Saturday Blog 26

Saturday Blog 26

I had a rough night of pain. I didn’t sleep well. I spent the day just resting my ankle as I really didn’t want to make it hurt again. The pain and swelling had really gotten bad. So I stay in and only went downstairs to stuff my face and use the bathroom. I plan on taking a shower soon. I think it will relax me. I haven’t taken a pain pill all day, so that is good. I will probably take a couple tonight just so I can sleep without worrying about pain creeping up. I plan on doing the same thing tomorrow.

I watched “Gone with the Wind” after the baseball game. I never knew how much Scarlett was a two faced bitch. But then, that is what the character is. I couldn’t bare to watch the end as I know the child dies and wrecks the marriage even further with Rhett Butler. It’s just sad.

I wrote a distressing status on Facebook last night. I think it was like three in the morning when I woke up in pain again. I was pissed and hurting. I didn’t get any responses, none even in the morning. Only response I got was about posting that I was watching the movie and that was a cruel friend of mine calling me a racist. That really pissed me off. I should unfriend her as I am tired of her jokes. This is the first time she has called me a racist. I don’t care if it is in jest. You don’t call people that unless they truly are and I don’t think I am. I have never been prejudiced against another person for the race, religion, or creed. I don’t know how to hate a person for these things. I do hate a person if they are an asshole or not. You can be an asshole of any color, religion, or creed. Half the senators running for president are, well, they are more brainless than most people. How they got elected to their positions I will never know. Nor do I care to know. I just hope the country has sense not to make them president or this country will be a cesspool more than it already is.

Last night I was editing as I felt up to it. It was once of the few activities that I could do without moving too much. Half of what I wrote is getting tossed out. My therapist might disagree with me but I am the one writing this thing, not her. The stuff I am tossing out are the blog posts that aren’t really dealing with mental illness at all. It is just a blog post of how my day went. I don’t know what made me think that it would be good in a short story when there is no story or theme or even connecting points. I wrote a blog about coffee and therapy and it was more about how I drink my coffee than it was about therapy. That is when I started questioning what I was writing. Maybe I shouldn’t come out with a second book. My writing doesn’t seem to want to cooperate with me anyway. Not like I can write on demand, I can’t. But I should be able to be creative enough to write something about mental illness.

The Boston fireworks are going off. Big bangs are being heard. I hate noise like that. Sounds like bombs going off. It scares me. There also seem to be helicopters flying in the area. That almost never happens. I know they were having some flyovers with some military jets but I didn’t get the memo about helicopters. Just weird. Maybe they are filming the fireworks. I don’t know. I lost interest in the works when I was a kid. I used to love 4th of July but then things changed after I lost my hearing in one of my ears. It wasn’t appealing to me anymore.

I heard there is a case in Belgium where a 24 year-old was granted the right to die because she is depressed. It will be, I think, assisted suicide. She apparently wanted to die since the age of six. In the story, it told of her wanting to kill herself with a pistol. I didn’t think a child that age could have those kind of thoughts. I started having thoughts of dying when I was eight. But I had an abused childhood. The article didn’t say if this girl was abused or not, or even go into specifics on why she wanted to die. Only that she was granted the right after being committed for two years. I have mixed feelings about this. She thinks she is a hopeless case, but all depressed people think that. I even think that. I know that if I went to my psychiatrist and told her she had to help me kill myself because I was hopeless, I would be committed too. I guess the laws in Belgium are different than the states because a two year commitment at a hospital is unheard of these days. The article also didn’t say what kind of treatment she has had. I am curious to know only because as bad as my depressions have been, they seem to get better over time. Granted the suicidality of my condition doesn’t change. I always want to die. I just don’t act on those feelings. I don’t know why that is. Maybe I am just not desperate enough to want to die. Or my despair isn’t that great as it once was. I don’t know. I do know that I don’t want to hurt people with my death and that keeps me going, sadly.

Pre 4th

I went to my father’s today to set his medication straight. Again his stupid doc called in a two week supply of his heart medication. I am so bullshit. I am calling on Monday and going to raise hell. This is ridiculous.

