Tag: suicidality

Ramblings 37: intent to die

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

Been an early morning for me. I woke up at eight and my grocery delivery isn’t until eleven or so. I am hoping it is at eleven but they gave me a time frame of eleven to one. I saved a dollar by choosing this time.

I have been feeling pretty low the past few days. I don’t know why. I just have had a low mood of not wanting to do anything but have been forcing myself to do things. Today because I didn’t wake up with the horrible ankle pain, I am going to try and take a shower after the delivery and go out and get more coffee. I just had a cup but I know it’s not enough to keep me going. Besides I like to sit outside and read for a bit to make some headway on my book. The book is called “Team of Rivals” and it is about Lincoln’s political life and cabinet while in office. Right now I am reading the stuff that happened before he was chosen as the republican candidate for the 1860 election. I find it interesting that the author is talking in detail about the three other candidates, Seward, Bates, and Chase, men who later became members of his cabinet.

Other than reading, I plan on working on my book. I am hoping that if I read it through I can edit it and add stuff to it. Right now it just sounds like an essay of my life. I have not talked about the beginnings of my life. Just started at when I took my first serious overdose that landed me in the hospital. That is my starting point for me because it changed me profoundly. It didn’t help my suicidal feelings and I wanted to kill myself more than ever while I was in the hospital but it also changed my thinking so that I could deal with my suicidality and sort of live with it. There have been attempts after this, but they were not as serious as this one was. And there were plenty of hospitalizations after too. I was averaging at least two per year. Though there was a period where I did not go in the hospital, I have been hospitalized twice this past year and may need to go in again. I have been dreading it because they always mess up my meds. I like to take my meds in the evening, right before bed. But the stupid docs think that I take them in the morning and so they haul my ass out of bed while I am still asleep just for me to tell the Med Nurse to stuff it. It all gets sorted out the day I get discharged or the day before. Not much help there.

I am doing a back up recovery on my computer so I hope that I don’t lose this paper. I have not done this since I bought my laptop. And like I thought, when it finished it restarted the laptop. Glad I saved when I did. I get really mad when I lose a document.

My groceries have just been delivered and I should shower and get dressed but I just don’t feel like it right now. I feel like writing some more but not really sure where this rambling is leading to. Been thinking about what I said earlier about my serious suicide attempt versus my not so serious ones. What defines a serious one versus not? If you need medical attention and end up on a medical ward or the ICU, that is a serious attempt. If you just take a few pills and feel woozy, that is less serious or if you slice your wrist and need stitches but did not intend to die. The key word is intent to die. There are a lot of people who try to take their life without the intention of ending their life. They just wanted to end the pain and if it meant they died than so be it. But then there are people who do the same dangerous things with the intent to die. It’s a slippery slope.

There have been a few times I have been put in the hospital because I cut my wrist. I didn’t intend to die, I just cut a little deeper than I wanted and needed some stitches. Sometimes I have been able to talk my way out of getting hospitalized because when I cut, I do not intend to die. I just want to relieve the pressure of my feelings. Then there are times when I want to overdose on something and that will lead me to a hospitalization. A couple of times I have told the hospital staff that I wanted to jump in front of a train. But that seems to scary for me. I don’t know if I will be able to do it. I once rehearsed it, not really jumping in the tracks but jumping from a height that was similar to the tracks. I also timed where would be the train coming in the fastest. I rode the trains a long time to sort out things but I never tried jumping.

I hope that this is making sense. I know these are just thoughts that are just coming off the top of my head. But isn’t that how all writers write?

May is National Mental Health Awareness Month

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicide attempt

May is National Mental Health Month by Presidential Proclamation. I know I should feel happy that steps are being made to make mental health issues more aware to people but at the same time, I can help but feel resentful that I cannot find a therapist within a five mile radius of my house because of the severity of my illness. When my therapist and I knew that I couldn’t see her anymore because distance was a factor, I tried finding another therapist. I didn’t try once or twice. I tried ten fricken times. The last therapist that I saw locally was at a mental health clinic I used to go to as a teen but he was too scared of me. He was too afraid I might kill myself so that made it difficult for me to trust him. How could I work with some one that was scared of me? I am sure my current therapist gets scared when I tell her I am suicidal. Her anxiety goes up because she like to talk stupid things. I get that me being suicidal is not easy for mental health clinicians. It’s a clinician’s worse nightmare to hear that their client is suicidal or thinking about ending their life. But I know there are going to be a lot of people who have had past attempted suicides that are going to be in the same boat I am. No one wants to deal with this population. It is a crying shame. And no wonder Suicide is a leading killer of the United States.

