Category: suicide attempt survivor

When they say you aren’t alone but you really are…

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, CRPS, depression, mental disorders, mental illness, mood disorders, physical pain, psychosis, suicidality, suicide, suicide attempt survivor

Past few months I’ve planned my ending. Now the time has come and it all comes down to me as to whether I go through with it. Sure, I unexpectedly got my pain meds that I waited 9 months for. But I am still in pain. Meds aren’t touching flares or making them bearable.

My lower body hurts. Legs feel like cement some days and because my legs are usually bent on the bed, they don’t want to stretch when I stand. And it hurts so much trying to walk just to go downstairs to use the bathroom. Sometimes walking helps but I got to walk hunched over because being fully erect is too much pain. It just isn’t comfortable.

Foot is going berserk. So fucking tired of being on pain. Half my foot from third toe down my ankle joint outward is being ripped apart or cut open. It wants to be separated. I hate this feeling and nothing helps me. I am so fucking annoyed!! Flares have a mind of their own. This one started with my pinkie and got worse from there. Midnight has struck. I want to fucking sleep. Chloral hydrate?

I feel like I should email my dark thoughts to my psychiatrist to let her know what is going on. I don’t know if she will respond, if she will tell me to go to the hospital (not an option and I will fight it), or she will want to see me ASAP. My therapist is on vacation. He doesn’t have a clue.

See, here is the thing. I’ve been chronically suicidal for years. I spent the last few months of 1994 in the hospital. I had one attempt in the beginning of November and I didn’t get out until mid January. Basically, I had to cover up my feelings to get out. I was close to being committed to a state hospital at the age of 19. I didn’t care because my depression made me feel so worthless that nothing was going to keep me here. But eventually by stuffing the darkness, I was let out to go to college. I earned my degree, found a stable job that I didn’t go to school for. And then tried to back to earn my bachelor’s degree only to suffer a psychotic episode that I never recovered from until months later on the right meds.

All that time, my suicidality fluctuated. I had a serious depressive episode in 2005. Things sort of got better in 2006. Two years later was the psychotic episode and I had to quit college. 4 years later I had a condition known as complex regional pain syndrome and that threw me on the disability table. Now I feel my life is over and I have a plan on ending it soon. I planned it back in March. I really was going to end it June 30th. But things happen and I push it back. Then pushed it back again. Now I am on the cusp and I don’t know what to do.

People always say you aren’t alone, but the truth is, when you are an attempt survivor, you are. You know what to say to get in and out of hospitals and what to say to avoid them. But the thoughts remain. They still circle your brain. And when you are in severe pain, you want to end it now. But patience is needed. I can’t end it on my bed for a family member to find me. I have a location in mind. I am scared of myself and omg what if I do die. If I succeed. Failure has happened and prevented me from attempting again. Now I am wanting to try again. I have no idea if I will succeed.

No one wants to hear me out. Soon as I say I want to end my life, people panic. They get angry. They tell you stuff that makes you feel guilty. And then you think why bother. Just go on suffering for THEM. So they don’t feel the pain you go through every single day. I’ve been doing this for years. My previous therapist prevented so many dates that could have been attempts. Sometimes I was hospitalized. Sometimes I just had more contact with her and or my psychiatrist.

I wish I could say I gave a fuck. But I am tired of hurting so damn much in the midnight hours of hell. When the midnight demons come out in me. I am a dark person. I pretend to be happy, to get along with everyone. That is what is expected of me. It hurts me to see others hurt. I’ve always been an emotionally sensitive person.

I have no idea if what the hell I am writing makes sense. I had to get the thoughts out of my head. It is going to be a flip of the coin the day of my doom. Imagine that. A coin having the power to live or die. I am pathetic.

Just when I think…

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, CRPS, depression, mood disorders, suicidality, suicide attempt survivor

Just when I think I don’t have to kill myself, I can make it, pain proves me wrong. No matter what I do. I can’t hang in any longer.

