Tag: suicide attempt

Another Day in the Life of Midnight Demon

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

Another Day in the Life of Midnight Demon

I participated in the weekly BPD, Borderline Personality Disorder, chat on Twitter. This week’s topic was about social media. I gave a few thoughts and shared my friend’s blog. She has BPD and writes about the struggles quite frequently. I will also be participating tonight on the SPSM chat later this evening. I just hope that I will be up.

My boys won today, 6-1. I am very happy they did. We needed a win and now fall within 2.5 games of the Rays, who are currently in first place. I am glad it was a day game today. I don’t know if I could handle a night game and then a chat. Or chat while the game was going on. I don’t particularly like SPSM because I feel it doesn’t validate my statements most of the time and I get talked down to a lot. I know it’s probably not the case but it feels that way.

I plan on making pancakes for supper. I just don’t know what kind to make. I am leaning toward oatmeal because I do love them more than buttermilk or original. The last time I made them, they came out kind of sucky so I am going to play with the ingredients a little bit to make them better. I only once made them perfect and that was a while ago.

Sometime in the last few hours, I re-read the article I am writing a review on. I wanted to get back to it but I have been lazy today. My brain just isn’t there. I didn’t sleep too well again last night as I went to bed around 0230. It seems if I am up past 2300, I get hyper and have a hard time falling asleep. I get my second wind, so to speak.

My mother needed a box for the cleaning that she is doing. I was happy to oblige and gave her two that were in my room. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the clothes that are in its place. I am slowly making my way to the closet but I am just not there yet. It is a struggle and maybe before the chat and after I had some food, I will be able to clean a little more or at least go through some of the stuff that is there. It’s so hard for me to make decisions on what to do with the stuff that I just get overwhelmed and don’t do anything. I keep telling myself just one thing but sometimes, that one thing leads to another that leads to another that leads to another. Then you have several things and you start feeling overwhelmed by it all and just say fuck it. At this point it will become my summer project. If I can clean out that part of my room, I can then hang my jeans and clothes that can be hung and not be on the floor or on top of boxes.

I still have my menses, much to my disappointment. I thought it was going away as I had less stuff coming out of me but my last trip to the bathroom proved me wrong. I hate it so much and was so looking forward to wearing boxers. Now I just want to take a shower and do nothing. I am so disgruntled. And what kills me is that I have no one to really talk about it with. I have my therapist, but I don’t talk with her till Tuesday and by then it will most likely be gone. It just kills me that I have to put up with this every few months. I know I should be grateful it isn’t every month but I am a man and shouldn’t have to put up with it period (no pun intended). It just kills my ego and how I view myself. It’s like it takes a little part of me every time it comes around. It definitely makes the suicidal part of me grow. I really rather be dead than to deal with this shit. And the trouble is no one understands. They just think that I have to endure it because I am a “woman” and that is what women do. God, it hurts me so much. No matter how much I try to be a man, I just can never be enough of one.

I am sad to report that one of my friends just told me she tried to attempt suicide twice in as many weeks. That makes three attempts, maybe four, since I have known her. I really don’t know what to do. She is having a hard time getting services where she lives. And I just feel helpless. We used to talk every day and now it’s spotty. She feels like she is a burden to me and no matter how many times I have told her otherwise, it hasn’t clicked in her brain. It is just upsetting to me that she uses my illness as a way of not reaching out for help. I know I am just one person, and she obviously has the right not to seek my help, but to tell me she attempted after the fact just strikes me as painful. I want to help her, I really do, but I can’t if she doesn’t talk to me. I haven’t responded to her message and I don’t think I am going to, least not right away. I need to regroup and think about this and how to approach her.

