Tag: suicidality

Reflections on the Year

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

Reflections on the year

This time last year I was deeply in physical pain and psychological pain and in the throws of a yet another nasty depression. I was asked to do a writing project for a friend and I didn’t think I would make it. I was sure by this time, on this date, I would be dead. And if I happened to be alive on Dec 17th, I would surely die by my own hand. I promised myself that if things were still the same, that this heaviness that I felt in my chest were not gone, that the pain in my ankle/leg/foot were not decreased, I was going to end things, permanently.

This year, things are still not a hundred percent better but things are less. My depressions are bearable when they hit. I have Wil Wheaton to thank for giving me the tidbit that my brain is not working right and that things will pass and be better tomorrow. My suicidality, though still a deep part of my soul, has decreased to the point where it is just thoughts I ruminate over and then give up. I figured out with the help of some books that this is always going to be a struggle for me, that my depression and pain are always going to be there. But like a former therapist said to me, you don’t always have to act on what you are feeling. These days, I am a little bit more hopeful about the future, though I don’t always see it. I still get hopeless every once in a while but it doesn’t last forever like it once did. I find that writing my blog has been a life saver for me. Mr. Hyde hasn’t come around in almost two months now and for that I am grateful. I have people in my life that have helped me see that I can succeed, even though I am disabled. It took a long time for me to accept my disability. Took longer to grieve it. But eventually, when I realized that part of the depression and suicidality was the grief I was not mourning, I took it apart piece by piece and wrote about it. There was nothing I could do about the pain except wait for the pain meds to work and for that I grateful that I have it. Also emailing my psychiatrist about the depth I was in helped as well. I don’t know if I am still going to have the same doc in 2014 and that scares me. I know that getting pain medication is going to be harder to get with new doctors and even harder as government rules will dictate the rules for prescribing rather than relying on clinical judgments. I don’t know what I will do then. But that is not my worry for today.

I don’t know what brought about the change. Maybe it was having a daily contact with someone miles away from me, urging me to continue my writing and work on a book. Maybe it was a little of owning the depression and taking charge of it, that it doesn’t have to rule my life like it would love to. I just know that I feel differently than I did a year ago. And though the impulses to kill myself are still a threat, I have a therapist that is behind me like a fungus that won’t go away. I really doubt without her countless sessions I would still be here. She really has been the one person that I can always rely on to be there when my mood is dark and gray. We might have our arguments about treatment but I know that she believes in me that things aren’t always going to be so bleak. I guess I have more people in my life now that believe that I can do things where last year I didn’t think I was going to survive my own lethality. I have been tested a few times this year to end my life. I have made several plans before today to end my life this year. My therapist can account for that. Though I have only had one psychotic break this year that required hospitalization. My hospitalizations have been fewer in recent years than they were in the past. I think that is more because I don’t think they help as they once did and that is a shame. You don’t get the care I once relied on.

Lastly, I have to thank country music for without listening to the same songs over and over for hours of despair, I doubt I would be able to make it though the horrible nights when I couldn’t sleep, either because of pain or despair or both. It is the one genre that I can relate to every song and let my brain do the escaping when I was writhing in agony. From songs like “water tower” by Jason Aldean to “Crash my party” by Luke Bryan, to Taylor’s endless songs and lastly to the other artists that I have followed but are not so popular, Casey James and Cassadee Pope. Without music, the heart just doesn’t heal from pain.

you learn to live with it

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression, suicide

You learn to live with it

It didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen in a week. It took some time but you learned to bare it. Except on nights like this when the pain keeps you awake and nothing eases your mind to bring on sleep. You think of death as your only way out. You think of what more your doctor can do to ease the pain but he doesn’t know because it’s fucking midnight and he’s not on call anyways. Besides, they don’t want to hear you cry in pain. They just want you to live with it. And that is the toughest thing to do.

I have been battling pain since seven tonight. And it’s been a trigger for me. CES started when my left leg went out on me and then I was left with foot drop. I wasn’t told to live with it. I was told my ass was going to have surgery for a condition I had no knowledge of. I still don’t have complete knowledge of cauda equina syndrome because it varies in so many people. Sometimes the right side is affected. Sometimes it is the left. In my case it was the left and I still have nerve damage twelve years later.

Yet I haven’t been told to live with the pain. No, not yet. But you have to or you lose your mind or your life. It is a conscious effort every day to not stare at the bottle of pills or some other weapon of destruction and not think, why not? You have to take the walls down piece by piece of the strength you have and build it back up again with new ones to block the pain out the best you can. But sometimes, like tonight, the walls fails you and you are in mega pain. My foot/ankle/leg are hurting all at once and all you want to do is scream. But you can’t because it’s after midnight and everyone else is asleep. Thoughts of wanting to amputate run high on these nights. It’s a good thing there isn’t a chainsaw in the bedroom.

