Tag: chronic physical pain

write the pain

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, chronic physical pain, depression

Write the pain.

For those that are frequent blog readers, you know I write about my pain, physical and emotional, most, if not all, the time. It has been the cornerstone of my blog. I can articulate what few can and my readers like what I write because they can relate.

Writing about pain has been a staple of my blog. It seems I cannot write without some measure of pain. It can be the pain associated with depression. It can be the pain associated with the chronic pain condition that I have. It can be a pain that keeps me awake at night. The pain that tears at you and is unrelenting. Whatever type of pain that I have been feeling, it has caused frustration, anguish, despair, suicidal thoughts, and agony. It makes you dread waking up in the morning. It makes you want to sleep forever, to have this escape of no consciousness. It wears you out. And exhausts you. It causes you to be unmotivated. To want to stay in bed and not face the day. But for me, it also has been the stimulus behind so many writings. I write about my darkness that is a short story. I write about the chronic pain and suicide ideation that happens frequently.

Pain has been sadly, the inspiration to write this blog because it causes such dark thoughts, and by dark thoughts I don’t mean just depressive thoughts. I’m talking about suicide ideation. Thoughts that make you think you would be better off dead than to continue living. Dark thoughts of suicide, the ones where you cannot express in normal conversation. Most of my dark thoughts are expressed in this blog because the therapist hours do not occur between 11 PM and 3 AM. It’s hard to find any here to listen between those hours. So I read about the pain. I write and I write till I am succumbed by pain meds or psych meds or exhaustion. I write the pain. Because if I did not have this outlet, the dark thoughts would take over. And I would cease to exist.

Pain is exhausting, be it physical or emotional. And to have both occur at the same time is just torture. When the meds don’t work, when the pain is overwhelming, when all you feel is anguish and misery, that is what causes you to feel like life is not worth living. Writing helps to express what I cannot it sort of makes life more bearable as the father of suicidology has said many times, decreased the psychache (pain), decreased the suicide. I have found writing the pain decreases in my dark thoughts. This doesn’t mean I have found a life worth living. It just means life is more bearable for me.

just so frustrating

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

I just came home from eating dinner at my cousin’s house. We had a good time. I told him about my book but didn’t say anymore about the content of it. He is one of those people that thinks that if you don’t talk about suicide, it doesn’t exist. He doesn’t know about my attempts for this reason. He doesn’t want to hear about it. He rather hear about how crippling my depression is than hear about how suicidal I have been. It is a barrier so we just don’t talk about it.

I also didn’t talk about my being transgender. He made a comment tonight about how I am his favorite girl or something to that effect. I wanted to correct him but then I figured why bother.

I had an extremely long day that was mostly dealing with my family members. I think the only two members of the family I didn’t have to deal with today were my youngest niece and my brother in law, oh and my nephew. So three. I am exhausted just thinking about it. My morning was filled with going up and down stairs. My ankle is thanking me kindly right now with pain. No matter as I am about to take my night meds and go to bed. I am hoping that I will stay asleep till eight but I doubt it. My track record hasn’t been good and I didn’t get a good night sleep last night. I went to bed after two in the morning and then woke up an hour later. Took some Ativan and only slept for two more hours before I said the hell with it and stayed up. I lost track on how many hours I have been up. Plus I am sick so that doesn’t help me much. If I continue this way, I know I am not going to get rid of this cold.

I had therapy today and my therapist was on her high horse, which pissed me off. I warned her that if she didn’t settle down, I was going to hang up on her. The one advantage of phone sessions. I finally told her about what my AAS blog is going to be about. I didn’t tell her at first because I wasn’t sure if I told her what I did and I was afraid that she would be mad at me or get all worried on me. I don’t know when this post is going to be published but when it is, I will reblog it here. I think it is an important post about chronic pain and suicide.

Tonight while I was over my cousin’s, I was thinking of suicide and how I don’t think much about it these days. I guess because my chronic pain is well controlled and I am not hurting too much these days. But the depression. Man, that is a whole other can of worms!! That is making me wish I was dead so bad. I just don’t want to be alive and there is really no one I can talk to about this. I haven’t been able to tell my therapist because we have been dealing with my family issues lately more than my suicidal thinking, or death wishes. They are more like death wishes than actual suicide thoughts. I am not planning my death or anything. I just wish I was dead. I dread waking up most mornings. I have been having bad dreams. So I can’t even have a restful sleep even if I wanted it. It’s so distressing. I haven’t told my therapist about the dreams. She knows I have been having weird dreams but not every night. She doesn’t know that and I am afraid to tell her because I know she wants to talk about it. I would talk about it but I don’t remember the dreams. I remember the people in my dreams but not what they were doing or anything like that. It is so frustrating. And makes me wish I was dead all the more. I just want to escape. I need a place I can go to without judgment and criticism. Away from my family for a little while. I don’t want to go into the hospital because they aren’t going to do much for me and will most likely make my sleep worse. Plus I am not suicidal so it is not like I need to be in the hospital. I just want to die. I feel like the future is closing in on me where it was expanding on me before. Maybe I don’t have a future. I still believe that I am meant to kill myself. But I don’t have the lethality to actually follow through with it. It’s just so frustrating. I can’t live and yet I can’t die. WTF am I supposed to do. Yet I continue to exist. And I don’t like it.

