Category: psychache

Don’t call me daughter 2

by Midnight Demon, posted in bipolar, blogging, psychache, suicidality, suicide, suicide attempt, transgender

Don’t call me daughter 2

I had a conversation with one of my Twitter buddies about being TG. He got me thinking that I still have not made any steps forward in this endeavor since I tried to come out to family last year. My sister read my book, so I know she now knows that I am transgender. Now comes the hard part, do I tell my mother? I have been wanting to for some time now but can’t bring up the nerve to go through with it. I know she will say that I will “always be her daughter” and that is going to be hurtful to me. I don’t want to be called “daughter”. In the song by Pearl Jam, “Daughter”, one line goes like this: “don’t call me daughter, not meant to be, the picture left will remind me”. I remember during an intense painful time in my life, these words spoke volumes to me like they do today. Granted it was a different meaning, meaning I didn’t deserve to be called “daughter” because I was such a despicable person.

After my conversation with my Twitter buddy, I got depressed, which lead me listening to Pearl Jam. I still hate myself so very much. I want to get rid of the things on my chest so badly. I bet I would lose 30 lbs instantly, LOL. Damn suckers are so damn heavy anyways. But I don’t know who to talk to about getting them cut off. My psychiatrist is still out of the office and she isn’t answering my emails. I am getting frustrated with her. I would call her but her pager has been signed out to another clinician, one that doesn’t know me. And I don’t talk to my therapist until Tuesday to discuss these things. Maybe I should call the LGBTQ clinic on Monday and see if I get anywhere. I think I want to try taking testosterone and see if that helps me. I just don’t know if my insurance will cover it.

I am not scared to try anymore. I think that if I do move forward with this, the lingering depression that I feel will lift and maybe I won’t be so suicidal anymore. But I can’t move forward with this. I know my mother is not going to accept me. She could barely accept that I like women, how is she going to accept that I am the wrong gender. And what if she gets so pissed off, she kicks me out of the house? What then? I doubt it as she needs me financially but there are things better than money. And I am not quite sure if her possible rejection will send me to another suicidal crisis. If my own mother can’t accept me, what reason, really, do I have to live for?

I have struggled for years with my suicidality and only in the last five years or so have I realized that the majority of why I was suicidal is not only because I don’t like myself, but because I can’t stand being in the wrong body. It became evident when I made the connection between my menstrual cycle and being purely suicidal. Then I would bleed, and a switch went off and I felt I was just dreaming of being suicidal but I wasn’t because my therapist and friends were on me, seriously worried about me. I can’t say that my mother knows me. She may say she does, but she doesn’t have the first inkling about me. If she did, she would know how torturous it is being in the wrong body. But I know she doesn’t think like that. No one does. It was all for me to figure out one day. I have had twelve different therapists from all different disciplines. IF they figure out the reason for my suicidality, they sure as hell didn’t tell me.

I remember being emotional whenever I brought it up in the beginning. I cried in my therapist’s office (back when we were seeing one another) and she held me, telling me I was going to make it through. I had no idea what she was talking about. I just wanted to die. I hate myself so much it hurts. I don’t even know how I can love anyone when I have so much hate towards myself. My therapist now thinks that going forward with TG stuff is the “only” way to ease my suicidal suffering. I think that she is wrong. It might help in the short term, but I don’t think it is going to help in the long term. I have heard stories of TG people go through with their sex reassignment only to kill themselves afterwards. Why? Most likely, because they were not accepted by the people that were supposed to accept them. I still have no idea how I am going to explain this to my “kids”. I have a homophobic nephew, two caring nieces, and a little pre-teen niece that has her own mental issues. Maybe I will come out to my older niece first and then see how it goes. If I lose their love, it will be the death of me. I know I cannot handle their rejection of me. It will hurt more than my mother’s rejection because we raised my nieces to be accepting of people. I don’t know what happened with my nephew. I blame his teacher for telling him that gays aren’t born gay. They choose to be it. In his mind, only girls choose to be gay. Boys don’t choose because they are always straight. Least that is what I think he thinks. It has been a while since he explained it to me. But he is ignorant and still doesn’t know the world so I don’t blame him. But if I lose his love, it will kill me. He has been the main reason I am still alive. I couldn’t bear to die knowing that he needed me, especially when I was going through a hard time his first year of life. I would say goodbye to him, not knowing if I would see him again. My suicidality twenty years ago was horrific. I was in and out of mental hospitals for six months, until I took an almost fatal overdose that landed me inpatient for two and a half months. That would be unheard of today. No one stays that long in the hospital anymore, though there are exceptions.