Meds kicking in is a joke. They may lessen the pain some but they do nothing to ease it 100%. At my best, the pain is always on the level of 3 on a scale of 1-10. At my worst, like now, it can be an 8-12. So I will have to take a third pain pill to quiet it down or I won’t be waking up at 0645 like I need to. Got to take dear old Dad for his tests.

I hate my leg right now. And I should be able to live with the pain. And I will. But not tonight. Tonight I am writing and writing until I pass out because people should know that despite having surgery for CES, you are still left in pain. It is called nerve pain and it sucks. Nothing eases it except narcotic medications or some anti-convulsant drug and that is some of the time. Oh how I wish I could call my doctor now. Have him see the veins popping out on my foot, how swollen my ankle bone is and how I can’t get it down with ice or elevation.

But I got to live with this? I can’t kill myself? That really sucks when you know you are in so much pain, physically, and you can’t end your life because of it. I have too many people I’m responsible for. People say they will miss me. I often wonder if that is true.

My psychiatrist told me tonight to take my meds and get some rest. How am I supposed to do that when I got pain this bad? I keep hearing her voice telling me to go to bed. But I can’t sleep. Pain is just too fucking bad.

I didn’t do anything to cause this. I didn’t stand too long, I didn’t walk too far. I didn’t go up and down the stairs too much today. Well, maybe I did, now that I think about it. I went downstairs a few times to empty my recycle bins and get rid of some boxes in my room.

I wish I could just disappear, permanently, where there is no more pain and no more agony. No more depression. But I don’t want to be happy all the time. That would be too weird for me. Just being content is all that I want. Content means being neither sad nor happy but not being miserable either.

I just want the pain to stop permanently. Then I maybe I could live my life a little better. Third dose of meds and an Ativan have kicked in. And this is how I live with it, without putting a noose around my neck. I put my hat on backwards and I write, until the meds kick in.

It helps to write. It really does.

With thy mighty pen, I slay thee

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

With thy mighty pen I slay thee

This is what I feel like right now, that someone has slayed me and I don’t know why. Just no reason. No explanation. I am just gone from a website.

I just finished looking at my introduction to my book. It says all that it needs to say and more. I hope my book becomes more noticeable than that website, though I doubt it. It further ingrates in me that I am insignificant in this world. That I don’t matter. My feelings don’t matter and obviously, my words don’t matter.

But what does matter is my book. It will be great, I hope. And maybe it will be listed on the other website but I don’t think I want it to be. I am too hurt right now to think of going that far. It will be listed on other, better websites.

If I had any gall, I wouldn’t wait till March to put this book out there. I think this book is good even with the editing that I have done but the ending is weak. It needs some thing good. I am working on it. I hope that my depression goes away for a day so I can write something hopeful and meaningful. I have miles to go before I sleep, isn’t that how the saying goes?

book is done! And other stuff

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

Book is completed. I finished it up today, sort of. I still don’t have a solid beginning or ending but the bulk of the book is done. Now I just have to wait for the editor to put me in her queue, make some changes and boom, I will be ready for publishing. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my chest and now I can open and read my reward!

I even got the acknowledgement of one of the consultants so I need to add his name or maybe just leave it as treatment team. He is apart of that.

I am so excited about this. I could if I really wanted to, publish it today, but I want a few people to read it first and give me their feedback before I proceed. I also want to print it out so I know what it looks like. Right now I know it is 160 pages but after formatting I think it will be double that. I was looking at some other publishing sites and they wanted as much as $9K for self-publishing! I couldn’t believe it! You got a lot of stuff for that price but still, that is still a substantial amount of money to put into a book. But I guess if you want it to do well, you might as well put the money into it. Unfortunately, I don’t have 9K so I will just publish for free and hope that it does well.

I am kind of scared that I am getting closer to the end product. All my doubts and fears are there. I know when it comes down to the last page of writing and hitting send, I am going to take a long hard look at that click button.

My side effects seem to be ok today. I didn’t take my dose last night because I didn’t want to be an elastic ball today. I paged my pdoc to talk to her. Just in case those feelings come back, but she hasn’t returned the page. I also sent her an email so she knows that I am paging her. Sometimes I don’t have the luck of sending pages through. Symptoms for the past few days have started around 4 pm and so far I don’t have any other than the soreness of the past few days. I hope I can take my dose tonight or that my pdoc doesn’t want me to lower the dose. I am so afraid of the voices coming back but I also don’t want to be an elastic ball being stretched and have restless limbs where I have to keep moving them.

I had a therapy appointment today. I also got snuck into one tomorrow. I don’t know how that happened. But the 17th is still off the table, as far as I know. I just need that day off away from my therapist as it is going to be a hard day. And I don’t want her to know why. I will just keep this to myself this time. I am not going to share it with my blog because it just seems too personal. I hope that you will let me keep my privacy. If I do write about, the blog will be a protected blog and the password will be midnight.