Category: psychache

Year end Blog

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

Year end blog

I thought and thought about what I would write today. I guess I should say that I am still here, alive. I can’t say that I am well because I am in pain at the moment. Damn ankle didn’t like me going out today.

I had a good year overall. I got my book done. An email from my idol saying he wishes my book is successful. I turned a corner in my psychache. I no longer feel it as much anymore. Though I still think about killing myself, the thoughts are less. I might have had a rough beginning to 2013 but I made it through even though there were times my life was tested. I don’t know what changed. I really think that my friend in Chicago really snapped me out of the funk that I was in. He is the reason why I am still here. He has a way about him that just makes me see things differently.

I got a ring on my finger that I got the beginning of the year. It was my reward for writing in December of 2012. I am not getting myself anything as expensive this year, not unless you count my editor, LOL. I hope that she does what I am expecting to and my money is well spent.

I don’t have any goals for the New Year. I can’t commit myself to anything because I never think that far ahead. I know there are going to be some changes in the New Year in regards to my insurance and possibly my student loans. I hope that my book is successful and I am able to pay the loans off and start going back to college to earn my degree.

I don’t have plans for the night. My sister is throwing her annual party. I bought some beer to have. I don’t know why I bought a six-pack. I probably will only have one beer and that will be it. I am not a beer drinker, in fact have only had two beers in my life time. But this year, I started wanting one for some strange reason. I find that one is all I need. I bought Sam Adams Winter Lager. I never had a lager before so I am hoping it is good.

I still can’t believe that I am not going bonkers about Konrad Michel writing back to me. Or that my consultant wishes me well with success for my book. I still feel blah and I don’t think that is ever going to change. Sure I might not be suicidal anymore but feeling nothing, no joy or pleasure sucks. Even my annoying game hasn’t been fun anymore. I just keep playing out of habit and the fact that I will get far behind if I don’t keep up with it. I even bought horseshoes and that didn’t get me far, nor did it make me happy. I chocked it up as an entertainment expense but it really is not entertaining me anymore. I hate to think what would happen if I was working. I would get so behind it would be impossible to get caught up. I still have three active pages of missions to do. I don’t know why I am talking about my game. Unless you play it, you have no idea what I am talking about, LOL.

Bottom line is that I am still feeling low. I am forcing myself to go out of the house even though the coffee that I have been drinking doesn’t have the same appeal it once did. I ended up throwing away most of it. I just couldn’t drink it. I miss my Isla Flores and Blue Java. Now they have a Mexican coffee but I have been too afraid of getting it for fear of liking it. They don’t even have my Hawaiian coffee anymore. I should have bought it when I had the chance. So I am just left with getting lattes and mochas. I really want a good cup of hot chocolate but keep forgetting to order it. It sucks that my one joy has now become mute to me. I just go to Starbucks out of habit more than a need to get a cup of Joe. It just breaks up the monotony. I hope that this mood that I am in changes. I really don’t like it.

Reflections on the Year

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, psychache, suicide, suicide attempt

Reflections on the year

This time last year I was deeply in physical pain and psychological pain and in the throws of a yet another nasty depression. I was asked to do a writing project for a friend and I didn’t think I would make it. I was sure by this time, on this date, I would be dead. And if I happened to be alive on Dec 17th, I would surely die by my own hand. I promised myself that if things were still the same, that this heaviness that I felt in my chest were not gone, that the pain in my ankle/leg/foot were not decreased, I was going to end things, permanently.

This year, things are still not a hundred percent better but things are less. My depressions are bearable when they hit. I have Wil Wheaton to thank for giving me the tidbit that my brain is not working right and that things will pass and be better tomorrow. My suicidality, though still a deep part of my soul, has decreased to the point where it is just thoughts I ruminate over and then give up. I figured out with the help of some books that this is always going to be a struggle for me, that my depression and pain are always going to be there. But like a former therapist said to me, you don’t always have to act on what you are feeling. These days, I am a little bit more hopeful about the future, though I don’t always see it. I still get hopeless every once in a while but it doesn’t last forever like it once did. I find that writing my blog has been a life saver for me. Mr. Hyde hasn’t come around in almost two months now and for that I am grateful. I have people in my life that have helped me see that I can succeed, even though I am disabled. It took a long time for me to accept my disability. Took longer to grieve it. But eventually, when I realized that part of the depression and suicidality was the grief I was not mourning, I took it apart piece by piece and wrote about it. There was nothing I could do about the pain except wait for the pain meds to work and for that I grateful that I have it. Also emailing my psychiatrist about the depth I was in helped as well. I don’t know if I am still going to have the same doc in 2014 and that scares me. I know that getting pain medication is going to be harder to get with new doctors and even harder as government rules will dictate the rules for prescribing rather than relying on clinical judgments. I don’t know what I will do then. But that is not my worry for today.

I don’t know what brought about the change. Maybe it was having a daily contact with someone miles away from me, urging me to continue my writing and work on a book. Maybe it was a little of owning the depression and taking charge of it, that it doesn’t have to rule my life like it would love to. I just know that I feel differently than I did a year ago. And though the impulses to kill myself are still a threat, I have a therapist that is behind me like a fungus that won’t go away. I really doubt without her countless sessions I would still be here. She really has been the one person that I can always rely on to be there when my mood is dark and gray. We might have our arguments about treatment but I know that she believes in me that things aren’t always going to be so bleak. I guess I have more people in my life now that believe that I can do things where last year I didn’t think I was going to survive my own lethality. I have been tested a few times this year to end my life. I have made several plans before today to end my life this year. My therapist can account for that. Though I have only had one psychotic break this year that required hospitalization. My hospitalizations have been fewer in recent years than they were in the past. I think that is more because I don’t think they help as they once did and that is a shame. You don’t get the care I once relied on.