I still have a date in mind. I don’t know if I have the capability to do it. I’ve failed before, what makes me think I can end my life this time?? If it was that easy, I would be dead by now. I am tired of hurting. My heart hurts too, physically
and emotionally. The pain is so bad it is giving me palpitations and sometimes chest pain due to anxiety. It goes away with Ativan so I know it is not a cardiac issue. Anxiety is such a bitch.

Someone is hammering my lateral malleolus. It has a name. funny thing though is that I have bony things on the medial malleolus which doesn’t hurt. Go figure that out. Maybe it is referred pain. Medical mystery…

SPSM and Prezi and being a suicide attempt survivor

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

SPSM and Prezi and being a suicide attempt survivor

For the first time in a long time, I felt I was useful to the #SPSMChat that goes on every Sunday at 10 pm EST on Twitter. I learned about Prezi, which I am not sure what it is yet. I thought it was a video thingy but I couldn’t figure it out and I am much to tired to try. I did make a couple of layouts but it crashed my Chrome and internet so I think I will stick with IE.

What I was talking about with Prezi was being a suicide attempt survivor. Twenty-five years ago today marks the actual day I got help, or tried to. It was a very confusing time and my mother had a hard time accepting me as being suicidal. She was worried about me, as is understandable. But I had my own world to contend to that she didn’t know about. I will write that in another blog, but for now, just know that I was living between two worlds, one that I created internally to cope with the external world.

It wasn’t easy the first few days after my attempt, if you want to call it that. My wrist hurt from cutting and then I found out that cutting really released emotion better than talking did. So I started having my cutting kit. I had to be very secretive but then, I sort of was as I was living in two worlds. I had two facades, the one that school saw and the one my home life saw. It wasn’t much different except at home I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t talk to my sisters and my father was not there after his violent outburst the day before. A week after all this suicide talk and me not getting any better, my sisters felt that he had to know. I had a large decorative knife outside my bedroom door. I swore he was going to tell me to kill myself by stabbing myself with it. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, he told me to jump off the Tobin bridge. He was giving me permission to kill myself essentially. Nice guy, huh?

I was a straight A student at school. I also had perfect attendance until that night. I think I had to skip school one day to meet with a counselor so that ended my perfect attendance record for the year. It didn’t matter, I lost interest in school. Nothing mattered to me except for dying. I was 15 years old. The school nurse helped me a lot for the rest of my years in high school. I don’t think I would have graduated if it wasn’t for her. She gave me hope every time I saw her and I knew that I couldn’t let her down by being depressed. She wanted me better so I saw the school counselor instead of going to a private therapist. Unfortunately, when the school year ended, so did therapy. I was deeply depressed, more so than I already was. The nurse got me in touch with a social worker at the community school. I saw her for about ten months before she got married and left. I had a breakdown. I skipped school for a week and then in April of 1992, I tried to kill myself again. I threw up the pills and thus saved my life. I lost all hope that I ever was going to die. I felt like more of a failure than I ever was. That summer, I had my first hospitalization and thus started the cycle. I was hospitalized every three months because my suicidality reached its peak and I couldn’t cope with life anymore. The third time I went into the hospital, I came out as being gay. I had dissociated while cutting because I felt an attraction toward a woman on the T (public transportation). I thought I was going nuts until I met someone in the hospital who was also gay. I came out with my treatment team and felt a huge burden off my shoulders. It wasn’t until two decades later I would come out as being transgender.

My teenage years were filled with hospitalizations and cutting. It was a vicious cycle that continued into my twenties. After graduation from high school, I had my longest hospitalization because I overdosed again on the antidepressant I was taking at the time. I was determined to die and no one was going to stop me. Except, a Jewish doctor that felt I had some hope. She told me the only way out of the hospital was if I were to see her. The outside therapist I saw didn’t want to see me anymore. She couldn’t handle my suicidality. So I started seeing her but my suicidality increased. I was in and out of the hospital from August of 1994 to Jan 1995. I felt like no one could love me. Until I met a boy from Nebraska. He was gay and he loved me unconditionally. He didn’t care about my past. He wanted to help me. And he did. I felt that if I had him, I could heal. It took a while to trust him and I did. We had long conversations about school and life and being gay. We joined BAGLY and met others like ourselves. I still felt like an outsider because I really felt like I was a man. I was too scared to tell anyone this. So I was called a lesbian or gay woman instead. My self hatred rose to new levels. But I always held it in check.

