Category: suicide attempt

frustrated, why yes I am!!

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

Feeling really frustrated. I didn’t get my Long Term disability approved today as they still need more information which means I won’t have any money for the next four weeks. I am also frustrated because I am down to my last few tablets of pain meds because apparently I have been in more pain this week causing me to use what I had. Now I have a few to carry me till Monday because my PCP thinks I am an overdose risk because of my mental illness. My safety with my narcotics have never been an issue and both my psychiatrist and therapist can vouch that I have found more lethal methods of killing myself than overdosing. I am just so damn aggravated that I have to be swimming in pain and then just when I think I am going to get relief my PCP decides I have to stay on the boat and I can’t come to shore. I have to continue to suffer this game of his, not mine. I understand the risks involved but withholding pain meds to a chronic pain patient just doesn’t make sense to me especially when that pain makes me want to kill myself. I have not thought of killing myself since this regimen but then my mood has been alleviated somewhat. The reason for this I am not sure other than I just can’t stop and think of how shitty my life truly is at the moment because if I stop and do think, I might be back in the abyss faster than David Copperfield disappeared the statue of liberty.

I am so tired of fighting for everything. I fight to stay alive when I don’t know why, I struggle just to make ends meet and I struggle just to make it through the day without causing harm to myself.  And now I have to struggle to deal with my pain meds when before I was given them freely. I have not and will not harm myself with these drugs. The rope I have in my room will suffice. Or the many plastic bags I have in my house will do. I just have to concoct some brilliant plan that doesn’t allow my family to find me, find some location off and hide myself with my ID so they do not have to have that awful experience.

I see my doc on Monday and I hope that I can hold out until then. I have had to use more pain meds because I have been in more pain lately. I don’t know why. Sometimes I have pain while going about my business and other times like today I am hurting really bad and all I want to do is cry. My back and leg is giving me the Nth degree of pain and I don’t know what hurts more. I got someone stabbing me in the back and my ankle is exploding in nerve pain. I think me adding neurontin might have helped me sleeping better.  I just don’t know what combo will work one night and what will work the next. It so fricken sucks not knowing and no doctor can say just why this is. They just have their own ideas on what will work and what will not but even then it is a trial and error game.  It’s like with my trials of antidepressants. I have been on ALL of them. I can run off the list but that will be pointless because I am sure that most of you will say yes I have had success with this one or that one. I currently have had some success with Cymbalta but it is expensive and when my insurance runs out I am not sure I can continue to take it. Then we have all the mood stabilizers and surprisingly, I have not been back on one since Jan of this year. I think that I might go back to it but not right now. I have not been having the ups and downs of life just mostly really, really, really DOWNS. Twenty years ago I probably would have been committed to a hospital as I have been in and out of the hospital since I was sixteen.

I have been having a harder time. This has been since I found out my father’s liver cancer has spread to the good part of his liver. He is now facing radiation treatment. I guess you can say that he is having his due for the cruelty he brought to my sisters and mother, though he will deny it, saying he was a “good father” and that he was “just joking”. I am sure that he was “joking” when he told me to jump off the bridge when he found out I was suicidal. That was a painful night when he came to my room. I was sure that he wanted me to stab myself with the huge knife that was hanging outside my bedroom door but no, he said if I wanted to kill myself, to go jump off the bridge. I guess I finally got “permission” to end my life. My life is obviously worthless to him. That is why when people tell me I matter I do not believe them. How can I when my father told me how to kill myself?  Here’s a clue dad, it is not a joke what you told me. I took it to heart just like when you called me a liar and said that I was nothing. I am nothing. I am worthless, my life does not have any meaning. How could it?

Maya Calendar

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

The Maya calendar is a based upon a sophisticated system of days and how they relate to the moon, sun, and planet.  There are many calendars that make up the Maya calendar.  The “Haab” or solar calendar is made up of 260 days.  The year is broken down into eighteen months and each month has twenty days with one month containing 5 days to account for the leap year.  The other Maya calendar is called the Vague year and it is made up of 365 days.  This is because the Maya did not account for leap days.  Interlocking these two calendars is called the sacred round called the Tzolkin.  The Tzolkin means ‘count of days’.  This was created so that certain days could not be repeated for 52 years.  During each 52-year cycle, the Vague year got 13 days out of step with the solar year, the earth’s actual 365.244 days of revolution around the sun.  (Fifty-two times .2422 of an unaccounted for days equal 13.) (Libasi, 1976:11)

            Unlike our current superstitions, the Maya deem the number 13 as sacred.  The Maya used a counting system based on the number twenty, most likely derived from the twenty digits of the hands and feet (Marcus, 1991:26).  The day names of their calendar were based on animals and natural phenomenon (e.g. earthquakes, wind, etc) and varied from group to group.  The combination of a given number and day name formed a unit that could not recur until 260 days (20 x 13) had elapsed (Marcus, 1991:26). 

