on my soapbox

Productive day

I had a productive day. I have been up since six and then went on a caffeine high. That was fun seeing my psychiatrist when I was all racy and talkative. My mood has been up and down all week and I have finally been able to spend some time on my book. I just have seventeen pages to go, which I probably will either do tonight or tomorrow. I haven’t decided. I just read one bleak, downhearted blog entry that I included in the book and it brought my high down. I couldn’t/can’t believe how down I really was. Not to say that I haven’t been down all week but still. My writing was very touching to me and I am the author! I don’t know if I should keep it though. In the book, I made several mentions of my upcoming suicidal plan and also of my plan that I had back in August. But as my therapist calls me, I am a planner. I just am not a do-er. Which sucks for me because I have to continue living this crap every day. I guess it’s good that once I write the dark stuff I don’t think about it as much anymore.

My psychiatrist answered an email I sent her from Monday. I told her that I could no longer “live like this anymore” because I got my menses (which thankfully have gone away!) We talked a little bit about doing something about the transgender issues but I am just not ready to go ahead with it as much as my therapist wants me to. I think she gets it but I still don’t think she (pdoc) knows just how much I want to kill myself because I am in the wrong body. I read about my struggles today in my book and it just killed me. Knowing that I can’t go ahead because of my family and being forced to stay in the wrong body. I just feel like a transvestite because I wear men’s clothes. That is what I am. Whatever you want to call me, it hurts. It causes a huge whole in my heart that can never be filled up.

On another note, I belong to a CRPS support kind of group on Facebook. In one of their posts, they listed oil of wintergreen to help with joint pain. At this stage, I am willing to try anything to ease my ankle pain that throbs me night and day, day and night. Well I bought the stuff from VitaminShoppe but it was the wrong kind. I bought the aroma therapy version and not the application version. Who the hell knew there were different kinds! Now I have to plan a day to go to Harvard Sq and return the bottle. I feel stupid. The bottle didn’t have instructions on it, which I thought kind of weird. I am just glad that I didn’t use it as it probably would have irritated my skin. It should have said that on the website and I would have bought another kind.

Last night I made Nutella cookies for the first time. Now it turns out that I have some kind of allergy to nuts. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and then the Nutella cookies and my stomach got wicked bloated. I just had another cookie to see if it was the peanut butter or the hazelnut and I am hurting. DAMMIT! I love these two nuts. I hope this doesn’t include all nuts because I will be pissed! I am going to miss having a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. *sad face*

On yet another note, I got an tweet from Medscape Psychiatry today about how a single question can lead to a suicide risk. I read the article and low and behold, if someone is thinking about dying nearly every day it is a risk factor for death by suicide or suicide attempt! Really??? I want to tweet one of the authors and scream DUH!!! One of the authors is actually a tweet follower of mine. But what is sad is that there were 709 suicide attempts and 46 death by suicides that could have been avoided had someone CARED to ask more about their feelings. It’s like being asked do you have heart disease or high cholesterol in your family and NOT being tested for it, in my opinion! That is just negligence. And another sad thing is that the questionnaire used was the same one used by Jobes to help initiate his CAMS framework and SSF (see this blog for more info). Just kills me that people are so afraid of death that they can’t deal with people talking about it so people have to kill themselves because no one fucking cares they are hurting. And you don’t need a whole fucking questionnaire to find out if someone is suicidal. Just ask! 9 out 10 times they will say yes. The one person will probably just end up denying it because of being labeled crazy. But the important thing is to be open about it. Ok I am off my soapbox, for now…

rambling 60

I really have no gas today, despite waking up at the god awful hour of five. I had no reason to be up at this hour, other than a slight pain on my pinky toe. I must have had a blister on it or something and it dissipated but I am left with pain. Thank you nerve pain. You cannot tell me that my foot isn’t messed up with mixed nerve signals anymore. There is just so many random things that happen with it. One minute (or more than a few) it is ice cold, then next burning red hot. Other times it is throbbing like I bang it or something. I gave up trying to figure out what I do to make it hurt the way it does. If I stand it doesn’t hurt too much but then I don’t feel the pain right away so who knows. If I walk too much, I won’t know until the next day if I did too much. I just never know what it is going to be. And then I will have a day or two of no pain. Of it acting like my right foot except for the constant tickle that I feel everyday, which is manageable, I hardly know my foot is there.

But I do have to be protective of it. I have to make sure I don’t expose it to extreme temperatures, too hot or too cold and I am going to hurt. I give up. Yet I suffer either way. It just feels so hopeless. And I have become helpless. All I can do is take my pain medication. It is the only thing that helps me. No other medication has helped and I have been on several.

It looks like I might be in the clear with the menses situation. I hope so. I am starting to feel a lift in my mood and that usually changes when things stop. I hope so because if I have another suicidal attack I think I will act on it this time. I just am so tired of fighting it all the time. I know that will push my book back further but what choice do I have? I also know that attempting might mean a hospitalization longer than two weeks and mean that I might spend the holidays inpatient. Oh well, not like that hasn’t happened before. It will be 18 years since my last serious suicide attempt. I still remember it as if it was yesterday. But things were different back then than they are now. Treatment in the hospital is like an inpatient office visit than an actual helpful place. Your “team” meets with you for fifteen minutes and that is supposed to help you? So if you start feeling better to the nursing staff, and they feel you are not a threat, you go home. That is how is works now. No doctors making real decisions, sure they cover it so that it looks that way but it really isn’t.

I am not sure I want to go in the hospital with an attempt. They watch you closer than they do when you go in without one. And you get out quicker. I have yet to see someone attempt and be out in three days time. I am sure it happens but not at the place that I go.