On the way home, I did something to my stomach muscles. Either that, or I developed a hernia. I am in pain if I slouch or try to straighten up. I feel like I have a line cutting into me. No one is home as they went over my cousin’s for celebrations of the 4th. Pain isn’t too bad, unless I try moving. So I am trying to stay as still as possible. I hope it goes away on its own. I can’t blame over eating as I really haven’t eaten much today. And besides, the pain came on before I had anything to eat. I don’t know what is causing the discomfort. For all I know, it could just be gas…

I came home from my father’s in pain, not only from my stomach, but my ankle, too. It’s still in flare up mode. I don’t know what it is going to take for it to calm down. I took some pain pills and then made some coffee. I think the coffee is helping me stay awake. I finished watching the “Lincoln” movie. I started watching it last night, fell asleep, watched it this morning when pain woke me up, then fell asleep again. I was determined to see it through when I came home. As usual, I cried at the end. I really think they should have stopped the movie when the South surrendered to Grant. There really was no need to see the guy die as they didn’t even show the scene where he was shot. But whatever.

I plan on doing some editing today. I have to finish it. It’s only about 15 pages so it shouldn’t take me that long to do. I am writing about psychosis so it isn’t triggering me. It’s more making me sound crazy, but that is all. I do have interesting delusions. I still need to write up the whole new one but am afraid that if I do, I will become delusional again, or my sense of reality might take a hike. It’s so tricky writing about psychosis and delusions when you still believe them. It will make a great story, but I really need to think this out and create a storyline that doesn’t affect me. I figure if I treat it as a story, it won’t affect me. But continuing to see things in the news keep the delusions alive.

I have a couple of hours before the baseball game. I don’t know if I want to watch “Gone with the Wind” or try to get caught up on Bones. I have like 6 episodes I need to watch before the new season begins. I like keeping them because if I feel like binge watching, I can do it. Though my attention span tends to only yield to one or two episodes. I used to love watching it all the time but since Hodges no longer does his crazy experiments anymore, I feel the show lost something for me.

I got a crazy idea today that I am still pondering. I want to crowdfund for suicide research. Thing is, I don’t have many contacts and I don’t know how the funding works. I would have to look into it and then seriously think if this is a go or not. The idea sounds great and I think I will get some support but will people actually fund it is the question. I don’t know if there is a time frame for this or not. I would hate to go for say 6 months and raise only $300, if I am that lucky. I would just give the money to David Jobes to fund his research for CAMS. I can’t think of any other researcher who is more deserving. Okay, I am totally biased because CAMS has helped me so much, but still. He is a suicidologist with the know how to do clinical research that will back up clinical practice. I just wish people would change their clinical behavior to this method when they actually sign up for his course. It isn’t just about continuing education units. It’s about saving lives.

Can’t Die Without Explanations

“One can’t die without explanations”. Fyodor Dostoevsky p 513, the Idiot

This statement struck me tonight, in more ways than one. I think, this is the purpose of Hyde, to explain my death to people so they know of my suffering. I am very tired at the moment. I just woke up from a short nap and now I am in pain because I almost fell while getting up off the toilet. I lost my balance and fortunately, sat back down, but harder than I would have liked. My left knee didn’t like it much. I woke up with it hurting me. But once I started moving, the pain went away. Mysteriously as it came. Until I nearly lost my balance. Weird.

My back is hurting and I don’t like it. I can barely sit up. I keep thinking about death. I don’t want to live anymore. I know I have said these things time and time again, but it’s true. I don’t know what I am going to do when my date comes in the next few weeks and I am left all alone with my thoughts. If I don’t kill myself, it will be a defeat. If I try, at least I can say I tried. I won’t know if I succeed if I don’t try.

The quote is from a character in the Idiot, Ippolit, who has consumption (TB or Tuberculosis) and is in the last stages of the disease before death. He has been given just three weeks to live and keeps on telling people that he must tell his “confessions” before he dies. I feel the same way, though I don’t feel there is anything to confess. I have not done anything wrong. I just feel like a lowly human being that deserves to die. I am tired of the mental anguish I suffer day in and day out. I am tired of my physical pain that prevents me from working and “having a life worth living”. Today I drove and it cost me pain in my ankle. I don’t know why. I always feel this pain while driving/sitting for too long. It is a pain that starts at my ankle bone and goes into my foot. The pain is like a wrap that no one can see but I feel. They say it’s the peroneous tendon that is inflamed causing this pain. If you look at the skeletal structure of this tendon, you can clearly see how it goes from the ankle to the three damn toes of the foot. That is where I have most of my pain. The last three metatarsals in my foot. It haunts me like it does now. And I am in severe pain.