I just don’t want to be anymore. I really just rather die than to deal with all this bullshit of becoming a man. It’s not like my bones are going to change. My pelvis will always be revealed as a woman. And that is what kills me every time I think about it. Got to thank a “Bones” episode for that. I know I will kill myself one day. I just hope it is sooner rather than later.

Just Depressed

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, psychache

Just depressed

For some reason the cough that I thought had gone away has returned with a vengeance. It is not helping my back pain at all. I feel horribly depressed that I can’t move without pain. To make matters worse, I don’t think I will be seeing my therapist on my birthday because there is a storm on its way to Boston and it will hit then. Just great. Mother nature hates me.

I really am dreading my birthday this year. I really just want to take my sister’s car and just leave town for the day. But I know my sister will need her car back. I probably would have left months ago if I had a car.

I keep thinking I don’t have anything to do tomorrow but I have two appointments. I have my dreaded PCP appointment and then I have PT. I am dreading the PCP appointment because I know he is going to say something about my weight. I plan on wearing light pants so I can weight less on his stupid scale. Maybe then he will be happy. Last time I didn’t care and wore heavy jeans and kept things in my pocket. I weighed 8 pounds heavier than my last appointment. He flipped out on me. But this time I will be seeing him not only for my med refill, but also because I have this cough and back pain. My prediction is that he not only is going to tell me to lose weight, but also that I have a viral infection. He’ll give me a script for my pain meds and then its see you next month.

I hope the bastard is on time because my appointment with PT is two hours from his and I need to catch a shuttle bus to get there. I was looking forward to this appointment but now I just don’t care. After the possible poking and prodding of my PCP, I know the PT is going to do the same thing, if not more prodding to assess my ankle. I will be lucky to walk out of there. I won’t be wearing my AFO. I have given up on wearing it. At this point (2 years later), I don’t think it is doing me any favors.

I just am really down today. I watch the Pats game and that made me feel worse. They played like shit but somehow got the win. It was a very ugly game. Brady (quarterback) got sacked like 4 times. I think if he had better protection, the game would have been different.

I really am not looking forward to my birthday in a few days. I wish it was today just to get it over with. I just want the hoo-hah to be done with. I am not looking forward to having my family give me gifts when I didn’t get them anything for their birthday. And I know my cousins and aunts are just going to give me the “this is your birthday and Christmas gift” like they do every year. I always get stiffed. When I was a kid, I always got birthday AND Christmas presents. But I don’t give a fuck this year. Let them say this and I will just be thankful to have something. It’s better than nothing, right?

don’t call me daughter

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, psychache, suicidality, suicide attempt, transgender

Don’t call me daughter

Just recently, I was discharged from the hospital because of a suicide attempt. The self hate of being in the wrong body grew to unbelievable proportions. I hated my body, myself, my breasts, and my menstrual cycle. I just couldn’t take it anymore. The self-loathing I felt was unimaginable. I don’t know what set me off. That was one of the first questions I was asked when I was in the hospital but it was a cascade of everything in my life from being disabled to being transgender. I didn’t care anymore. I still don’t. I don’t want to live my life in a hole anymore. Sure, I talk about being transgender on my blog but my mother doesn’t know. She will NEVER accept me for being her son. And that hurt is what drives me to suicide. I’d rather die as her daughter than as her son.

So I left tonight’s chat…

by Midnight Demon, posted in bipolar, blogging, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, psychache, suicidality

So I left tonight’s chat

Don’t know if anyone that reads my blog knew, but a 29 year old woman with terminal cancer ended her life today, on her own terms. She basically committed suicide. It got me thinking about Robin Williams and why his death was not treated the same way. He was battling demons we knew nothing about and a medical illness that threw him off the ledge. I don’t blame him for killing himself. It makes me sad, but also makes me happy that he is in a better place than he was in. No one understands why I have such happiness for those who kill themselves. But for this woman, I am having a hard time feeling happiness for her. I am glad she chose the method of her death and she had free will and all. But a part of me doesn’t like that she was an advocate for choosing to end your life with dignity and she took it. So we lost an advocate and that bothers me.

Then I entered the SPSM chat that was discussing this. The current president of the AAS sends out a PDF of Shneidman’s 10 commonalities of a good death. That’s when my suicidality peaked for some reason. Then talking about how depression was a terminal illness just made me snap. I had to get out of the chat room. I could have just left without saying anything but I said something, that today’s topic is too triggering for me. I got some pleasant responses. Then I got a weird one that said that I should be kept abreast of the topic. I was like “Huh”?

