an example of Mr. Hyde

I have a serious mental illness that wants me to claim my life. I hear voices that taunt everything I do but I have never been violent towards another person and god help me, hope I never will. I just want to kill myself because I am a sorry excuse for a human being. I don’t blame my parents or my siblings for the way I turned out. It just happens to be who I am, I may not accept it but it is who I am. I know that someday I will ultimately end my life by my own hand. I know because I think about it every day. But I will NOT take another person’s life other than my own. Do I need to have a lifetime commitment because I am so suicidal? Probably but insurance companies don’t see it that way. As long as you are not in “imminent” danger to harm yourself or others, you cannot be allowed to stay in the hospital for more than a few days time, against your will. I have been there many times and even though I have chronic suicidality, I have never been kept beyond the three days or two weeks because of my suicidality. I might have been kept because the voices were telling me to harm myself, but never because I said I was suicidal after the three days. The mental health system is wrong and should be address these issues I am stating. Because maybe a longer admission is what I need to get better. I have intense psychotherapy with my therapist twice sometimes three times a week and still feel suicidal. I have been on every drug used for psychiatry and yet I still feel suicidal. How am I to live my life when I want to end it so much? How am I supposed to work and go to college when thinking about my death is all that matters to me? No hospital can change it. No psychiatrist can and no psychotherapist can. So the blame then gets shifted on to me. It’s my fault for not “wanting” to get better, that my negative attitude/emotions are what is causing me to be suicidal. If I change my attitude, I will be happier. It’s all bullshit. It’s not my fault being this way anymore than it’s a dying person with cancer fault because they have cancer. And believe me, I would much rather trade places with them because I know they are going to die while this “emotional cancer” is eating me alive and no one can see it. And no one wants to help me either. I can only save myself if I want to. Well, I give up. I don’t want to anymore. What purpose will living my life that I know is only going to end up six feet under. I have thought about cremation but the cost is the same. I thought about buying my own plot somewhere but I really don’t care what my family does with my remains. They are of no use to me anymore. So I am giving myself some time before I do it. And hopefully within this time frame things will change. Because if they don’t I am dead and there is nothing anyone can do to stop me.

on my soapbox

Productive day

I had a productive day. I have been up since six and then went on a caffeine high. That was fun seeing my psychiatrist when I was all racy and talkative. My mood has been up and down all week and I have finally been able to spend some time on my book. I just have seventeen pages to go, which I probably will either do tonight or tomorrow. I haven’t decided. I just read one bleak, downhearted blog entry that I included in the book and it brought my high down. I couldn’t/can’t believe how down I really was. Not to say that I haven’t been down all week but still. My writing was very touching to me and I am the author! I don’t know if I should keep it though. In the book, I made several mentions of my upcoming suicidal plan and also of my plan that I had back in August. But as my therapist calls me, I am a planner. I just am not a do-er. Which sucks for me because I have to continue living this crap every day. I guess it’s good that once I write the dark stuff I don’t think about it as much anymore.

My psychiatrist answered an email I sent her from Monday. I told her that I could no longer “live like this anymore” because I got my menses (which thankfully have gone away!) We talked a little bit about doing something about the transgender issues but I am just not ready to go ahead with it as much as my therapist wants me to. I think she gets it but I still don’t think she (pdoc) knows just how much I want to kill myself because I am in the wrong body. I read about my struggles today in my book and it just killed me. Knowing that I can’t go ahead because of my family and being forced to stay in the wrong body. I just feel like a transvestite because I wear men’s clothes. That is what I am. Whatever you want to call me, it hurts. It causes a huge whole in my heart that can never be filled up.

On another note, I belong to a CRPS support kind of group on Facebook. In one of their posts, they listed oil of wintergreen to help with joint pain. At this stage, I am willing to try anything to ease my ankle pain that throbs me night and day, day and night. Well I bought the stuff from VitaminShoppe but it was the wrong kind. I bought the aroma therapy version and not the application version. Who the hell knew there were different kinds! Now I have to plan a day to go to Harvard Sq and return the bottle. I feel stupid. The bottle didn’t have instructions on it, which I thought kind of weird. I am just glad that I didn’t use it as it probably would have irritated my skin. It should have said that on the website and I would have bought another kind.

