Tag: schizoaffective disorder

religion and faith

by Midnight Demon, posted in mental illness

I am not a religious person in the least. I lost my faith years ago and more so when the Catholic church turned out to be a hornet’s nest of pedophiles. But when it came to suicidality, I remember asking the priest to ask for forgiveness for me because I didn’t feel remorse about wanting to take my life. I was pretty messed up and just a teen but I felt that I should die because I was an evil person.  The priest did not condone me on wanting to take my life but I was still asking god to forgive me for I wanted to take my life and break one of his commandments on “thou shall not kill”. I have tried to wrap my head around it but after several weeks of going to church and praying for forgiveness, I finally tried to take my life. Fortunately, I didn’t succeed.

I was thinking about how faith can affect someone. Who are we really putting our faith into? Is it a god that we believe in or a higher power?  Most people believe that there is a god, even if they do not go to church every week/day. As you get older you tend to follow church more closely. We may even decide to talk to the pastor or priest or reverend to find the answers we are looking for because everything happens for a reason, so they say. Maybe by me telling god that I was going to kill myself, he intervened and I did not end up dying like most people would have. If I didn’t throw up I doubt I would be here today.

Why do we put a god or other higher power in our trust? Could it be that we are looking of the whys of what is wrong with our lives or for a bad thing that has happened to us? When a sick child has cancer, we tend to punish the god for taking the child away. When I was in the 7th grade, my priest said that if I went to church for a year, faithfully, that good things will happen. My life was going poorly. My parents were arguing every day and it hurt to see them fight all the time and it made me mad but I didn’t have anyone to talk to about my problems. I kept it in and became depressed. I excelled in school because it became my escape from my troubles. I went to church, sometimes two days in a row on weekends and went to confession, the whole kit and caboodle.  When my year was coming to a close, disaster struck, WWIII in my house happened and my parents split up in the biggest fight they ever had. I was traumatized by what happened and still am to this day. My father took his shot gun out of his closet and threatened my cousin if he didn’t leave the house. My cousin was protecting my mother but after all was said and done, I couldn’t understand why God had let this happen. I was devoted to him and wanted peace and instead it resulted in my wanting to take my life. Did god want me to join him? Was that why he wanted me to kill myself and then for me to hear voices telling me to so that I can escape this world and end up in another place? Did he really want me to become psychotic so that my Navy career would end before it even started?  No one had the answers for me. Yet my belief then shrunk big time. I stopped going to mass. I stopped believing in god. I felt so hurt and betrayed I wanted to yell at the priest that told me my life was going to change after a year of attending mass when it did not change for the good. Granted my parents were not going to stay together and there was nothing to really do about it. But I blamed god just the same. People might say that I am vindictive about this as I do feel wicked guilty about trying to take my life. I was a good Christian up until then. When my world came apart so did my heart and soul. I was splitting in every direction and I know that if I gave into the voices that night, I probably would be a schizophrenic right now. I still have the voices but they are managed. I tried to go back to church after all that has happened but after I tried to take my life, I have not set foot in a church since voluntarily. I have gone to churches for funerals and weddings but that is the ONLY time I have set foot in them. Some times when things are going bad I do admit I will go to the hospital chapel and pray for my friend or family member that is having difficulty. I may not believe in a god anymore but I do believe there is a higher power out there directing things to happen, whether it be angels or just faith.

Jupiter is a funny planet

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

Been struggling with voices most of my life and think now I am going finally whacko. I just can’t seem to break out of the psychosis and firmly believe that if I cut my leg open, my problems will be solved. It is curious that I miss one dose of my med, that little pink pill that holds the key to my sanity and all hell breaks lose. I can’t fricken sleep because my head is a jumble.
I have been watching the show ‘perception’ on TNT and can’t help but think that is me. I don’t see things but I just hear the same voice and when I’m in a psychotic state that voice becomes another person, another tone, another character all its own. No this is no altering of egos, least I don’t think so only because I interact with them on a regular basis that truly is what I hear. I can have a conversation all on its own merit based on whatever. Sometimes it is intellectual, like the show portrays, sometimes it is just the criticism of what I am doing. Constant hounding of not making my eggs “right” or walking the wrong way to get somewhere, to why am I taking this bus versus that bus, all the fricken time. Even while I was walking in my own home town did I get this criticism. I can’t go anywhere without these voices hounding me. It is maddening but yet if the meds work too well and I don’t hear them, I feel lonely without them. They are my invisible friends…I know it sounds pathetic but it is true, though when they tell me to cut, they are not my friends and usually that lands me in the hospital which I don’t like. I hate going in the hospital but sometimes I need to be there because only there do the voices let me be and I can trust that the meds I am given will make these bad voices go away.

It’s 4am and I’m hardly breathing

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

Just got finished with a couple of episodes of watching season 2 of criminal minds. I have fallen in love with this show though it is kind of creepy. I’m not sure which is freakier…that this fiction is whacked and someone thinks of this stuff or that it might actually be true and there are more serial killers/rapists/or more than I would like to think about.