            The day names were so important to the Maya, that children were often named for the day of their birth resulting in such names as 2 Wind, 3 Crocodile, 5 Flower, 6 Monkey, and 8 Deer.  The day names were given a hieroglyph, which consisted of a combination of a dot and bar.  The dot stands for a single digit of one through four.  The bar stands for the number five (e.g. “8 Deer would be written three dots above one bar with a picture of a deer.)  Among the Maya, the number was placed to the left or above the name (Marcus, 1991:26-27). 

            In the ancient city of Zapotec, a monument was found dating between 2,600 and 2,500 years old.  Monuments found in this city suggest that the 260-day calendar was the first used in Mesoamerica.  During this discovery, the 365-day calendar was found.  The 260 and 365 day calendars were used in combination to produce a cycle of dates that did not recur for a period of 52 years.  This system set the stage for a more sophisticated method of reckoning time, the so called Long Count calendar.  This calendar, for which the later Maya are famous for, first appeared in a series of monuments that belong in regions where the Zoque-speaking Indians lived (Marcus, 1991:26-29). 

The Maya have several different languages for each of the different regions that surround the Yucatan, Belize, and El Salvador.  This results in having multiple names of the month in the solar calendar of the Maya.   The solar calendar is made up of eighteen months, consisting of twenty days and different glyphs representing them.  Each year follows different seasons than the one before.  For example, in the Yucetec language, in the Julian year A.D. 1553-1554, the Maya month Pop, the first month in the solar calendar, corresponds to July 16 to August 4.  This date changes in the Julian year in A.D. 956-957, Pop is the time period between December 16 to January 4.  The differences seem to revolve around the seasons of wet versus dry.  The dating of the Maya calendar may have begun as far back as 550 B.C. during the middle pre-classic period and may have started during the winter season (Marcus, 1991).

The “Haab” consisted of the 18 months of 20 days plus a 5-day intercalary “month” that represented an adjustment of the Maya vigesimal system to the 365-day solar year.  This 5-day month accounted for the leap year correction (Bricker, 1982:101-103).  For the several languages of the Maya in the different regions of Mesoamerica, there were different names of the months.  For example, Pop is the first month in the Yucatec language and Huc Uicil is the name of the first month in the Tzeltal language (Bricker, 1982:101-103). 

The planet Venus to the Maya’s reckoning of time and how the calendar round was developed as a result of the Maya to calculate Venus’ synodic period.  This period consisted of 584 days, which correlated with five times 584 equals 8 times 365 so that 5 correspond to a vague year.  A Vague year is defined as 365 days that are not intercalated leap days.  Because the Maya were in awe of time, they devised two interlocking calendars, one of 365 days and the other of 260 days, which come together every 18,980 days or 52 years (which correlated to our Julian calendar (Libasi, 1976:11-15).

The Long Count is the most commonly used time period of all the Maya time keeping records.  The start date of the long count is August 13, 3114 B.C. (Marcus, 1991:28).  The Long Count has five set of numbers beginning with the largest cycle of four-hundred 360-day years (144,000 days) called Baktun, followed by the Katun, twenty 360-day years (7,200 days).  The next unit, Tun, was the eighteen-month year (360-days).  This was followed by the month of 20 days (Uinal) followed by the smallest unit, the Kin (Marcus, 1991, Closs 1977).  Like the Haab, there were eighteen months.  Because there are many languages of the Maya, so to are there different names of the months (Bricker, 1992).  For all months name here in, I will be using the Yucetec language, as it is more complete than any other language.  The first month of the year is Pop, the second, Uo, Zip, Zodz, Zec, Xul, Yaxkin, Mol, Ch’en, Yax, Zac, Ceh, Mac, Kankin, Muan, Pax, Cumku (also known as Uayeb) (Bricker, 1992).  The string of numbers corresponds to a date in the “haab”.  For example, my birthday, Dec. 23, 1975 converted to the Maya Long Count would be 12.18.2.8.7, the Tzolkin date would be 11 Manuik, and the Haab 15 Mac.  The sum of these days would be 1858487 days (12 Baktun x 144,000, 18 Katuns, x 7,200 2 Tuns x 720 , 8 Uinals x 20 and 7 Kins). (Hartley, 2002).

In conclusion, the Maya was able to record time in a number of different ways.  Their level of sophistication without the use of calculators, computers, and other forms of mathematical calculation is very impressive.

 

Bibliography:

 

Aveni, Anthony.  “Time, Number, and History on the Maya World.”

Kronoscope 1 (2001): 29-61

 

Bricker, Victoria. “The Origin of Maya Solar Calendar.”

Current Anthropology.  23.1 (Feb. 1982):101-103

 

Libassi, Paul. “Observations Without Telescopes.”

