Category: psychache

Enduring the unendurable

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

I thought I would try and write a little bit about my thinking about suicide and what it means. I have spent the last hour reading up on Shneidman’s psychache, the psychological pain that encompasses you to think only about ending the pain, even if it means ending your life. Then I read some more about the factors that go into psychache and suicidal thinking. It was a refresher course in knowing about suicide as psychache.

In getting to what my therapist wanted to me to write about constriction, there really is nothing to write. It is a term concocted by Shneidman that basically means you are fixated on one thing to ease your pain. But what I did come across, that is interesting, is what the Emperor of Japan said to his people after the end of WWII. He basically told them to “endure the unendurable and suffer what is unsufferable” so as to contain any suicides as the Japanese are an honorable country. That thinking is the formula for outliving a suicidal crisis.

I have been feeling good the past few days and don’t know why. I don’t know if it is hypomania or what but my mood has totally did an about face. It is eerily weird to feel so carefree. Yet in the back of my mind I am scheming and plotting to end my life in two months. Least that is what I think I am thinking. But then my friend from Nebraska reconnected with me. I am thinking that maybe I can take the Emperor’s advice and try to keep enduring the unendurable. I know I say this now that I am not experiencing any dysphoria or physical pain. I just can’t think that I can stop thinking about killing myself is somehow contributing to my euphoric feelings because I know I have a way out of my suffering. It is a funny place to be, and I don’t mean the ha ha kind of funny. I never have felt good for more than a few days at a time and this go round will be almost a week that I have felt up.

Since reconnecting with my college friend, I feel that I must tell him that I might not be around that much longer. I think he has the right to know as we have been friends for almost fifteen years now. But will I cause worry? Will he believe me when I tell him this? Or will he just chalk it up with the myth that talking about it means you won’t do it? I won’t know until I tell him. I rather he find it out from me than from someone else, though seeing as we have few friends in common, the likelihood of him finding out will be slim/next to none. But then I wonder how many of my friends will find out that I have died. I thought of writing a note to someone to tell them what to do as I don’t think my family would be able to do it but I don’t think that I can do that. Most likely that friend would ignore me or think that I am just talking.

picking dates

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

I started writing my lyrics book. I don’t know if I will ever get it published because of copyrights but I will worry about that when I am close to finishing.

I was supposed to get my blood work done today but I forgot my lab slip and headphones but didn’t want to miss the bus so I guess it will have to be another day.

It always surprises me the way people think about suicide and suicidal thinking. They think that you must be angry at someone or something. That something is keeping you here or you would have done it or that you are all talk until you do it. Or that you have to be in some mega pain (correctly so) to think of such things. I guess there still is some people that think that because they have had some experience with suicide because they themselves have thought about or even acted about it, they think they are experts. Well they are, to a degree. Not all people want to help after they have attempted. Some shy away from it and call it just a bad experience and vow never to go down that road again. Some continue to be suicidal, like myself. But I still want to help those that are suffering because it means that someone cares.

I have been writing for months (or what seems like months) about having a suicidal plan. The only people that know are my readers and my therapist. I am fearful of bringing up the subject with my psychiatrist for being hospitalized against my will. There are days, like today, that I don’t think I will go through with my plan. Then there are times that I think I will just for kicks and giggles. But the hardest part of this crazy plan is that it is not too detailed. I have a vague idea about what exactly I will be doing to kill myself. And because of this vagueness, I feel that I shouldn’t go through with it. The last thing I want is another failed attempt. That would devastate me more than anything.

As I was writing my lyric book, the first song that was on my list of songs was O.A.R’s “Shattered”. How fucking fitting. All throughout my suicidal career, I have always seemed to “turn the car around” and get back to my bearings, meaning that no matter how bad things were for me, I got through it, somehow, some way. And I am talking pitch black darkness. I don’t know what got me through each battle. Someone’s kindness, the neediness of my nieces and nephew, the words of my therapist or psychiatrist. I just don’t know but I got through it and some how came out the other side unscathed.

When I was a teenager and young adult, I cut to relieve myself of the awful pressure and pain that I was feeling. Today, the scars remind me that there were bad times and I got through with them. They are sort of like hash marks for all the trials and tribulations that I have gone through in my life. I don’t talk about these scars with anyone. They are just there as a reminder that I have seen darker days and some how pulled through. It helps to have these scars because they are real. They are the reminders I need to pull through along the rough patches that I continue to face. It is like they are almost saying, “you go through that, you can get through this”.

