I know I only posted a few hours ago but I am still feeling the need to write. The heaviness in my chest has not lifted and I am finding it hard to breathe. I just feel this tremendous weight on me and I don’t know why. I feel like my heart is going to pieces and I have no reason for it to be. Maybe I am going crazy? I just know that I hurt and I don’t like this hurt. I think I’d rather be in horrendous physical pain than deal with this heartache. Sadly, I already am in physical pain but I seem to be getting good at tuning it out. It only hurts when I try and move my foot so I try very hard to keep it as still as possible. That has what my life has become. Staying as still as possible. And I just feel broken and lost. My niece today really touched a nerve. She was just being honest. I just feel like I should be working at a “real” job, though my therapist tells me this is my “real” job. I can’t understand how my life went so badly in such a short amount of time. Four months is not even a season. Sure you have the middle of winter and the beginning of spring but neither were full seasons when I lost my jobs. granted I quit one at the end of Jan and then I was forced to leave the other the end of April. so technically it was three months of going from two jobs to none. All because of what? That is what is killing me. The doctors still aren’t sure what is causing my pain. They thought at first it was my back but that was ruled out with MRIs. Then they did MRIs of my leg, ankle, and foot. All negative except for some swelling. I say just cut the swelling out and see how I fair. I can’t go on living like this. I just can’t. I don’t think I will see the light of day again. These black clouds keep circling around me, day in and day out. I got to sleep with emptiness so vast it can fill the Grand Canyon. I am not on an antidepressant. None of them work for me. None provide relief. Yet my therapist thinks that I should be on one. I don’t see why. I will just become sick off them and will have to discontinue them after a month or so. My psychiatrist has nothing left in her arsenal to save me. My therapist is all out of ideas to help me. Yet I continue the course, hoping that there will be a light at the endless tunnel. They (my therapist and psychiatrist) see this light but I never do. It is too far away from me. But what they don’t see is my heart that is torn to pieces. I want to end my existence because the pain is too great. Yet these two tell me I can’t. One will be hurt and the other will hospitalize me. Why can’t they see how much I am pained? Maybe if they saw it, maybe if I describe it better, they will see that the only way to fix it is with my death.
Tag: psychache
stuck in a black hole
Well today I thought I had enough spoons to get me through the day of getting coffee and dropping off my return to UPS. Then I decided to be bold to go a little shopping after my coffee to get dinner. I was wrong. I was half way back to the bus stop when my ankle gave out on me. CRAP!! For those that can walk normally, PLEASE PLEASE don’t take this for granted! It is so essential for me to have my own transportation (my feet) that every day that I cannot do something because of pain, makes me so very sad. Luckily I didn’t have to wait too long for the bus and it took me over twenty minutes to walk home from the bus stop where it normally takes me less than ten minutes. Because I already was in agony, I decided to go to Walgreens to pick up Ocean Spray’s new Cranberry drink, Cran-Lemonade. It is soooo good even my finicky niece loves it!
Dell has been trying to get in touch with me the last two days. If I wasn’t in great pain, I would have answered the call today as my laptop is making a high pitch whine noise that is absolutely driving me fucking crazy. It sounds like a cop car coming but really I think it is the cooling fan starting and stopping. Whatever it is, I did NOT have this problem before I shipped out my laptop. I will try calling them tonight or maybe sending them an email because the morons can’t speak good English. The messages they have left me have been undecipherable. Sorry but if you work for customer service you should have GOOD English speaking skills for an American company!!!
I still am feeling blue. I feel like this huge black cloud is following me every where I go. I don’t “see” colors except for black and gray. I hate being in this world. And I know it is going to pass but that does help for the time being. It sucks being this way. I called my repro endo doc and she is out of the fricken country. Just fricken great. Secretary was able to give me an appointment on Monday, so that is something at least. Hopefully this siege will be over by then. I know that is what is making me feel more miserable than usual. I have decided that I can live with a certain amount of misery in my life. In fact, I expect it. My world has been filled with gray clouds for most of my life so what is the difference if there are black clouds following me. I never see the sun. I am so far away from it that I am just stuck in a black hole.
My battery came close to dying on me today and I had it. It was the last straw. I went back to the extended battery that I have. I just hope it lasts until I can get another one. Damn things are expensive. Sprint has one but it is only slightly bigger than a standard. I got a thicker battery through some website that I am going to have to track down through my Amazon purchases. I buy all my cell phone accessories through Amazon. I love it as you can get really good deals. Too bad I didn’t get a deal on the hundred dollar headphones set I bought. They only work on Apple products. I would have returned them but I didn’t want to go through the hassle so I just kept them. They are good quality headphones but I can’t use the stupid remote it came with. I tried handing them off to my niece and nephew who have iTouch/iPod but they don’t like the earbuds. Kids!
thoughts about death
I am in a deep dark spot and thought I would write about it. I am tired of living this way all the time. Every night around this time (between midnight and 2 am) I get what I call the midnight demons. It is the time of night where my thoughts are dark and almost sinister. All I think about is death and suicide. I don’t feel joy, even if I had a “good” day. I don’t feel much of anything except extreme sadness. People think that this is depression but it is much more than that. I know one day I will die by my own hand. I want it to be now. I have voices that watch me every second of my waking hours. I started to have chest spasms and when I told the voices, they said I could be having a heart attack. I told them I wouldn’t be so lucky. I often hope that I have appendicitis. I won’t get the operation because I want it to kill me. I can go naturally. I know it will be a painful death. No one survives an appendix rupture. I will refuse all treatment.
