Category: suicide

week 2 of hell has commenced

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

Week 2 of hell has commenced

I have to say it has been an interesting week. I have had my menses and I didn’t go crazy like I usually do. I still have the fucker though and now it is getting annoying. I have cramps from hell that are not responding to any anti-inflammatories so today because my joints have been acting up, I took some ketoprofen. It is a higher end form of ibuprofen (Advil) and I find that it works well for my arthritis. I am hoping it works for these menstrual cramps that I have. I have enough pain in my life. I do not need abdominal cramps to add to it.

Because I woke up at the nice morning hour of four in the morning, I slept till about noon. I woke up from a bad dream that doesn’t make any sense. It was about a car that was running and my friend was holding onto something to prevent it from leaking oil. She was holding pressure on the leak like you would a vein laceration. I then put oil in the car to replace what it has lost and a few minute later the damn hood explodes. Don’t know what the hell that means.

I wish I felt refreshed when I woke up but I didn’t. I didn’t feel like getting out of bed or taking a shower and getting to my Starbucks. But I did. Now that I have my coffee I am wondering what to eat. I am thinking of getting a pastry but I don’t know. I need something with more substance. Maybe a breakfast sandwich or something. I could have their turkey sandwich which has Dijon mustard on it. But I am not feeling that hungry. I am trying to save my appetite for the PF Chang General Chang for tonight. I haven’t had it in so long.

I am glad the kids that were running around Starbucks have left. They were starting to get annoying. They were cute and everything but I was just afraid they would get hurt if they fell or something.

I’m still feeling depressed. I think I just have a depressive personality. I don’t know what it is like to feel pleasure or be happy for more than a few moments. I have some things that give me joy like Starbucks but soon as the coffee is done I am sad again. I just can’t sustain joyful experiences or feel content. I know right now it is because I am hurting with cramps and my foot is bothering me. It never stops. But even if I didn’t feel pain, I still would be miserable. It is not a choice like many believe. I just am unhappy with my life. I feel stuck and it is difficult to feel unstuck. So I have this routine where I go to Starbucks and I write, either on my laptop or in my journal. I read, if my concentration allows it. And I rest because that is what is needed after an excursion into town. I really would love to take a trip to George’s Island this summer but other than exploring the fort which I have done a few times, there really isn’t much on the island. I don’t know if the fort is still explorable. There were parts of the Fort, built at the time of the Civil War (US) that were blocked off because they were deemed dangerous as it was falling apart. But it’s nice and quiet there. I have never been to Thompson’s Island in Boston Harbor. There is more activity to do there. Maybe one day I will go there if I can get my funds together.

I decided to get a bacon Artisan breakfast sandwich. It was good but I forgot I don’t care for the cheese much. I think it’s Gouda. I’m not a fan. The treat receipts are back at Starbucks. If you buy a drink before 2 pm you get your drink after 2 PM for $2 (USD). I might get a refresher drink before leaving. Depends on how thirsty I get.

I just added some stuff to my book. I felt that I should work on it for a little bit as it has been weeks since I last did so. I swear I am in love with the Kati Kati coffee that I have been drinking the past few weeks. It is so good. But as with other coffees, it perks me up for a little bit and then I crash. I hate the crash feeling. I usually end up taking a nap.

New blog today from the AAS as it is every Monday. I have yet to be asked to write for it again. I still have a paper that I am dying to have post. It’s about suicide attempt survivor reaction. I think it will be fitting for a suicide attempt blog. But I know that there is one person ahead of me for writing. Anyways, this week’s post really resonated with me. I have had a long hospital stay once and I don’t remember it going so well. The only reason they kept me so long was because they knew that if they let me out, I would try again, which I would have. I spent hours talking to staff but it did nothing to change how I felt. I was put on another antidepressant that did help my mood some but caused me to gain a lot of weight. Course my diet of eating cheeseburgers and fries for lunch didn’t help. It was one of the lowest points in my life. I know my mood has not been as low as it was back then but it has been close. I have not had a long hospital stay since, and by long I mean two months. But that was when things were different for psych hospital admissions. Now if I had attempted, I doubt I would stay longer than two weeks. Soon as I started to be “less” suicidal, I would be discharged. I would just have more therapy sessions. I think that if I didn’t have so many sessions with my therapist, I probably would be hospitalized more. Meeting just once a week just isn’t enough for me. Even though my therapist drives me crazy, if I didn’t have her support of meeting a few times a week, I know I would be in the hospital or worse, I would attempt to do something. But then I meet by phone, which is easier than meeting in person. She is on vacation this week and I already sort of miss her, and it is only Monday. I hope that with her being gone, I will be ok, especially as my menses are causing havoc with my mood right now. I really have been having some dark thoughts today. I keep hoping that I won’t wake up one day, that my autonomic system will realize that I am dead inside and just stop functioning and let me die by stopping my heart and lungs so I won’t have to.