Lastly, I have to thank country music for without listening to the same songs over and over for hours of despair, I doubt I would be able to make it though the horrible nights when I couldn’t sleep, either because of pain or despair or both. It is the one genre that I can relate to every song and let my brain do the escaping when I was writhing in agony. From songs like “water tower” by Jason Aldean to “Crash my party” by Luke Bryan, to Taylor’s endless songs and lastly to the other artists that I have followed but are not so popular, Casey James and Cassadee Pope. Without music, the heart just doesn’t heal from pain.

dark clouds circling upon me

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, psychache, suicide

I just got finished reading some more of Touched with Fire. I keep reading this book and wondering, is this me? Because the descriptions of the melancholy and the mixed states could be more like me than I have been letting on. I am not saying I need to be on more medication or anything but wow, I never thought I was truly bipolar until I read this book again.

I came across my favorite quote from Tolstoy, “I myself did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life, I struggled to get rid of it, and yet I hoped for something from it”. I think that is going to be the first line of my book, if I can get it approved. I don’t know how to do that but I will figure it out.

Funny how I wrote a hopeful blog about seeing my future and now all I see are dark clouds circling me. I am tired. I am in pain. My foot is hurting me as if there is no tomorrow. I have taken my meds but they have not kicked in quite yet. I want to end my life because I just cannot go on this way. This heaviness in my chest must cease if I am to survive. I am sure that if I see my doctor he will tell me that I must lose weight. But it is not a visible weight that you can see that is on me. It is to the left of my sternum, under my ribs that I feel this pressure just above my heart. It stifles my lungs. I have to force air in and out to keep myself breathing otherwise I fear I will stop and suffocation is no way to die. It is a painful way to die. I don’t know when the heaviness began. It seems to have reared its ugly head when I was reading about my melancholy and my mixed states. Now I am flooded with emotion that no one else can feel. It is a powerful feeling to write when you feel you are dying. Maybe I have another diagnosis called hypochondria. But this weight is too much to bear. It bored down on you like a heaviness you just cannot explain. Its tightness wraps around your heart and tries to squish it. My whole left side feels weak. I am too tired to fight it. If it is going to kill me, let it be quickly. But maybe the heaviness is trying to stifle the thousand wounds that have been inflicted upon my heart. Either way it is very unbearable and despairing and frightening. I know it is not a sign of a heart attack because I would not be so lucky to die of that. I am not sweaty. I am not short of breath. I just have a 100 pound weight on my chest that no one can see. And I am afraid should it be long continued it will kill me.

thinking of my future is so not me

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, psychache, suicide, suicide attempt

You know, I never really thought ahead with time before. I found that if I did it overwhelmed me too much so I always stuck with today or the hour or sometimes the minute because I had to. But now with this book that is turning into my baby, I am finding myself looking forward to the future more. Totally a weird sensation. I am not saying this makes me less depressed. It makes me a little less suicidal or have suicidal thoughts that float more rather than linger.

Today I have been in a weird space. I had a good session with my therapist and for some reason it put me in a good mood. Now I am wondering if I am hypomanic because I am in a good mood and have been up since 5. Things with the hypomania can spiral out of control quickly so if I am not my usual pessimistic self I tend to worry.

My writing friend said that I should write about this weird sensation but I am finding it difficult to because it is so not like me to think about the future. Usually my future is pitch black. I don’t have one. I know everyone does, but for a LONG time I just didn’t. Thinking about the future brought worry and anxiety. I had to get through today first and that was always difficult enough so I stopped thinking about future things. I still think that I can get my degree and my doctorate and be the therapist that I want to be. I know that I don’t want to be old and gray though, too. I have Alzheimer’s on both sides of my family so I know there is a good chance that I might get it. I already am having trouble with memory. I often write things and I forget that I write them. I don’t know if it is the dark side or just another part of me that was in the moment and I had these ideas. I am sure when I look back on this post, I am going to be like WTF, I wrote this?? That is so unlike me! And it is and that is what is weird.

My friend also thought that I don’t reward myself because of my suicidality. I have been suicidal for so long that I don’t think I can look past a month at a time without fearing losing my life. It’s like I am a Klingon and wake up every morning asking is this the day I am going to die? People don’t understand this. I know my family would be watching me like a hawk if they had any clue just how suicidal I have been the past few months. And the past two days I have felt like I have been in an alternate reality or something because thinking of my future is so not me. But this book that I am writing and sort of slaving over has given me a different perspective. I want to see this book published. I want to see this book successful. If I sell 100 copies, I will be happy, least for a little while. But I didn’t go on disability to be a successful writer. The bad stuff is still under the surface. I was re-reading “Touched with Fire” and came across a quote from Hugo Wolf “I appear at times merry and in good heart, talk too, before others quite reasonably and it looks as if I felt, too. God knows how well within my skin, yet the soul maintains its deathly sleep and the heart bleeds from a thousand wounds”. This is so true of me. I appear to be merry, cheerful, happy to the outside world but inside I am tormented and my heart bleeds. Nothing can stop the bleeding. I thought that working on this book would help the ache, and it has to some degree but it is still there. I might not be feeling it 100% of the time, all the time, but it is still there. I can’t deny it anymore than I can deny my foot pain that also is my nemesis. I am my own worst enemy. But today I can say that I am more a friend.