why I drink

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression

I had a frustrating day today. I installed Dragon Naturally Speaking, older version, in my old laptop and tried to work with it. I am trying this software so that I can speak and not type but it hasn’t been that easy. I then get the newer version for my new laptop as it works faster and is lighter. I hope that I can use it but I don’t have the patience right now to install. If this works out, I will be so happy.

I had a difficult session with my therapist today. She wanted to know what was behind the drinking messages I have been sending her. But I couldn’t tell her the reason. I really don’t know why I feel the urge to drink but I do know how I cope with my father is by drinking. I have been doing that since I was a teen. I found my bottle of gin and soon as my father’s doctor calls me, I will have a few sips. I know my situation is precarious because I take pain medication, but I don’t care. I don’t know how else to cope other than to drink my problem away, though I know my father is still going to be there. I wish I could drink him away but I can’t. See, when my parents separated, my father would give us nips of alcohol. We were not even close to legal drinking age but that didn’t stop him. So we drank at an early age. My favorite nip was Beefeater gin. The nip wasn’t enough to get me drunk but did give me a buzz. My mother never knew otherwise I don’t think we (my sisters and I) would see my father.

I had a therapist tell me after the first time I ever got drunk that I was an alcoholic and should start attending AA meetings. Since then, whenever I drink I watch how much I drink. I can be a binge drinker when I want to be. But I know I am not an alcoholic because I drink so infrequently. Sure I will have my drink every now and then but that will be it. Now I just feel the need to drink because I am under a great deal of stress. And who knows, maybe it will help my pain or at least make me forget about it for a while.

So I am drinking because I lost my aunt, dealing with my childish father, and can’t cope with his medical stuff on top of my own. Where is that gin bottle?

constant physical pain makes me depressed

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

I am up early yet again. I just can’t sleep more than eight hours anymore. I sleep six hours and then I am up. My foot is hurting so I guess I should take something for it before it gets worse. I already went downstairs twice for bathroom reasons. My ankle didn’t appreciate that at all. I don’t know why it is so stiff today. But then today is going to snow so that might have something to do with it. Seems every week there is some snow going on. I can’t wait for it to stop. It makes walking very difficult, especially when people don’t shovel their walk. Drives me crazy. Then you have to walk in the street and the cars get mad at you.

I am thinking of changing my “about me” blog to just living in chronic pain and having suicidal urges. I realize that is all I write about. Sure there might be a few blogs just about my depression but most of it starts with me being in physical pain. I am in constant physical pain and it makes me depressed and often times suicidal more so than my depression alone. But now that I have the pain managed to a good degree, I am less depressed about it. But I still think that I should maybe add that I also suffer from chronic physical pain.

Yesterday when I went to pick up my prescription, I was asked for the first time what my diagnosis was. I had heard people tell me that pharmacists now need a diagnosis in order to process but it never happened to me before now. Funny on my main pain medication they didn’t ask me for a diagnosis but the one I take for break through pain they did. Very weird.

It’s Sunday and I hope there is a televised spring training game for the Sox playing today. I miss baseball so much. It is the one thing that I can watch without getting bored.

It’s almost seven in the morning. I have no idea what I am going to do today. It’s cold out and is supposed to snow so I guess I will just stay inside. Monday I have my appointment with my pdoc so I will be out of the house. I don’t think I will be getting a latte anymore as the last two that I have had, has given me the jitters. This sucks. I guess I am back to drinking coffee. Sad thing is that there is no new Clover coffees that I like or are interested in. I still want to try the Mexican coffee. Maybe I will tomorrow. Their sun-dried Ethiopian coffee I didn’t like. It had a very weird aftertaste. I don’t like it when coffee has an aftertaste.

I still have depression, though it seems to be lessening as I can now type without it bothering me cognitively. I hope this continues because I would like to work on my short story this week and maybe my blurb for my book.