In addition to me having mental health issues, I also have physical issues that prevent me from walking long distances. It makes me crazy that I have this problem and my mental health team does so much to help me deal with it. I was once working two jobs, but that proved to be too much for me and now I am collecting social security benefits and wondering if I will ever be able to hold down a job again. I don’t know. I really want to go back to school but I cannot afford it financially. I have defaulted on my student loans so there is no hope of me ever going back to school on my income. I know it is my fault and it pains me so severely that I want to kill myself because I know I have wrecked whatever credit I ever had. It physically and emotionally hurts knowing that my credit is fucked. I can never own another credit card for as a long as I live and I cannot begin to think of what lies ahead. I always hear that some jobs require a credit history check. If that is the case for me, I know I will not be able to get back to work.
I hate the idea of not being able to support myself. I know that I have made mistakes in my life and if I could do it over again, I would not make the same one. I would be further along in my degree and I would be on my way of being the kind of therapist I want to be. I know that there will always be risks with working with suicidal clients. I know because I am one of them. But mental health awareness campaigns do help screen for depression. But it doesn’t help those that want to kill themselves. Very rarely do you see the question on questionnaires, do you or have you thought of killing yourself in the past week.

So I wonder now that May is mental health awareness month, will I be able to find a therapist within a five mile radius from my house?

a painful day

by Midnight Demon, posted in Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, depression, suicide, suicide attempt, writing

Woke up today in pain. It should have been a sign not to go out today but it was such a beautiful day out I decided to go out anyways. I got my coffee at Starbucks, my West Java which tastes like a little chocolate coffee. I started journaling but got bored so decided to write a letter to my therapist about how I feel about our last few sessions.

I feel like she has been blowing me off when I tell her I am suicidal. The most she can say is go into the hospital instead of trying to work through it. And that just pisses me off because the hospital is NOT the fucking answer to being suicidal. She doesn’t use the pain scales or even use the SSF’s when I get suicidal anymore. I think I am barking up the wrong tree. I don’t even know if she is taking me seriously anymore. I have not thought how I would kill myself but I just know that I want to die. I am trying to write this all down but my head is still half asleep because I took a pain pill before leaving the house and it makes it hard to concentrate. And the music today in Starbucks was a little louder than it normally is so I was being distracted very easily and could not focus on what I wanted to write. So I texted her that I wanted a check in, not to tell her all this, but just to tell her I am having a hard time. I hope she calls me but then we have an early appointment tomorrow so she may not.

On my way home, a three wheeled stroller got on the bus next to me. On my way off, my bad ankle couldn’t clear the wheels and I sort of tripped. Just fucking great. I now am in really bad pain and I have a golfball swelling on my ankle bone. I just iced it, took another pain pill, and put on the compound mixture of different meds to try and get it to calm down. So far, the pain is down a notch but that is all. I am screwed. I know tomorrow I am not going out as I need to rest it. All because I wanted to get a coffee at my favorite coffee house.

Today I finally learned how to print a PDF from my new laptop. I really didn’t want to have to switch laptops to get it printed. But control P works! The article I printed was about CAMS, Collaborating Assessment and Managing Suicide. It was a nice article that summarized the breakdown of how it evolved and where it stands now. I love this idea and I wish my therapist would open her pea brained mind just a little bit to let this in but noooo. I don’t want her to become a suicidologist, just to open her mind a little about the current trends out there that might be helpful to me. Is that too much to fucking ask??

My safety is kind of in question at the moment. I really want to slice open my ankle to let the swelling out but I don’t think I will get anything more than just blood. I would have to cut pretty deep to get to the root of the swelling and cutting deep would mean stitches. If that happens, I am liable to end up in the hospital. I don’t want that. I just want the swelling and pain to go down. Ice has not helped. I get to ice it again in an hour or two. I know part of the reason it hurts is because it is swollen. There is not much space for swelling to happen down there and it hurts when there is fluid build up. I was hoping that compound might shrink the tissues but it does the opposite with one of the ingredients. It brings blood to the surface to absorb the stuff. I can’t tell if it helps. I only have used it twice so far.