Aside from my transgender issues which will never be resolved, I have body image issues that are distorted. I am ugly, yet people have told me I am handsome and sometimes, cute. I don’t feel this way. I feel like I am very ugly that I will break a camera or mirror if I look into it long enough. I have a negative self-image. I can’t stand the way I look or how my body feels. I have a self-loathing so deeply ingrained in me that I doubt my therapist can ever get to the bottom of it. Having breasts is just one of the reasons I self-loathe. I cannot stand myself. I really want to die. I don’t want to breathe anymore. It hurts to breathe. I tell my psychiatrist this and she doesn’t think too much of it, about the hurting to breathe. But then, there is nothing she can really do about it. I am not in distress. My skin color isn’t blue. I am oxygenating very well. There are no obvious signs that there is a weight on my chest, unless you count the things that are there (breast tissue). But every woman has them and they don’t cause interference with breathing. No, I am not saying there is something pathologically wrong with me. I know that this heaviness is this depression that I feel. It makes everything heavier than what it should be. Probably why my knee hurts. It can no longer carry the weight that I have put on since my last hospitalization. I have tried to lose this weight but it is difficult. I eat the wrong things. But I eat the things that make me happy, like cheeseburgers, bacon, and ring dings. Not all the time. Just once a month when I get paid and can afford these things.

These things taste good when I am feeling up to eating them. Lately, my taste buds have failed me and nothing tastes good. I eat only because I need to, though I don’t enjoy it like I once did. Nothing brings me joy or pleasure. Used to be that I have a mocha from Starbucks and that made me happy. Now it just tastes like sugar and I don’t even taste the espresso like I used to. I feel like I am wasting my money on this drink. Maybe it’s time to try espresso by itself, but I am a creature of habit. I order the same thing all the time. It’s hard to break from that.

Today I was thinking about my diagnosis. Used to be that I had recurrent major depression, with psychotic features, NOS. Now I am depressed but it’s not under the same classification. Not that I need to know what it is. I don’t really care, but I would like to know if it is a bipolar depression that I am suffering. I had highs a few months ago, back in February. Those were lovely, though a bit terrifying. I am not used to feeling up. I am used to feeling down all the time. And this time I have hit an all time low. I think about death constantly and when I am not, I am dreaming of funerals and wakes. I often wonder, if I do have a wake, who will show up. I doubt I will get the same sympathy as a friend of mine who died from diabetes. People who die by suicide don’t get the same sympathy as other who die by illnesses. But that is a debate for another day.

My explanation of my death is this, I am tired of hurting, both physically and mentally. Physically, my pain is well controlled, though I still hurt every day causing me to be on medication to control it. Mentally, there is no medication for me. Sure I take my mood stabilizer and anti-psychotic pill to ease those symptoms caused by the bipolar and psychosis that I have. But it doesn’t help the mental pain, the psychache, the deep down to the bone ache that no one can see or feel. I have been struggling with this ache since I was 8 years old. I am tired of fighting it every single day. 32 years is a long time to be fighting something that no one else can feel or see or measure even. There is no test that my pdoc can give to see where it lives, where it abides. Sure, I know there are measures out there but no one uses them. My therapist has stopped using the psychache scale. I have even stopped using the psychache scale, not because it wasn’t effective, but because it just was a number that couldn’t be brought down. It was up and it stayed up, until my crisis was over. This time, I don’t think my crisis is going to be over. Hell, I don’t think I am going to last that long period. What the hell am I waiting for?? Why can’t I go through with it tonight. Fear. And that I don’t want my family to find my body. It will be hard to be dead by suicide. Harder still and more traumatic to find my body. I don’t have a place I can go to end my life. And that is really sad. So I just sit here and complain about why I cannot go on living knowing I can’t take my life because I have no place to end it. And that is the funny thing about my therapist and psychiatrist. They have never asked me how I am going to do it, where, when. I just tell them I am suicidal and they just leave it at that. They never know what my plan truly is.