I wrote earlier today that I felt blank. I still do. I just have thoughts of death because I don’t feel anything. Anything is better than living like this. I can’t even sleep away my darkness that I feel inside. The only thing that I do feel is pain in my stupid ankle. It is a constant pain that has driven me to thoughts of death. Doctors have told me it is tendonitis but if that was all that it was, I should have been healed by now with rest and ice and elevation, but I am not. I don’t think doctors have a fricken clue what I go through on a daily basis. I talk with my therapist at least twice a week, for fifty minutes each day. I don’t think she gets me. She says she does but I don’t think she does. Same goes for my psychiatrist. She says that if I didn’t have pain, I would be less suicidal. On some level she gets it but I don’t think she really know just how suicidal I have become. If she only knew what was swirling in my head. I have voices that are constantly talking to me during my waking hours, I think I have said this earlier. They talk to me about anything and everything. They seemingly are my best friends, you can say, if that is possible. We have conversations that last for hours. Some times it is deep, other times not so deep. Some of the voices try to help me, others could care less and just want to make sure I am in pain. I have tried to control them with medication but still they continue despite this. I think that is why I am always in a flux of mental pain. Like I am tonight. I am numb but not numb enough. I have seen worse nights than I have tonight. But I am hoping when I go to sleep it is for the last time. That I won’t wake up in the morning. I am hoping to die in my sleep. I know that is unlikely. I do not have any health problems that would cause such a thing. Unless of course, I do have the silent heart attack and it kills me instantly.
my suicidal career (short version)
My suicidal career:
I write about this not in the sense that Ronald Maris created it as that would be a completed suicide and I am not dead. But my relationship with suicide is a long one, from the time I was eight up until now. It is a struggle I deal with on a constant basis. It along with my depression makes life very unlivable for me. I often think about death in so many ways. I plan my death in so many ways yet I am unable to act on it.
When I was younger, I had no problem acting on my impulses to kill myself. But then protective factors such as my niece and nephew entered my life and I couldn’t bring myself to go ahead and kill myself. The loss was too great for them. I couldn’t imagine what my sister would say to these young kids who adored me. They were my saving grace whenever I had a bad day and really wanted to end my life.
Then chronic pain entered my life and made the balance of protective factors seem out of reach. I felt that I had to ignore them in order to let myself get into the suicidal mind frame to end my life. And I got there several times in the last few years. I had one friend call me every single day for a week until the storm had passed. I had therapy with my therapist several times a week. Nothing stopped the pain and the hurting that I was feeling. And when the pain got worse, so did the suicidal feelings. The feelings turned into plans that never were executed. This is the story of how it evolved and how a few suicide attempts lead to more hospitalizations than I can count.
I first thought about killing myself at the age of eight. I don’t remember the particulars but I thought it would be a grand idea not to be alive anymore. This got worse when I was nine. I really thought that ending my life was the answer to my problems. I hated myself because I felt like I was a burden to my family. I felt I had let them down somehow. I started planning my death at my birthday that year because I couldn’t stand the pain of living anymore. But for some reason, the age ten had a significance for my family and my mother was throwing a big party. I don’t know why she was throwing the party and making a big deal out of it but I figured I might as well stick around and see what I got. I was disappointed that I didn’t get a tape recorder that I wanted. I didn’t try to kill myself that year. But I did try later that year when I had an argument with my mother that now I don’t even remember what we were fighting about. I just told her I wish I was dead and went to my room to try and kill myself. I placed a pillow case over my head and prayed for death to come take me away. It didn’t work. The pillow case was too breathable. I was left crying in my room what seemed like hours. I don’t recall if my mother ever checked on me. I hated my life from then on. Suicide was always on the back burner for me.
This is a book detailing my career in suicide and the journey I went on to deal with it. There have been a couple of close calls but nothing recent, though I still feel the need to kill myself at times. But I do not act on my thoughts. I have attempted suicide many times and according to all the statistics, I should be dead. The one study that I often am in awe at is the one where they found that suicide attempt reactions often predicted future suicide deaths. I am in that category of not wanting to live yet I am still here. I am the outlier. And I hate being the outlier.
This story is my life that centers around my suicidality and the works that helped me get through it. Without finding the American Association of Suicidology, the works of Edwin Shneidman and David Jobes, I doubt I would still be around to talk about my life in this way. There are concepts of these people that I hope to explain in layman’s terms so people know about them because they have had a deep impact on trying to keep me alive.