Hospitalizations: Fifteen Minutes of Fame

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, depression, mental disorders, mood disorders, suicidality, suicide

Hospitalizations: Fifteen Minutes of Fame

I had therapy. My therapist read my “Brick Wall” blog. She asked if we could talk about the bricks and we spent most of the session going over them. I also told her about my book problems, that I think it is disorganized. She said that it is her most prized possession, so I think she is biased in my writing abilities. She said my short story was heartbreaking to read. I haven’t gotten too many likes on it. I may have to play with the tags a bit. Anyway, talking about the bricks was difficult because it lead to where I was in my last hospitalization, where I wrote the story. I told her how no one was looking at the bricks, that they were just looking for the cement to dry before sending me home, so to speak. That is all they cared about. Stabilization and discharge were the key focus of what they wanted to do. What brought you in the hospital, they didn’t care about. Or if they did, it was always, “we’ll talk about it tomorrow” but never did. I hated that my needs were ignored and patronized. I flatly told them I was going to kill myself when I left the hospital during my initial few days when they wanted to discharge me. And it was true. I needed help and was going to stay inpatient to get that help. Except the help came back to me looking for help from outside services. The social worker that was working with me didn’t care about my needs. I ended up having to call places to look for outside support. I tried to get it but never had a call back or even an email back, though one place the email came back as undelieverable. It was a trying time. I wanted to kill myself so badly and yet I was supposed to make all these phone calls to show that I wanted to live? To do the work my team was supposed to be doing? I just don’t understand their mentality. Yet it has been nine months since I left the hospital. I am still here because the anti depressant they put me on really help stabilize my depression. Too bad it no longer works. I stopped taking it in December.

My therapist thinks I should write a blog about past hospitalizations and current ones. Thing is, I don’t remember much. I know things are different today than they were back then. For example, there are no longer any outside passes given. If you want outside passes, you are basically discharged. When I was in the hospital in August, they wanted to give me grounds privileges. This meant that I could go out for staff walks. I told them adamantly no because I was scared I was going to run. They gave it to me anyway. Granted that at the time, I was in an AFO so I know I wouldn’t get far, but they still took that chance of letting me go. Stupid, I tell ya. I should have gone away from the group and tried to escape. I don’t know what that would look like but I know it wouldn’t be good on either side. I would most likely get reprimanded like a child, even though I am an adult. But that would be on them. I told them I would run and if I did, it was on them, not me.

I remember a time when I was in the hospital 21 years ago. I was severely depressed and suicidal. I had attempted suicide and was hospitalized against my will, in fact the admitting staff forged my signature on the consent form. I went through my records after discharged. Anyway, back then they had ground privileges, which meant you could leave the unit unaccompanied by a staff person. Just as long as you stayed on hospital grounds. Well, I decided to walk around the block after working hours and got “caught” by off duty staff. My privileges were revoked the next day as I broke the “rules”. I never kept my privileges too long. I always did something to revoke them. One weekend I had to beg for an outside pass just to pay a bill (I was there for more than a month and if I didn’t pay the bill, my phone was going to be turned off). I told them I would be back within an hour and I did. It was the first time they trusted me to do this. It was tough because I was so suicidal and they weren’t going to let me try again, hence why my stay was 2 ½ months. That was my longest time in the hospital. It did help me but the demons were still there. I had major issues that I still don’t talk to anyone about, not even my current therapist. It’s just too scary.

Last night I was looking for former therapists. I came across one, Dr. B. She helped me probably more than all the rest. She was the longest therapist that I have seen till that point, three years. All the rest of the therapists that I have seen were year or less. I am going to send her my book and email address. I wrote about her in my book. It was hard not to include her because the opening introduction has her in it as that was my first serious suicide attempt. I had made other attempts before that one, but this one landed me in the hospital and then I was there for a long time. That is when you had good care and one on one contact with someone. Now they have these “teams” where there are all the staff from the unit meet with you for fifteen minutes or so and then decide what to do with you. Fifteen minutes to decide if you need further stay or discharge. It is nothing like the care I had 21 years ago. You met with your inpatient therapist, then a social worker, and then your contact person who was a staff member for that shift. This no longer happens and it’s sad. No longer do you feel safe in the hospital or cared for. It is the end of the era for hospitals. I will never go back, no matter how suicidal I get. They can just kiss my ass goodbye.

coming out as transgender

by Midnight Demon, posted in suicidality, suicide attempt, suicide attempt survivor, transgender