The trouble is, this time I don’t know if I want to “turn the car around”. I want my suffering to end. I want my pain to end, both physically and psychologically. I am tired of fighting every day. But then I have days like today where the battle doesn’t seem to great and I make it another day. But I am so scared of what tomorrow or tonight might bring. I never know when my demons will emerge from the darkness. So I have a date I look forward to. A date that will decide my fate, to test my resilience. To see if I will go through with ending my life. It is after all my choice. No one can really stop me for if not this date, then I will just pick another date.

Next song on my list is Linkin Park’s “numb”. How fitting.

Your Word

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression, mood disorders, psychache, psychosis, suicide, suicide attempt

I think I should just give up sleep. I just can’t get sleepy tonight. I have my head racing a mile a minute and the voices won’t shut up so I am playing music because it is the only thing that calms me down. I had to go up on my meds to quiet them out. I love when I have three conversations going on in my head at once. It gets loud and noisy. Drives me crazy. Just picture a crowded lunch room with a bunch of people talking at once. That is what is going on in my head right now. Doesn’t help that I should not have had the sausage for dinner. My stomach is killing me. I just took some antacid. I wish I could fall asleep but it just isn’t happening. I am too wound up. The voices keep asking me questions. What am I doing? what am I writing? How am I feeling? What do you think of this? What do you think of that? UGH I just want to sleep and they just don’t get it. Least they aren’t telling me what to do. But I am scared the new voices, the ones that are having a big conversation might turn against me. Then I will have to go to the hospital. I would hate that.

I don’t know why I have been so angry lately, more annoyed, than I have been. Started with someone calling me a bullshitter. I am not. I can’t even if I tried and then you will know that it is. I did realize that if I don’t go through with my plans to end my life, I will be breaking a promise to myself and I don’t know if I can live with that because I have let myself down so many times. That is why I keep future dates. But this time I really mean it. I am not going to see 2014. I just can’t face another year of being in pain. I know I should learn to live with it but I just can’t. I can’t break a promise to myself that I will end the suffering. What started this all was reading today’s AAS (American Association of Suicidology) blog. I felt like I could go on if only I could live with the pain. But I can’t. It’s too unbearable. It might not be all the time. It might not be every day. But when it hits, I just want to curl up and die. But instead I am just popping pills. I am a pill popper. And I don’t like it. I am ashamed of it. But with out these pills, I am in horrific pain. And isn’t it better that I am not in pain while popping these pills? It’s a catch 22 and you can’t eat your cake too. Though I would have loved some cake tonight. I miss having desserts. I used to have pie all the time when I was at work but then the pies got sucky and I switched to cake. Some cakes were better than others. I wouldn’t eat the frosting, just the cake part because that is what I like, with a little bit of frosting not a glob. Though sometimes in my moods for chocolate, I will eat the frosting, if it isn’t too sweet. But I digress…

Right now my stomach and throat hurt. Not because of the same reasons. I knew I shouldn’t have had the greasy sausage so that is why my stomach is acting up. My throat is acting up because I still have whatever virus or bacteria I caught last week. I have the A/c going because it is quite warm in my room and humid. I cannot stand humidity. So now I am freezing in my winter pjs and have my comforter on. Oh well.

What does your word mean if you don’t keep it? I mean we all make promises to ourselves all the time. We promise to go on a diet, to go to the gym, etc. but what if you make a promise to kill yourself? How can you not keep that promise when it means so much to you? I am struggling with that question. I mean if you give your word to someone, you generally keep it, least I do. That is why I am still here. Because I have kept my word to her that I would not kill myself. But what about my word to myself? Don’t I get the same kind of respect? Am I disrespecting myself by not keeping my word to MYSELF? I don’t know. Maybe promises to yourself are meant to be broken and only those for others are to be kept. It just hurts that I have to live to please others when I am disrespecting myself knowing that I should be dead.

Also what has been ticking me off is that the prez of the AAS thinks he can stop suicide from ever happening. He is fooling himself. I half want to say to him, dude, if you can save me you can save the world but I don’t tell him my true feelings. How can I in 140 characters on twitter? Even the founder of the AAS has stated that he does not want to live in a world where suicide doesn’t exist. Suicide is and always will be an individual choice that no one else can make but you. So why am I still hanging on?

Am I still a midnight demon?