No ball game tonight so I will be bored. Maybe I can get some reading done. I have not been so great at that. Facebook games have been distracting me. But seeing as I will be laid up for a while until the swelling in my ankle goes down, I think reading will be good, as I got like a 1,000 page book to read. It is called Team of Rivals and is about how four people became the republican nomination for presidency in 1860, and also about Lincoln and the war. I have not ventured too far in the book but I am making headway as I am at page 150. It is easy reading though I cannot read too long because then my eyes do a weird thing that makes things double. I feel like I could use another cup of coffee. I am so tired but I don’t feel like going downstairs to get it. It will put too much of a strain on my ankle.

feeling scared still

by Midnight Demon, posted in chronic physical pain, depression

Watched the baseball game today. It was a good game. Red Sox won 6-1 and swept the Astros. Now they head up to Toronto to face the Blue Jays.

I stayed in most of the day. I didn’t feel like going out. I have been in pain. It is beautiful out and I am hurting. I can’t stand it. But today is Sunday and I can’t really go out unless I have a car. The buses are running but they don’t go to Davis Square. I really wish they would. But I don’t make the rules.

I had bad dreams last night, Well more like weird dreams. I wish I could remember them now but I have forgotten them. I know my psychiatrist was in one of them and I think we were talking about the bombings. As much as I am trying to move on from the bombings, seems everywhere has the Boston Strong logo. Even the MBTA buses.

I still seem to be in a down mood. I just can’t get out of the funk. I wish I could. But it is not easy. I have been in pain the past few days since going to the ball game on Thursday night. What usually is a fun time turn ugly as that night I couldn’t sleep and then had to wake up early the next day to go to my appointments. I have been playing catch up ever since and the pain is winning. I just can’t seem to get it under control. I thought I had it today but then around nine it flared its ugly head and back to sleep I went for a couple of hours. I should have taken a pain pill then, but I forgot to refill my pill box the night before. Right now my foot is cold despite it being under blankets. And my last toe on my left foot is throbbing like a SOB. It feels like I stubbed it but I didn’t so I don’t know where this pain is from. I know it is nerve pain because it is a stabbing, kind of throbbing. I just want to cut my toe off. I took a pain pill so hopefully it will calm down before I make it hurt.

My cousins from Virginia have been calling. I have been meaning to return their calls but I just don’t feel like talking. I just want to be left alone. I am just not in a talking mood. I know I might feel better if I do talk with them but I know I won’t be able to handle it if they start talking about the bombings. I just can’t talk about it without crying my eyes out. Even as I am writing this I am getting anxious just thinking about it.

I just can’t get over this fear that something more is going to happen. I don’t know if this is rational or not. I just want the fear to go away but I guess it is always there. We always know there are bad people out there that want to hurt other people for no reason. You got the mentally ill that think of these plots to kill people with automatic rifles like those used for the school shooting in Newtown. How can you be safe. I can’t stay home all the time. I have to go out some of the time. But it’s hard. It used to be my depression kept me in because I just didn’t feel like going out. Now it is more than that. I hope that with therapy I can get past it but I am not sure. I have not moved to the anger phase of the PTSD yet. I don’t know if I ever will. I am frightened. Sounds of motorcycles are like gunfire to me. I try not to let anyone know that I am scared. I have to appear to be strong. But my mother is noticing a change in me that I have not noticed before. I know part of the reason for my fears is because of my finances and how I am going to get on with just the few bucks I have in my pocket right now. I need to go grocery shopping but I don’t have enough to get all that I need. I can ask my mother for the money I gave her to save for me but then that will be last of my saved money and once it is gone, it is gone. I still have not paid the cable bill. But I think eating is more important. Oh and my doctor wants me to lose weight through all this. Wants me to lose just one pound. I told him I would try. But I have been eating junk food all day. I did good this morning. Had my bowl of cereal but then it all went to crap after I woke up from my nap to watch the game. How am I supposed to lose weight when I am stressed out and all I want to eat is a bag of chips??