Rambling 45

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

I have been trying to collect my thoughts to write this blog while listening to my “mood” playlist and keep getting distracted by the songs.

Last night I wrote my therapist a letter. I think I will write one for each day that she is gone. It is some thing that we do. I can’t explain it but sometimes something good comes from it. I have some deep thoughts or something that I want to talk about. Sometimes it is just a bitch letter because I don’t have someone to talk to about something that is going on. I have notice in my old journals, I would write with the beginning of a letter. Each entry started with her name Dear A. and the later journal entries start with Dear Bozo. I started calling her Bozo to piss her off and maybe she would dump me. Six years later, she still has me so it didn’t work. I still call her Bozo. Her middle name starts with a B anyway so rather than call her that name, I call her Bozo. I am such a prankster. I once got a sticky and placed Bozo on her sign in her office where A should have been. She had no clue for three days!! That was and still is hysterical.

I found a clinical paper last night going through my files so I posted it as a blog. It’s about schizoaffective disorder and I think I wrote it for one of my psych classes.

I had the BEST homemade iced coffee today. I am so JACKED right now on it. I am really feeling hyper from it. My brain neurons are firing left and right. I like it when I feel this way. I am able to get a lot of writing done. I am sure that I will probably crash in an hour but this is kind of fun. I already did my shopping. Now I am just waiting for the mail to come to see if my doc sent out the prescription for my pain meds. I have only a few to get me through the next few days.

I have been up since 0800. I woke up and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I don’t know why. But it gave me enough energy this morning to go food shopping. Tonight I will have PF chang’s general Chang. I love their food. I wish I could have gotten some of their appetizers but I had only so much money. I still have some money left over for my meds that I will need in the middle of the month. I know I am going to be hurting tonight because I had to go up and down the stairs to bring up my groceries. It was only a few bags and a couple gallons of water but still. The trips are going to cause havoc on me later.

I am so happy I made my coffee. I also got my donuts like I wanted. I was so craving a jelly donut. I got a ½ dozen rather than a dozen like I was thinking. I was disappointed they didn’t have powdered donuts.

I know the coffee is making me feel hyper and feel good. I don’t trust it. I know the demons will be back tonight when the sun goes down. And I will be in pain. I wish I could feel like this forever. Then I wouldn’t be thinking of killing myself every night.

nobody knows

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, mood disorders, suicide, writing

Nobody knows…

Nobody knows how bad I hurt

Nobody knows how late I stay up

Nobody knows the pain that I feel

Nobody knows the hours I sleep and don’t sleep. They think that because it is night time, I sleep but I don’t. I usually have the best sleep between 6 am and 10 am. That is all I need. A four hour nap. Because it is the only thing that makes me feel good for a few hours. It is the only thing that takes my pain away when I am in the deepness of the unconsciousness.

Nobody knows the struggle in my chest.

Nobody knows the pain that I feel

nobody knows how bad I want the struggle to end

nobody knows how bad I just want to end my life

coffee and therapists

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

Went out for coffee today. I didn’t feel like it but I forced myself to. I gave myself an incentive, that if I went I would get something sweet. I usually just get my coffee and maybe a sandwich, if I am hungry. But today I really wanted something sweet so didn’t need that much incentive to get a coffee cake. I like that the baristas are getting my order down pat. I don’t order anything fancy, just my favorite flavor, which is now Kati Kati, grande size but in a venti cup. This is so I have plenty of room for the half and half. I also put in several packets of sugar. I need my coffee sweet, which is why I usually don’t get something sweet.

I did accomplish something today and that was finishing the book why do people die by suicide by Thomas Joiner. I had an autographed copy but lost it on the train the first week I read it. Much to my sadness. The book was good and I learned a few things that I hope I retain. He is a cognitive therapist so he focused on that during the strategies for dealing with suicidality. I really liked the book because it not only dealt with personal experience (his dad died by suicide while in grad school), he also listed empirical data to back up what he was talking about. I am a research geek so I tend to like stuff like that. He also used terms that put people that couldn’t understand the technical stuff into words that people could understand, like how neurotransmitters interact. It was a very interesting book. I also bought another book that he wrote called Myths of Suicide, which I hope to read after I finish reading Lincoln’s Melancholy.