Coming out as a transgendered male (Female to Male) has not been an easy thing to do. It has been a very confusing road since kindergarten. The hardest part of the journey was puberty. I had a male best friend and I seriously thought that we were of the same genders up until I started developing. When I started developing breasts and he didn’t, I was confused so much that I wanted to die. But when you are eleven, the concept of killing yourself is not completely formulated. You knew you wanted to die, but didn’t know how. You knew that suffocation by a plastic bag would do the trick, but were too scared you would get into trouble with your parents. That fear prevented a lot of suicide attempts, especially during adolescence. The more I developed into something that conflicted with my brain, the more it hurt. But it wasn’t a physical pain like that of a broken limb. The psychological pain was so intense that suicide was all that I thought about. The higher the pain, the deeper the suicidal impulses would emerge. But I had to be a “good girl” and fight what was wrong. I suppressed the feelings of maleness but still acted like a “tomboy” in every fiber of my being. I wore baseball hats whenever I could. My father disliked it so much, he often threatened to cut up my hats when I got “caught” wearing one. To him I was a girl and I should act like one. My sisters did act like their gender roles, but that make up and hairspray were something I was not into nor had an interest in. Boys didn’t wear those things and neither would I.

When my menses started, that really started the hardest part of the conflict to deal with. I was bleeding and I didn’t understand why. I was welcomed into “womanhood” and I wanted nothing to do with it. I didn’t understand why I wasn’t growing a penis. It was a very confusing time and month after month, I hated myself more and more. Even the use of feminine products was abhorrent to me. The more I grew into a freaking woman, the more I hated myself. I prayed for death every night. But no one knew of this struggle. Not even my best friend. With him, we were buddies. I was “Mike” and we played pretend male gendered games such as me being a mechanic or cable repairman. When T-ball season came around, I asked my father if I could play. But he stuffed my dreams of playing saying that is only for “boys” not for girls. I was beyond hurt.

During middle school, my sisters would have boyfriends. I never had an interest in boys. I was a boy so why would I be interested in my own gender. I didn’t have feelings for girls either. For the longest time, I thought I was asexual. It wasn’t until I was in therapy after my family fell apart that my therapist asked if I was gay. I felt really uncomfortable with the question. I just was saying I hadn’t found the right “boy” for me. She didn’t have to know that I was a boy inside just waiting to come out. I had suppressed it so much that I really didn’t think about it at this time.

When I first became suicidal, it was when I was fifteen. My family had fallen apart and I fell apart with it. My father called me a liar and my world ended. I was no longer a good “girl” in his eyes so there was nothing to live for. I started self-harm by cutting, thinking it would bring me to the verge of death, but all it did was bring my internal pain to the outside. After that therapist asked the “gay” question, I started thinking about it, but it was on a subconscious level. I remember being on the train and these really good looking women were on it. And I don’t know what possessed me, but I wanted to kiss them and it didn’t phase me that it was wrong. When I got hold of my senses (I made no such act toward them for fear of being called a freak), I was shocked. I grew up as an Italian Catholic and I knew homosexuality was forbidden. I knew I couldn’t bring it up in therapy. I was too proud to do so. Yet I continued to feel like I was crazy. Then things started to make sense to me. The voices that I was hearing, all were female except for one or two of them. I have been hearing voices since I was five, but that is another issue.

When I was sixteen, a therapist that I was seeing was leaving. I was very hurt. I felt I had nothing to live for with her leaving me. So in April 1993, I overdosed. The pain of living my life as what I was, was too great to bear. Subconsciously, I always wanted to die because I was in the wrong body. And I finally made an attempt to kill myself because of it. Though when I was asked the reasons, I just said I was depressed. No one figured out why I was so depressed. People never talked about being transgendered or being gay. Yet here I was, in the mix of being a confused teenager and had no one to turn to for help. Because I had suppressed so much of myself, I couldn’t even bring it to the surface. I had other issues to contend with, such as the break up of my parents.

Then suddenly women were attractive to me, something that has not happened before and I liked it. I thought I was crazy and that no one would understand. I felt isolated and despondent. There wasn’t a gay person that I knew and this was before the age of the internet so it wasn’t like I could ask Google what to do. Instead I internalized and compartmentalized. Then one day in January when I was 17, I started cutting myself and I didn’t stop until I was satisfied. But I didn’t know I did it. I knew I did it as I was holding a razor but I didn’t cut myself. I dissociated. That landed me in the hospital. I met a homosexual male and asked him about being gay. He told me that it was natural and that I wasn’t crazy. I took a chance and told the staff I was gay. I didn’t get a lifetime commitment in the psych ward. I felt a huge burden was lifted off my chest. But my Best friend that I had known since I was in diapers, didn’t like me being gay. He felt if we had sex, that would change me. But we already tried that and every time we were intimate, things turned off. I just wasn’t attracted sexually to males.