Amazingly, I graduated a two year school for medical assisting. I was still cutting. I changed therapists, again. This time I was seeing a male therapist. It wasn’t too long before I fired him. I had obtained the medication to overdose again and when I told him, he asked if I was suicidal. It was the most stupidest question I was ever asked. Do people obtain large quantities of medication just for the hell of it? Granted I didn’t tell him I was suicidal, but getting asked point blank was kind of silly.

After this therapist, I really didn’t want to see anyone else again. It was really tough because either they left me or I fired them. Most of them couldn’t deal with my suicidality as an outpatient. They just thought the hospital was the way to go. By the time I was 25, I had about as many hospitalizations in ten years time. I just figured that was the way life was going to be. I was going to be in and out of hospitals for the rest of my life and I didn’t like that option.

It took years for suffering till I was an undergraduate at a university where I was taking psychology classes. My cutting had stopped, least for now. I had met my current therapist and she wanted to help me. I was taking a class for psychometrics testing. I researched stuff about suicide and couldn’t find a damn one that dealt with pain. There was an overview of assessments, twenty-five in all, and not a single one dealt with psychological pain. Then I came across the works of Dr. Edwin Shneidman. He lead me to David Jobes and the world of suicidology was open before me. I still felt like a hypocrite when I became a member in 2007 but I learned so much. My hospitalization started to decrease. I was using Jobes’ work in my therapy. I was also using Holden’s work as well. My pain finally had a name, psychache. And with it I could finally stop the bleeding. I couldn’t control the bleeding because I still bleed to this day, but it’s much less now that it’s acknowledge and talked about.

I still don’t have supportive parents. My sisters try to be supportive around my transgender issues but I can tell they would just like me to be my birth name and gender. They don’t know how much my suicidality surrounds me not being in the correct body. I hope in time they will.

coming out as transgender

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicidality, suicide attempt, suicide attempt survivor, transgender

Coming out as a transgendered male (Female to Male) has not been an easy thing to do. It has been a very confusing road since kindergarten. The hardest part of the journey was puberty. I had a male best friend and I seriously thought that we were of the same genders up until I started developing. When I started developing breasts and he didn’t, I was confused so much that I wanted to die. But when you are eleven, the concept of killing yourself is not completely formulated. You knew you wanted to die, but didn’t know how. You knew that suffocation by a plastic bag would do the trick, but were too scared you would get into trouble with your parents. That fear prevented a lot of suicide attempts, especially during adolescence. The more I developed into something that conflicted with my brain, the more it hurt. But it wasn’t a physical pain like that of a broken limb. The psychological pain was so intense that suicide was all that I thought about. The higher the pain, the deeper the suicidal impulses would emerge. But I had to be a “good girl” and fight what was wrong. I suppressed the feelings of maleness but still acted like a “tomboy” in every fiber of my being. I wore baseball hats whenever I could. My father disliked it so much, he often threatened to cut up my hats when I got “caught” wearing one. To him I was a girl and I should act like one. My sisters did act like their gender roles, but that make up and hairspray were something I was not into nor had an interest in. Boys didn’t wear those things and neither would I.

When my menses started, that really started the hardest part of the conflict to deal with. I was bleeding and I didn’t understand why. I was welcomed into “womanhood” and I wanted nothing to do with it. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t growing a penis. It was a very confusing time and month after month, I hated myself more and more. Even the use of feminine products was abhorrent to me. The more I grew into a freaking woman, the more I hated myself. I prayed for death every night. But no one knew of this struggle. Not even my best friend. With him, we were buddies. I was “Mike” and we played pretend male gendered games such as me being a mechanic or cable repairman. When T-ball season came around, I asked my father if I could play. But he stuffed my dreams of playing saying that is only for “boys” not for girls. I was beyond hurt.