I have no one I can talk to about this and so I just decided to write, like I always do when I am in distress or feeling intolerant of my feelings. It helps me to put perspective to my thoughts. I also have been terrified of crapping myself for the past few hours and it has taken it’s toll on me. I have decided that if I crap myself tonight, I am going to take all of my meds, every last pill that I have will be ingested. I have had enough of dealing with the indignity of crapping myself. I can’t live like this anymore. I am only 38 years old. I should be able to control myself but that control has been taken away from me. I am no longer an “anal” person, so to speak. It is draining me being this way. I could cry but why bother. Darkness envelops my soul. I feel like I should not live like this anymore. Isn’t it my right to die? I may not have “good” reasons. I just want to end my suffering, is that so bad? I have no purpose in my life. I have no responsibilities like I did before. The only responsibility I have is to clean my sheets or clean my room, which never gets done because I don’t have the motivation to clean. My mother takes care of the cooking and cleaning, though it kills her to do it. She cleaned the bathroom and it took her almost three days to do it. She did it a little at a time. And I have to do the same or my back goes out. But lately my ankle pain has been worse so I have been having a hard time standing for any length of time. I was given exercises to do to help do something but all they do is cause me pain. I stopped doing them because I hurt so much afterwards. I shouldn’t be in this much physical pain. I have tendonitis in all of my tendons on the outside part of my ankle starting from where the bone is to my feet. There is a tendon called the peroneous that wraps around the ankle and anchors into the foot. Aren’t I lucky that I have aggravated this tendon and the ones surrounding it. The docs don’t know why. But the usual course when they don’t know what to do with you is to send you to physical therapy, like that is the cure all. I am so sick of physical therapy and it hates me. My goofball swelling has returned and it is throbbing like no tomorrow. Yet despite this pain, I am not suicidal over it. I am more suicidal over the fact my bowels have taken a run for the hills and decided not to tell me when they are moving. Usually if I have gas, I know I will soon have a movement. But lately, the stools have been soft and when I fart, the stool comes with them. I have shit myself twice in the last two weeks, both times in bed. The first I was lucky that it didn’t leak onto my bed sheets as I was in bed at the laptop like I am now. The second time, I didn’t even feel myself shit. I just farted and thought that was that. Wrong. I got up and there was a yellow stain on my bed. Fuck. I was wearing black underwear so it didn’t show anything but my pajamas did. I feel like the biggest asshole on the planet. And if it happens again, I want to kill myself. I have stayed away from taking laxatives and fiber pills. Now I will have hard stools that will cause me to bleed but I don’t care. It might also flare up my nerve pain in my ass but I don’t care. That will be the least of my worries. I don’t want to shit the bed again, literally or have another accident. I am lucky I have my menses now so I am wearing a pad. But pads irritate my skin after a while. When I had my menses that lasted for more than six weeks, I thought I was going to go insane. And I was wicked irritated by my clothing (female underwear) and the pads. The elastic in the female underwear was digging into me after a while. I don’t know why. But even my boxer will irritate me after a while too, especially if I don’t shower on a regular basis. And I have been too depressed to keep up with hygiene. I just am a mess. But with my menses, I have been forced to shower nearly every day. But now they are showing signs of stopping so I might be back to my every two days routine.

I have been safe so far tonight with passing gas and not having friends with it but that could change at any moment. It scares me to think that I might shit myself again and not realize it. I bought diapers for when I go out. I refuse to wear them when I am in the house for fear of just wasting them. Thing is, I don’t trust myself anymore and that has been a hard thing to endure. I have gotten used to peeing myself more than crapping myself. No one understands this. No one really knows this, aside from my therapist. I haven’t seen my psychiatrist in more than a month because of my own mobility issues and now she is out of the office because she broke her hip. I miss her really bad. I also feel bad going through what she is going through. She said she needed surgery so that must have been a real bad break. We have been together for twenty years and this is the first time, other than her maternity leave, that we have been apart for an extended period of time. So I this weighing on me as well. I am set with my medications for at least a month. I hope she is back soon but I know that it takes at least 6-8 weeks for a bone to heal. She didn’t say how long she would be out for but my guess is that she will be back after the holidays. This so sucks. My demons are coming back and I don’t have her around to corral them back into outer space. My therapist can only do so much. And lately, we have been on the wrong page of things. I am getting frustrated with the whole talking on the phone all the time. She is ok with it, course she would love to see me in person but I don’t have transportation to go out to where her office is, which is 30 miles away. I am still trying to finagle getting my sister’s car one week and going out to see her but my sister has been so stressed lately that I don’t want to bother her with my needing her car.

Closing thoughts: I feel a little bit better since writing this out. I love having a blog that I can write my nonsensical thoughts out. I still feel ashamed about myself but I know it will go away in time. I hope it will anyways.