by what happened and still am to this day. My father took his shot gun out of his closet and threatened my cousin if he didn’t leave the house. My cousin was protecting my mother but after all was said and done, I couldn’t understand why God had let this happen. I was devoted to him and wanted peace and instead it resulted in my wanting to take my life. Did god want me to join him? Was that why he wanted me to kill myself and then for me to hear voices telling me to so that I can escape this world and end up in another place? Did he really want me to become psychotic so that my Navy career would end before it even started?  No one had the answers for me. Yet my belief then shrunk big time. I stopped going to mass. I stopped believing in god. I felt so hurt and betrayed I wanted to yell at the priest that told me my life was going to change after a year of attending mass when it did not change for the good. Granted my parents were not going to stay together and there was nothing to really do about it. But I blamed god just the same. People might say that I am vindictive about this as I do feel wicked guilty about trying to take my life. I was a good Christian up until then. When my world came apart so did my heart and soul. I was splitting in every direction and I know that if I gave into the voices that night, I probably would be a schizophrenic right now. I still have the voices but they are managed. I tried to go back to church after all that has happened but after I tried to take my life, I have not set foot in a church since voluntarily. I have gone to churches for funerals and weddings but that is the ONLY time I have set foot in them. Some times when things are going bad I do admit I will go to the hospital chapel and pray for my friend or family member that is having difficulty. I may not believe in a god anymore but I do believe there is a higher power out there directing things to happen, whether it be angels or just faith.

you should not kill yourself when you are suicidal

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mental disorders, mental illness, suicide, suicide attempt

Nothing interesting happened today. I just thought I would write about some more ramblings. I am feeling pretty down and I know the reason I just can’t do anything about it and it is killing me. I had written something about myself that is deeply personal but I keep writing about it and then erase it after I write a few sentences. I really wonder what my life will be like to live openly as who I am and not what I am. I really don’t think that is possible. I once considered it but it takes too much of an effort to confront those demons that are hurting me so. I still think that a fragile self is better than a whole one. I am too weak to fight these demons this stage of my life. I really feel that if I did I would fall apart and never be whole again. It takes all I have to live through each day and not break down and cry. I just cannot bare the thought of continuing to live a lie to myself. I must find a way or it will destroy me and I fear that self destruction is better than life itself.

I have been writing a synopsis of Baumeister’s Suicide as Escape from self. I find that it resonates with me on the deepest level. Yet as close as his words are to my real life throughout his jargon, I can make sense of why he feels that escape of self is the heart of suicide. And it is. I just want to escape into oblivion, where I do not think anymore, I have no feelings whatsoever, and am totally as he says, irrational. I am listening to Adele and wondering if I will ever be happy as she is. I won’t. being happy is not a part of my personality. Suicide has become my career and one day it will take my life. I cannot live with these feelings of self-loathing and hate for too much longer. It really strikes at my soul at the despise I feel toward myself. There is a song by the counting crows of how can I get myself away from me…that pretty much sums up Escape from self in a nutshell…

Is it wrong to want to die? I know in my heart of hearts that I will die by my own hand, it is a certainty that I am willing to live with but will others ever be on the same page as me. The all want me to live because they think I have a higher purpose in this life than the one I am living but I do not share their sentiments. I really think that by killing myself, I will be free. I will no longer suffer and that is truly what all suicidal people want, they want their suffering to end because it is too painful to continue to breathe life.  The only thing stopping me is well, I am not really sure what is stopping me. I guess I just have not been so suicidal that I really feel like acting on it. But then, according to the big suicidologists, you should not kill yourself when you are suicidal. So what do you do when you want to die but are not feeling suicidal??