The last few hours, my gastritis has been acting up. I wish I could say that it is keeping me awake but as tired as I feel, I am just not sleepy. 
I have been in a psychotic state the past few days, having weird thoughts, paranoia and delusions. 
I try not to give in to the voices but sometimes it is very difficult. It’s 4:30 and all I can think about is death. It is a constant struggle. With my nerve condition, CES (Cauda Equina Syndrome), I have had a bladder accident today that always sends me off the deep end. I know that sometimes sitting causes me to push on the bladder causing urine to come out. Because I have been on narcs and anti-psychotics, I have had some retention and don’t really know when I am full. I find it humiliating to find wet pants and not know it all the damn time. This week is also my 11th anniversary of getting this blasphemous condition and with every bladder or bowel accident, all I can think of is that another disc is going. 
The tension in my neck and shoulders from worry is causing my arms to feel weak at times. I can no longer hold the phone for more than 10 mins with out my arm going numb. And I feel that if I have cervical herniations, I will just kill myself. My only saving grace has been my nieces and nephew. I know they will not be okay even as much I try to think they will be, that they will be resilient enough to deal with my loss.

I have been trying to get a hold of my pdoc but no response. I guess she is too busy for me and it hurts. I have known her for 19 yrs now, since I was 17 and now I feel like I need to see another doc but then she knows me better than anyone. I know that the stressors of last week with the screw up of my benefits set the stage for this psychotic break. I just hope that I can getit controlled before I have to seriously consider going inpatient again. 
My fear there is that they will mess up my meds and then get it straight the day I get discharged. And besides, the docs there will most likely want to try a new expensive drug I have never been on to deal with my psychosis. No one understands the pressure of this and knows what kind of hell my head goes through. Yes, my physical pain sucks, but this madness is worse than that. Least I know that a vicoden or dilaudid can calm it down. 
Any type of stress and boom, I am crazy. Typical “normal” people become anxious or nervous, maybe even have anxiety attacks. Me I just become psychotic. The voices get louder, I talk to myself more to give in to their endless questions, criticisms, and observance of who is going to kill me or saying negative things about me. Weird thing is that every time I get psychotic, it’s different. This time in addition of them reading my thoughts, the conversations continue and no one knows what I am talking about. The conversation in my head gets externalized and the people around me whom I am carrying on the conversation have no clue what I am talking about. Sometimes it is of an intellectual nature, such as the Maya or some history that I have read and think that they know about but truly they have not read it but I know they have because the voices have. I know it is weird to think this but I know my thoughts are amplified and people can hear it and maybe the voices too. I don’t know maybe it is just part of the madness.

It’s now 5 am so I am going to try and get some sleep for at least 6 hours as I need to get up for good old therapy…

Dark thoughts, things no one talks about

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

Been thinking the last few days of how this blog has changed my life but yet the demons of my mental illness still play their cards. I have not really thought of ending my life today, until now because the physical pain I am experiencing is driving the voices mad. I forgot to take my medication this morning. I was excited in seeing a close friend and just forgot. The price you pay for sanity is a little pink pill. The voices have created this delusion that if I cut my leg open, I will be free from pain. I cannot help but see their point in this line of thinking. I have done everything to try and sooth my pain but cut. Maybe the release of endorphins is what I need to get over the pain but part of me knows I will not feel the release because my leg is numb. The last time I tried cutting which was a few years ago it was a god awful sound of cardbord being cut that I never want to experience again. Who would have thought that being numb had its vantage points. But that is what nerve damage does to you. It numbs you, making you jaded of the things around you. And then when the psychosis starts you begin to wonder what is truth and what is fantasy. I’m in a difficult spot because although I want to cut, I know the consequences of doing so. The chance of infection is greater because of lack of feeling or that I will feel the pain, just not right away like when I stub my toe on my left foot. Funny I remember when I was a kid I thought my left side was the “evil” side of me and had to be removed because my right side was the “superior” one and would defeat all. Yes I was psychotic back then but I always kept it hidden.
See no one wants to know that you are crazy, like really mentally ill and depressed. They say things like cheer up or things could be worse. How can things be worse if you are already thinking of ending your life and you are hearing voices cheering you on, almost daring you to go through with it every day??? Yes, things could be worse. Life as a vegetable or state commitment to a psych hospital would be a  terrible consequence of telling someone that they are NOT telling someone they are hurting. Every time I hear people tell a depressed person to cheer up it makes me so angry because they are so ignorant. I want to shout at that for being dumbasses because it only created guilt in the depressed person that is just trying to survive the day without incident.
But throw in being psychotic and depressed, you have a different ballgame. Voices are constantly criticizing everything you do. You don’t tell anyone because I’ve learned that only the voices care. The voices are with you 24/7 and they know you better than the person that is saying cheer up. That person then becomes the enemy, the object of paranoia where the voices scream that he or she is going to kill you. To beware of what he or she is saying and doing because now they are after you and are going to kill you. This is what I deal with on a constant basis.
So the next time a friend tells you they are down, don’t tell them to cheer up. Find out what is making them sad because if it is psychosis, you might end up being the bad guy…