Regarding my book, for those following my blog: I did one paragraph today and organized my ending a little bit. I want to get it to be at least eight pages long so I have four pages to go before that happens. I will work on it tomorrow, I hope. If my motivation comes. I have to see my pdoc tomorrow so maybe I can do some writing before hand.

just cause more agony

I finally got out of the house today. I haven’t showered yet because I wasn’t sure what kind of day it was going to be bowel wise. I would hate to shower and then my bowels decide it was going to let loose on me, forcing me again to shower. So far, it doesn’t look like it is one of those types of days. This is what I have to live with every day. All due to nerve damage. All because a disc was ruptured and entered my cauda equina nerves.

As I was walking home, the Story of Us came on my mp3 player. It is a song by Taylor Swift and I think I am going to write out the lyrics and send them out to my therapist. We are again at an impasse. She still needs valium for her to calm herself when I start talking about suicide so I haven’t been talking about it the past few weeks. I have closed myself off from feeling it. I know that I shouldn’t but if I can’t talk about it without her going wonky, where does that leave me? Alone with my thoughts. Alone with harmful thoughts. And what is ok, is that I am ok with this. I have been alone with these thoughts before. It’s nothing new to me. People can’t deal with it and I am ok with it. The alternative is involuntary hospitalization and that will just cause more agony.

Part of the lyrics is “Now I’m standing alone in a crowded room and we’re not speaking,
And I’m dying to know is it killing you like it’s killing me, yeah?
I don’t know what to say, since the twist of fate when it all broke down,
And the story of us looks a lot like a tragedy now”.

And “This is looking like a contest,
Of who can act like they care less,
But I liked it better when you were on my side. The battle’s in your hands now,
But I would lay my armor down
If you said you’d rather love than fight.
So many things that you wished I knew,
But the story of us might be ending soon.

I wish she would lay her armor down and we could talk things out. We have tried to work on this impasse but I think what she is asking me for (my promise that I won’t kill myself) is just too much for me to bare right not. I can’t promise something I know I can’t keep. I know the likelihood of me actually going through one of my hare brained plans is slim to none but she doesn’t know that. She should by now. She knows I am a planner and a date picker. But that is all that I am. I am tired of being those things but I don’t think I have the lethality in me to really act on my plans. But I know that if I don’t try, just one time, I will feel bad. I don’t want to see 2014. I don’t want to live to see another birthday. And it hurts because I know sadly that I will live to see both because I am a coward.

Today I asked for the 17th off for personal reasons and when she asked what those were, I said I couldn’t tell her. HAHA I couldn’t tell my therapist, who deals with personal stuff, what my personal reasons were for having the 17th off.

at least we can say we tried

All too often I get the how is your back, you look good bullshit. I want to strangle the person sometimes, especially when I have had a bad night the night before. No one gets it. My family keep telling me to see this podiatrist or go to this hospital or see this doctor. But they don’t get I am tired of seeing doctors who only want to stick a needle in my back or ankle and then say ok at least we tried, good luck to you and leave me hanging with NO FURTHER TREATMENT. Or they look at my ankle and xrays/Mri’s and find that there is nothing wrong with my back anymore or that my ankle looks perfectly normal. Well if it was perfectly normal why do I have friggen pain all the time?? I had another pain bout last night that I was climbing the walls with. And I didn’t do anything yesterday that would have caused it. I am just so tired of being in pain but I got to live with it and it sucks.

Last night I was in the deep throws of dealing with bad ankle pain. I wrote the above just now in response to an email that a fellow CESSG member wrote. I thought it would give me something more to write on but I just can’t think of anything more to say. I am all tired out from being in pain all night. Sure I had my coffee this morning and it was very good but it didn’t loosen my thought process any. I am struggling right now, really struggling with pain and my menses and the depression. No one understands. These three things make me want to kill myself. There is no one I can talk to about it. I sent off the blog I wrote last night to my pdoc, hoping for a response and still have not received one. Maybe she got mad at me because I wrote that she didn’t get it because she always uses the wrong pronoun with me. I don’t care. In my mind, I am a he, not a she. I think I got to let the group (the CES group) know that I have decided to change my name again. This one is a little more permanent and one that I have used since I was a teenager. I might still use Mike from time to time. I like the name, even if it is a common one. But for now I think I will just stick with GC. I don’t know if I will ever change my name permanently but I know that I like being called this and that is part of the transition.

The depression I can handle most of the time, except when everything I do drains me. It takes such an effort to get out of bed, to do daily living activities, etc. I rather just lay in bed and do nothing or instead I just play on my laptop or look at a blank page of a word document wondering if the words will come.

The menses are just an insult to me. I can’t handle it. I detest it with every fiber of my being. It is the constant reminder that I am not a male no matter how bad my brain thinks I am. It confuses the hell out of me and makes me think instant thoughts of suicide. I think it probably would take a suicide attempt for my treaters to know that I am serious when I tell them this makes me suicidal to the Nth degree. I can’t live like this anymore. And again I am downcasted by the psych profession. Call it what you will Gender dysphoria or transgenderism. I don’t care. I just know that I am in the wrong body and I want to kill myself be that is the ONLY way to solve the problem. Obviously birth control pills are not working. I have been on them for at least two years now and they just are not working. I get a few months break and then I get my menses again. This isn’t right. I don’t think my repro endo doctor care either. To her, I am just another female that cannot tolerate her period. But is it normal to want to kill yourself every time you get the bloody thing (pun intended)?? I don’t think so.