The first is Edwin Shneidman’s conception of the word psychache. It is a word used to describe psychological pain which is defined as the combination of hopelessness, despair, loneliness, guilt, worthlessness, unbearable anguish, intolerable pain, and helplessness one feels when in deep despair. It is the pain one feels that is deep within you when contemplating your life. His other concept, the twenty frustrated needs is another brilliant sign of what constitutes suicide. They are:
ABATEMENT The need to submit passively; to belittle oneself
ACHIEVEMENT To accomplish something difficult; to overcome
AFFILIATION To adhere to a friend or group; to affiliate
AGGRESSION To overcome opposition forcefully; fight, attack
AUTONOMY To be independent and free; to shake off restraint
COUNTERACTION To make up for loss by retrieving; get even
DEFENDANCE To vindicate the self against criticism or blame
DEFERENCE To admire and support, praise emulate a superior
DOMINANCE To control, influence, and direct others; dominate
EXHIBITION To excite, fascinate, amuse, entertain others
HARMAVOIDANCE To avoid pain, injury, illness, and death
INVIOLACY To protect the self and one’s psychological space
NURTURANCE To feed, help console, protect, nurture another
ORDER To achieve organization and order among things and ideas
PLAY To act for fun; to seek pleasure for its own sake
REJECTION To exclude, banish, jilt, or expel another person
SENTIENCE To seek sensuous, creature-comfort experience
SHAME-AVOIDANCE To avoid humiliation and embarrassment
SUCCORANCE To have one’s needs gratified; to be loved
UNDERSTANDING To know answers; to know the hows and whys
When you have frustrated needs your thoughts of suicide go up. One feels the need to be loved and nurtured and when that doesn’t happen a certain loneliness occurs and it is painful. According to Shneidman, one must rank these needs so the final sum of all is 100. I have never been able to rank them but I find that these needs are important in everyday life. He got them from another psychologist, Henry Murray in his famous book explorations in personality. The theory is that frustrated needs are a causal factor in suicide. Decrease the frustration and reduce the suicide. Then you have the ten commonalities of suicide (suicidal mind):
I. The common purpose of suicide is to seek a
solution.
II. The common goal of suicide is cessation of
consciousness.
III. The common stimulus in suicide is intolerable
psychological pain.
IV. The common stressor in suicide is frustrated
psychological needs.
V. The common emotion in suicide is
hopelessness-helplessness.
VI. The common cognitive state in suicide is
ambivalence.
VII. The common perceptual state in suicide is
constriction.
VIII. The common action in suicide is egression.
IX. The common interpersonal act in suicide is
communication of intention.
X. The common consistency in suicide is with
lifelong coping patterns.
Within suicide you have a vocabulary of suicidal terms. The list is exhaustive but I have a few favorites:
Hopelessness, psychache, lethality, perceived burdensomeness, thwarted belongingness, press, perturbation, fearlessness and competence.
Perceived burdensomeness, fearlessness, competence, and thwarted belongingness are not Shneidman’s term but of another suicidologist Tom Joiner. I read his book why people die by suicide and found it fascinating. It really is a good read and helped me to understand my suicidality a little better.
Hopelessness, the feeling of being lost in hope, that nothing is ever going to change, that things will always be the same no matter what.
Psychache is defined as despair, intolerable anguish, hopelessness, guilt, worthlessness, and unbearable psychological pain one feels. It is like pain in the heart that no one else can feel. Your heart feels heavy and you feel like a burden because of it. Nothing soothes this pain. No medication can touch it. And suicide seems like the only answer for this type of pain and anguish.
Lethality, the degree to which someone is at risk for suicide. Whether it be a loaded gun or a few bottle of pills or some cuts on the wrist. This is what determines how suicidal a person is and how they are going to act. If the risk is high and eminent, involuntary hospitalization is called for. If the risk is low, then more contact is need and assessment at every visit.
Perceived burdensomeness, the idea that you are a burden to those around you but in reality you are not,
Thwarted belongingness, the idea that you don’t belong anywhere and feel the need to belong somewhere. It is a very awkward and lonely place that hurts very badly. Everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere or to something and when that need is not met, they feel detached and alone.
Press, similar to stress. It is as if the building of the press is similar to the pressure of a volcano ready to explode. It can lead to further perturbation and make things worse.
Perturbation, the need to feel or do something to ease the pressure and anguish and despair they are feeling and to feel better. It can lead to want to do something but the idea is that you need to do something to relieve the pressure of the feelings on your chest.
Fearlessness, the absence of fear. In this regard, it means that people may be fearless when trying to take their life, like a type of Russian roulette.
Competence, the meaning is the level of competence to carry out the means for their suicidal plan. Examples include rope for hanging, gun handling and shooting, knowledge of drugs, etc. High competency is a high risk factor.
midnightdemons7 
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