During middle school, my sisters would have boyfriends. I never had an interest in boys. I was a boy so why would I be interested in my own gender. I didn’t have feelings for girls either. For the longest time, I thought I was asexual. It wasn’t until I was in therapy after my family fell apart that my therapist asked if I was gay. I felt really uncomfortable with the question. I just was saying I hadn’t found the right “boy” for me. She didn’t have to know that I was a boy inside just waiting to come out. I had suppressed it so much that I really didn’t think about it at this time.

When I first became suicidal, it was when I was fifteen. My family had fallen apart and I fell apart with it. My father called me a liar and my world ended. I was no longer a good “girl” in his eyes so there was nothing to live for. I started self-harm by cutting, thinking it would bring me to the verge of death, but all it did was bring my internal pain to the outside. After that therapist asked the “gay” question, I started thinking about it, but it was on a subconscious level. I remember being on the train and these really good looking women were on it. And I don’t know what possessed me, but I wanted to kiss them and it didn’t phase me that it was wrong. When I got hold of my senses (I made no such act toward them for fear of being called a freak), I was shocked. I grew up as an Italian Catholic and I knew homosexuality was forbidden. I knew I couldn’t bring it up in therapy. I was too proud to do so. Yet I continued to feel like I was crazy. Then things started to make sense to me. The voices that I was hearing, all were female except for one or two of them. I have been hearing voices since I was five, but that is another issue.

When I was sixteen, a therapist that I was seeing was leaving. I was very hurt. I felt I had nothing to live for with her leaving me. So in April 1993, I overdosed. The pain of living my life as what I was, was too great to bear. Subconsciously, I always wanted to die because I was in the wrong body. And I finally made an attempt to kill myself because of it. Though when I was asked the reasons, I just said I was depressed. No one figured out why I was so depressed. People never talked about being transgendered or being gay. Yet here I was, in the mix of being a confused teenager and had no one to turn to for help. Because I had suppressed so much of myself, I couldn’t even bring it to the surface. I had other issues to contend with, such as the break up of my parents.

Then suddenly women were attractive to me, something that has not happened before and I liked it. I thought I was crazy and that no one would understand. I felt isolated and despondent. There wasn’t a gay person that I knew and this was before the age of the internet so it wasn’t like I could ask Google what to do. Instead I internalized and compartmentalized. Then one day in January when I was 17, I started cutting myself and I didn’t stop until I was satisfied. But I didn’t know I did it. I knew I did it as I was holding a razor but I didn’t cut myself. I dissociated. That landed me in the hospital. I met a homosexual male and asked him about being gay. He told me that it was natural and that I wasn’t crazy. I took a chance and told the staff I was gay. I didn’t get a lifetime commitment in the psych ward. I felt a huge burden was lifted off my chest. But my Best friend that I had known since I was in diapers, didn’t like me being gay. He felt if we had sex, that would change me. But we already tried that and every time we were intimate, things turned off. I just wasn’t attracted sexually to males.

Fast forward to now. Around the time I was thirty-three, I started realizing that I wasn’t going to magically become a male. I came out in my therapist office and started crying like a baby because it was the source of my suicidality. I had been really suicidal and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. Then when my menses came, I immediately became suicidal. Since I put two and two together, I realized that I was a male and it was time that I stop repressing myself. I wear male clothing all the time, except for that time of the month that I am forced to endure. Trying to stop the female reproductive system has been the hardest task for me to endure.

I was recently hospitalized and am just a little over a week since I have been discharged. The reason I was in the hospital was because I had overdosed on some pills. I couldn’t take the self-hate anymore about being a transgender. There were other reasons too, but being in the wrong body took precedence over the others. I hate feeling like this. I know there are treatments out there but there is a lot of stigma that prevents it from coming to people like me. I am not sure I want the sex organs either but I do know I want a double mastectomy. There are days when I am okay with having breasts and then there are other days, I can’t stand them. I hope one day I can take the next step forward. But I got to first like myself because if I don’t have that, I won’t have anything to like or live for.