The Sciences. (Mar/Apr. 1976): 11-15

 

Marcus, Joyce. “First Dates.”

Natural History.  100.4 (Apr. 1991): 26-30

pain as a midnight demon

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

feb 15,2011

It’s 3:30 and I can’t sleep. I have been trying to go to sleep for the past 2 hours to no avail. The nerve pain in my left leg has started up and it feels like some one is pinching me.  Since my Godfather’s death last week, I have been in a weird state of mind where suicidal thoughts have been blunted.  Now that my physical pain has started up again, I am thinking of ending it.

For the past two weeks, my neck has been hurting. I finally made an appointment with my PCP and of course he is away until Wednesday. Never ceases to amaze me that whenever I need him the most he is away. I’m not sure if this neck pain is due to the car accident I had a few weeks ago or if it’s just because of stress.

 

I finally called the loan people. I have to pay more than I was expecting which means I’ll have to work more in the chem lab than I would like. I am so tired right now to working in that place and the thought of having to work extra days to afford the loans is just killing me. But I have no choice. It’s either I pay them the same amount or they garnish my wages that 15%. The nice thing about doing it this way is that after nine months I will be out of default and hopefully my credit will be better. I won’t be totally fucked.

 

I again had a phone session with Bozo because I was just too lazy to get out of bed. I don’t even remember what we talked about but she again reiterated what I was saying which totally annoyed me. We talked about my nephew for a little bit and his grandiose schemes, which I have to laugh because nobody seems to know what grandiose means. It’s funny how psych babble seems to enter my vocabulary without me even being aware of it. Hard to believe that 10 years ago I was lying in a hospital bed wondering if I’ll ever walk again. Around this time the staph infection, was making me very sick. And today I am able to walk but all I have left is this fricken pain that haunts me every night, causing me to lose sleep more than my depression ever could.

I am supposed to be off tomorrow. I hope that I sleep all day. I have not taken any Ativan tonight. But I just took 1200 mg of gabapentin to try and see if that controls this pain. I guess that is all I have to say for now.

songs that make you think

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

Because I don’t keep up with my music, I just purchased a song I already have thinking it was a new song by Lifehouse. Song is called broken and I find that I resonate with the lyrics. I find that I am my heart is still beating despite a broken heart and I’m hanging on another day because I can’t end my life.  People always say that you will be ok and I often put in hope in that statement but when the next day I feel the sting of the pain of living I doubt this hope I have been searching for is true. Maybe hope is just something people give so they can feel better about themselves when the person they are telling it to is hopeless beyond hopeless.  They do whatever it takes to get the person that is feeling hopeless to feel hope again, if just for a day because they know that if they do not, suicide is a risk.

This is what I base most of my therapy sessions on, that I won’t feel so bad after session as I would without. But right now my therapist is on vacation and my life is in limbo because of my disability. I wish that I could say that I had hope but I don’t. Everything just feels so far away from my grasp and I feel like I am just going to get the short end of the stick, that I won’t get approved for either disability of my work or government because I just am not “sick enough” to get it. Mentally I have been in a rut for so long I don’t see myself coming out any time soon. Physically I am in pain all the time so where does hope leave me? That Maybe my pain will be less and I won’t be as psychotic as I once was so that I can go back to school and finish my degree? Yea right. Any type of stress will activate the bad hallucinations that I hear and seeing as I am an under a tremendous amount right now, I will probably not see an end of me taking my antipsychotic pill any time soon. It sucks taking medications everyday but it is what needs to be done to keep the blood pressure from going sky high, the nerve pain to shocking levels, the psychosis under control, the depression in check, and to keep my hormones at a steady level. Course once I no longer have insurance I am not sure how I am to afford all these medicines.  It makes the pit of my stomach plummet to the abyss where I am not sure it will be coming back.

I wonder if I string some lyrics of different songs together if they will come up with something good. Cause I know the power of a song when a song hits you right by David Nail (Sound of a million dreams) is a good example of how these lyrics can give meaning to one or the melody can stir a memory on a july Saturday night…(Eric Church, Springsteen).And I can’t breathe but I have to (taylor swift, breath). Though one song that always gets me is John Berry’s if I had any pride left at all. Now that song always makes me think. Or when your eyes were staring back at me from between some letters and some keys and wondering why you keep all this stuff (mary chapin Carpenter, Almost home)

I have been in bed most of the day because the pain has been bad. I have had shocking nerve pains in places where shouldn’t be and my ankle just doesn’t want to be bothered moving. I feel the need for coffee but it is after 5 pm and I know that if I do I will be up all night and that won’t be good as I need to be up early in the morning to take my father to the doctors. Sucks being a caretaker sometimes. But the man is 80 yrs old and doesn’t read or write English so someone needs to be with him.