Last night I made Nutella cookies for the first time. Now it turns out that I have some kind of allergy to nuts. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then the Nutella cookies and my stomach got wicked bloated. I just had another cookie to see if it was the peanut butter or the hazelnut and I am hurting. DAMMIT! I love these two nuts. I hope this doesn’t include all nuts because I will be pissed! I am going to miss having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. *sad face*

On yet another note, I got an tweet from Medscape Psychiatry today about how a single question can lead to a suicide risk. I read the article and low and behold, if someone is thinking about dying nearly every day it is a risk factor for death by suicide or suicide attempt! Really??? I want to tweet one of the authors and scream DUH!!! One of the authors is actually a tweet follower of mine. But what is sad is that there were 709 suicide attempts and 46 death by suicides that could have been avoided had someone CARED to ask more about their feelings. It’s like being asked do you have heart disease or high cholesterol in your family and NOT being tested for it, in my opinion! That is just negligence. And another sad thing is that the questionnaire used was the same one used by Jobes to help initiate his CAMS framework and SSF (see this blog for more info). Just kills me that people are so afraid of death that they can’t deal with people talking about it so people have to kill themselves because no one fucking cares they are hurting. And you don’t need a whole fucking questionnaire to find out if someone is suicidal. Just ask! 9 out 10 times they will say yes. The one person will probably just end up denying it because of being labeled crazy. But the important thing is to be open about it. Ok I am off my soapbox, for now…

rambling 60

I really have no gas today, despite waking up at the god awful hour of five. I had no reason to be up at this hour, other than a slight pain on my pinky toe. I must have had a blister on it or something and it dissipated but I am left with pain. Thank you nerve pain. You cannot tell me that my foot isn’t messed up with mixed nerve signals anymore. There is just so many random things that happen with it. One minute (or more than a few) it is ice cold, then next burning red hot. Other times it is throbbing like I bang it or something. I gave up trying to figure out what I do to make it hurt the way it does. If I stand it doesn’t hurt too much but then I don’t feel the pain right away so who knows. If I walk too much, I won’t know until the next day if I did too much. I just never know what it is going to be. And then I will have a day or two of no pain. Of it acting like my right foot except for the constant tickle that I feel everyday, which is manageable, I hardly know my foot is there.

But I do have to be protective of it. I have to make sure I don’t expose it to extreme temperatures, too hot or too cold and I am going to hurt. I give up. Yet I suffer either way. It just feels so hopeless. And I have become helpless. All I can do is take my pain medication. It is the only thing that helps me. No other medication has helped and I have been on several.

It looks like I might be in the clear with the menses situation. I hope so. I am starting to feel a lift in my mood and that usually changes when things stop. I hope so because if I have another suicidal attack I think I will act on it this time. I just am so tired of fighting it all the time. I know that will push my book back further but what choice do I have? I also know that attempting might mean a hospitalization longer than two weeks and mean that I might spend the holidays inpatient. Oh well, not like that hasn’t happened before. It will be 18 years since my last serious suicide attempt. I still remember it as if it was yesterday. But things were different back then than they are now. Treatment in the hospital is like an inpatient office visit than an actual helpful place. Your “team” meets with you for fifteen minutes and that is supposed to help you? So if you start feeling better to the nursing staff, and they feel you are not a threat, you go home. That is how is works now. No doctors making real decisions, sure they cover it so that it looks that way but it really isn’t.

I am not sure I want to go in the hospital with an attempt. They watch you closer than they do when you go in without one. And you get out quicker. I have yet to see someone attempt and be out in three days time. I am sure it happens but not at the place that I go.

Regarding my book, for those following my blog: I did one paragraph today and organized my ending a little bit. I want to get it to be at least eight pages long so I have four pages to go before that happens. I will work on it tomorrow, I hope. If my motivation comes. I have to see my pdoc tomorrow so maybe I can do some writing before hand.

thinking of my future is so not me

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.