My reading voices are back, thank god. I can’t seem to focus unless they are there. I got a comment from my psychotic while reading blog and this person said that she only hears her voice while reading. I find that so interesting. I never hear my own voice. Unless my voice is male sounding, which I don’t think it is, not yet anyways. But then I do have enlarged ventricles in my brain that cause the voices. Not as large as those found in schizophrenia but enough to have a radiologist comment on it. I had the MRI the first time I was hospitalized when I was sixteen. They ran a bunch of tests on me the whole time I was there, from cortisol suppression studies to psychological tests such as the inkblot. I remember how much paperwork I had to do for the MMPI, the Minnesota Multiple Personality Inventory. I hated that. I did that more than once over my lifetime for various studies I was involved in. It is a LONG inventory. I am glad it is not used in clinical practice, unless you go specifically for psychological testing. It would make for a long afternoon or morning.

I have been feeling self-harm urges the past few days. I don’t know why that is. I just have the urge but usually distracting myself or listening to music helps. I have not cut in years and I like it stay that way, though I still have my “kit”. Even though I don’t use it, I still find it comforting to have it around. I also have been getting urges to overdose but these quickly pass as I just can’t do it in my house. Symptoms of my illness.

The dreaded nerve pain has come again. I really tried not to stand too long while waiting for the bus today to get my coffee. I tried not to jiggle my foot in a way that I know would upset it later. But I did do stretching exercises while I was on the phone with my therapist so maybe that is why it is angry at me. I never know what will make it upset. It’s like an untemperate, abusive person. You just never know what will set it off. The cold. The heat. Wearing socks. Not wearing socks. Moving it this way versus that. It’s a never ending battle. I am so sick of it. I am tired of hurting. And nothing helps curb the pain. My pain meds can only do so much, which is knock me out most of the time so I can sleep. But that is only for a few hours. Once the meds wear off, I am screwed. I wake up and sometimes it take a little but to register that I am awake before the pain starts. Other times it is because I am in pain that I wake up. My sleep has not been good the past week. I keep waking up between 0230-430 in the morning. No matter what time I go to sleep, I always wake up during those hours. If I fall asleep before ten, I am always up four hours later. I can’t stand it. I usually play my games or check twitter. If I am bullshit, I might write another blog or journal if I don’t feel like opening my laptop. Sometimes, I try reading and usually that works to put me back to sleep, unless I am in roaring pain. Then I just stay up until the pain meds kick in to knock me out again while withering in agony.

This week’s AAS blog is about finding a therapist that won’t run away or panic at the mention of suicidal thoughts. I want to laugh and say, have you read my therapist blog? I have had ten therapists run away from me soon as I mention that I have had suicidal thoughts in the past or been hospitalized because of them. Course I am hospitalized frequently so that doesn’t help my case. I have been hospitalized at least eight times since 2008. My last hospitalization was last June. So it has been a year but if these damn voices don’t stop, I might have to go back in. The voices and being suicidal doesn’t mix too well. But getting back to therapists, they can be tricky. I kept on being referred to another therapist, who would then refer me to yet another therapist. Before I knew it, I had ten within a month’s time. I finally gave up and stuck it out with my current therapist, even though I don’t see her in person frequently. I think I will see her next week. I will try and get my sister’s car.

I know why therapists don’t want to take on suicidal clients. They don’t want to be liable. They fear malpractice. They even fear losing the client. But I believe that despite this, with the right treatment, therapists can see suicidal clients. It just takes a little bit of courage and trust, a lot of it. Not only on the therapist’s part, but also the client. The client also needs to have a trust in the therapist that they aren’t going to be dumped in the hospital every single fricken time they get suicidal. The therapies out there that help are by David Jobes, CAMS and by using his suicide status form. Also using the Aeschi model helps. Knowing why the client wants to kill themselves says a lot. By not allowing the client to share his story, he gives his therapist a reason to distrust him. I do hope that there comes a day when graduate schools are mandated to have some kind of suicide preventions/treatment protocols in their curriculums. It shouldn’t be up to the therapist’s own style of interviewing that should be dependent on their suicide knowledge. That and the use of no-suicide contracts should be discontinued as long as something like CAMS is in place or the QPR by Paul Quinnett. I forget what QPR stands for but it is a useful resource.