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

I am up again in pain. I am thinking of changing my name from midnight demon to something else as I no longer write in the wee hours of the morning anymore. I guess I wrote in the wee hours because I was up late from my job and couldn’t sleep because of the dark thoughts that I had. Now I write at any time I feel like it, morning, afternoon, evening, or even after the midnight hour. I have the time to write more now that I am no longer working. I don’t know if this is a good thing or bad. But least I have the flexibility to do it.

Like I said I am in pain. My throat is killing me again. I thought it was getting better but I guess not. I plan on calling my primary’s office soon as they are open to see if I can come in sooner than Thursday. This is just getting ridiculous. The pain is much less than it was but still, I have to take my pain meds to quiet it down and I don’t like using my meds for something as benign as throat pain. The cough syrup helps but it only lasts about a half hour to an hour, which is about the time my meds kick in. I know I don’t have strep because I think I would feel worse than what I have been feeling. Who would have thought that a sneeze can cause all this. I think I might have an infection. If I don’t they I really screwed up my throat muscles or connective tissues when I had that horrific sneeze.

The pain is not bad enough that I am thinking of killing of myself but then, pain doesn’t have to happen for me to think about it. I just keep wondering how it will be when I am dead. To not be able to feel anymore, to not hurt psychologically anymore. To not actually be dead when I already feel dead inside. Since work ended, I thought that things would change for the better but I still feel the same. I might not have the same pressures I did when I was working, the whole being at work on time and dealing with the idiots at work, but I still feel this pressure on my chest every day. Sometimes it is so bad, I can’t breath. I know my respiratory system does my breathing anyway but it just feels like I can’t breath because of this weight. I guess even though the job is away, the psychache isn’t. I still have the psychological pain, pressure, and press. What made me want to kill myself to get away from my job, I now want to get away because I can’t stand living. I know that if I had some purpose to my life I would probably feel better. If I had some direction or something to do other than just thinking of writing or playing my internet games, maybe I wouldn’t feel so low. But it’s hard when your depression causes you to feel unmotivated. I could have cleaned my room twice over by now if I had the energy to do so but I don’t. I look at the mess and I just get overwhelmed with it and say the hell with it. I have no where to put my clothes anyway. I can’t hang them up as my closet is full already and so is my one bureau. My room is small enough that it cannot fit another one. I bought a bookcase for my room thinking I could fit some clothes on it but it got full with all the books that I have lying around. I buy a lot of books. I am currently reading like 5 books right now, though really, I am just spending most of my time on one. But even reading I have a hard time doing sometimes. It takes a lot of energy for me to read for an hour. The book that I am reading interests me but I can only pay attention to it for so long before I want to go to sleep or go back on twitter. I am a Twitter addict, I confess.

I had read a few short books for a friend so I could review them. That was something to do. The hard part was actually writing the review. The books left a positive impression but I couldn’t get it out on word. This is the third time that I have written a review for my friend. I am thinking of doing that for all the books I read from now on. It doesn’t take long to do it. But there are some books like the suicide books I read that are a bit technical for some people. They may not be a favorite but it is good to have a review for people to read. I wish I had done that for the suicidology book I bought. That book, you would think would be a textbook on the working of suicidology, actually sucked. It just talked about what I call the outer layer of suicide. If a person is suicidal, this is what you do rather than what you do to help the person. The book is not empirically based, least I don’t think it is from what I remember. But then some time has past since I last looked at the book.

Why do I love reading about suicide? Because I think that if I understand it better, I can help myself so I can be less suicidal. But back in 2012, when I was at the annual conference of the American Association of Suicidology, I realized that I am a hopeless case. That I will never get better because I cannot find someone to stand the pain with me. My therapist tries, but she gets anxious when I talk about suicide and then we spend more time talking about other stuff than what is important. I recently asked her if we can talk about the roots of my suicidality and didn’t learn much about it. I started thinking of suicide when I was eight years old. I had tremendous pain at that age that no one knew about. I learned to live with it all this time by not speaking about it. Why was I in pain? I don’t know. My memory is not as good as it once was. They say that all the answers lie inside you but for answering why I was suicidal I have no clue. I don’t know why I was in pain. I could have been in pain because I did not have a happy childhood. I had an abusive father and an abusive mother that was sexually interested in me. I also did not believe that I was a girl growing up. I wanted to be Mike but I couldn’t show it or even speak of it for fear of getting the shit kicked out of me. Maybe that is the reason for my pain. I don’t know. But whatever that is causing this pain is making my life intolerable.