Love/Hate Relationship with Therapy

Love/Hate Relationship with Therapy

There are times when I like my therapist. When she is supportive and understanding, it’s easy to like her. Sometimes the like turns to love because she means so much to me. It is at these times when I value our relationship the most. My therapist is very dear to me but then, like tonight, she will say something that makes me hate her. Mostly, this is around her not wanting me to kill myself. I feel trapped by this, and so the love I feel turns to hate. It is not a quick thing to happen. I don’t have oscillating feelings toward my therapist. It is only when I am suicidal and she wants me to live that I really hate her.

It wasn’t always this way. I never really knew how she felt about me till we were four years into our relationship. I call it a relationship for lack of a better word. In 2005, I was severely depressed and snapped. I wanted to die very badly and was planning on ending my life sometime that November. It was one of the lowest points in my life. When I finally confided in her what I was planning, which was not easy to do, she got really upset. I couldn’t bare to see her that upset. In fact, no one till that point in my life was ever upset with me for being suicidal. Her fear of losing me made her cry and I just could not tolerate it. I still cannot tolerate it. It messes with my head. Since then, the love/hate began. The love is just the kind that people have with one another. I told her I hated her tonight and she welcomed it. She said that I could hate her till eternity if it meant keeping me alive. But I don’t like hating someone that I really care for. It hurts me. It causes me mental anguish that drives me crazy. I can’t stay hateful for long. I’m not that type of person. And I do love her more than I hate her. She brings me joy and a little bit of hope every time we talk. I need these things or I will attempt to take my life.

I feel trapped by her love. To her, I can do no wrong. I am not a bad person in her eyes. I told her to read a blog that I wrote that I think is triggering to people. She doesn’t know where I came from, that I always think of others before myself. I write horribly dark, depressing things. But this piece of work is really troubling me. It’s extremely profound in darkness and depression. I want her to read it with a professional’s eye. I want her opinion from her psychologist’s mind, not her love for me. Yes, she loves me, too. It makes me uncomfortable at times. But it also makes me kind of feel unsafe. Because if I love her back and she loves me, that just opens a can of worms I don’t want to open. I don’t want to get hurt again by a therapist. I have been hurt ten times by former therapists and she is my last straw. I know that if we break up, it will kill me. After fourteen years together, it will be extremely hard to start over with someone new.

My suicidality has always been a gatekeeper. She feels that I should have more sessions because I am suicidal. More is sometimes not better. But she wants to know what is happening in my life all the time.

My psychiatrist I have known for more than twenty years. I feel closer to her than I do my therapist because of our long standing relationship. I sometimes think of my pdoc as a mother figure in my life. She is proud of me and my accomplishments, even though I never went to med school like we hoped. That is another story for another blog.

My pdoc is the best. She really gets me, sometimes better than my therapist. I don’t know if she loves me. I know she cares deeply about me. We have been through some tough times together. She is my rock. I know I do love her, but in a way a son love their mothers.

My therapist and I love each other as people do. We truly care for one another. I guess the same can be said about my pdoc, thought we have never discussed our feelings for one another. She is strictly professional in this regard, not to say my goofy therapist isn’t. There are boundaries. I respect both of my treaters. I don’t think I have ever hated my pdoc. The only time that I might have was when she sectioned me a few years ago after I sent her a dark email and she couldn’t get in touch with me. I knew it was out of concern for my safety but that doesn’t mean I had to like it.

My therapist has never sectioned me or made me go to the ER. My pdoc doc knows that I will usually take myself to the ER when I am in a dark place. My therapist will just tack on another session. My pdoc would do the same when I am at my worst points. Sometimes, I would see my pdoc weekly rather than biweekly because she was concerned about my safety. Both of these professionals know me pretty well. I have known them a long time and I am grateful they include me in their treatment plan rather than saying this is how it is going to be. That doesn’t work for me and they know it. I have to be in control of my treatment in order for it to work. And if this helps save a life, then so be it.