Fast forward to now. Around the time I was thirty-three, I started realizing that I wasn’t going to magically become a male. I came out in my therapist office and started crying like a baby because it was the source of my suicidality. I had been really suicidal and for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. Then when my menses came, I immediately became suicidal. Since I put two and two together, I realized that I was a male and it was time that I stop repressing myself. I wear male clothing all the time, except for that time of the month that I am forced to endure. Trying to stop the female reproductive system has been the hardest task for me to endure.

I was recently hospitalized and am just a little over a week since I have been discharged. The reason I was in the hospital was because I had overdosed on some pills. I couldn’t take the self-hate anymore about being a transgender. There were other reasons too, but being in the wrong body took precedence over the others. I hate feeling like this. I know there are treatments out there but there is a lot of stigma that prevents it from coming to people like me. I am not sure I want the sex organs either but I do know I want a double mastectomy. There are days when I am okay with having breasts and then there are other days, I can’t stand them. I hope one day I can take the next step forward. But I got to first like myself because if I don’t have that, I won’t have anything to like or live for.

Saturday blog 18

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

Saturday Blog 18

I slept for most of the morning, which was good because I didn’t sleep good for most of the night. Pain kept waking me up. My brother in law was going to Stop and Shop so I went with him to get a few things. He told me my mother needed milk so I picked it up as well. I didn’t get my fish and chips like I wanted to because I was low on cash. I could just get the essentials, like cream, my powerade, and milk for my mother. That was all that I needed. When I get paid in two weeks, I will do real grocery shopping. I won’t be paying my cell phone bill again because it is already paid for the month. For the first time in months, I will have a little extra money so I might just get another online grocery order. It will save me time and energy from walking around the store. I can just click on what I want.

After the grocery store, I made coffee and watched the baseball game. We won 8-4. In the Bronx. Against the Skankees. HEHEHE. They made a costly error and then loaded the bases and we capitalized on it. Instead of the inning to be over, Aroid took his foot off the bag after review of the play. It was sweet that my favorite player, Brock Holt, then hit a double that cleared the bases. This guy is amazing. He was awesome last year and his awesomeness is continuing this year.

After the ball game, I watched some of my shows. I had to watch the Criminal Minds episode with Gary Sinise. I miss CSI NY so much that to see Gary again was a thrill. He still looks the same.

Other than going to the grocery store, I really haven’t done anything yet I feel really tired. I haven’t played any games all day. It was just sleep, store, baseball game, tv. I guess that is a lot of doing nothing but my ankle would beg to differ. It is hurting like I have been standing on it all day. I don’t know why, as I mostly have been sitting or reclining. But that is the pain syndrome for you. It does what it wants, with no rhyme or reason.

I wonder why is it that if you have terminal cancer and was given only a few months to live, people accept that reality more often than if someone says they are going to kill themselves. I keep thinking about things like this because cancer is held higher than suicide when it is just the same. You are going to die either way. Either through your own terms or cancer’s. And if you survive cancer, you are considered a hero. Yet you attempt suicide, you are shamed and blasted upon. I have accepted that I will probably take my life sometime this year. It is something I have thought about for sometime and though I am not thinking about suicide every day like I used to, I have a specific date that I want to end my life. Not because of shits and giggles, but because I am tired of being in pain all the time, mentally and physically. I know nothing can happen with my life. I fucked it up and there is no unfucking it, not unless I win the lottery. I will never be a therapist because I can’t go back to school. I am in the minority. I am transgendered and never will be accepted by anyone. And I just can’t live with this knowledge. My dreams went up in smoke when I became disabled, when I got diagnosed with mental illness when I was 16. I tried having a life but it just isn’t working out. I am depressed nearly every day for no good reason. I am tired of living this way. It must come to an end. I am just going to die anyway and I rather it be on my terms.