23 years

As much as I tried to avoid getting sick yesterday, I think another culprit is to blame for me getting sick. There was a lady behind me on the bus that was sneezing and I think I caught her germs. I have been doing nothing but sneezing most of the day today, and I have been up since 0530. I am pissed because I am supposed to babysit tonight and tomorrow. I don’t feel really sick but my head feels like it is going to explode. Sinuses suck when they are clogged.

I finally loaded a profile on my speech to text software last night. I made my first FB post using it. I still like to type so I am typing this blog today. I am hoping to try it out tomorrow when I feel a little better. Right now I am all congested so I don’t think that will be good trying to talk with my voice not being clear.

I have use of my sister’s car today. I am excited but there is no place that I really want to go, except Starbucks but I feel so run down, I don’t want to go out again. I just came home from picking up my lunch: Pizza. I have been dying for a slice for a few days now. I don’t know why I get food cravings. It’s not like I am pregnant, far from it! Just weird I guess.

Last night I couldn’t sleep. I had a lot on my mind from my therapist appointment. She is hung up on the grief factor because of my aunt’s death. But I don’t feel sad. I don’t feel depressed about her death. We were close when I was younger but I don’t have that much new memories in my adult life. We just grew apart, though she would always ask me to come over for coffee whenever she saw me. I never saw her because we had a language barrier. She spoke 90% Italian, but the dialect kind. I always had trouble understanding her because I don’t know Italian much less the dialect kind. She was a good woman. And though she is gone, I am happy she is reunited with her husband, my favorite uncle. I know she was lonely though she didn’t show it often. He was a huge part of her life. And I am sure being without him for sixteen long years must have been tough.

But that is not why I have been having such a hard time lately. See this week marks an anniversary of when I started therapy and when I first wanted to end my life. It has been 23 years since this has happened. I was fifteen. But sometimes it still feels like yesterday. And dealing with my father who has been the chief contributor to my demise that year of the past, just means I was more vulnerable than I would be if I wasn’t dealing with my father. He just makes me want to drink which I guess is better than cutting. That night changed my life in a very profound way. I saw my father for who he truly was and it was an eye opening experience. The pedestal that I put him in came crashing down that night. And I wanted no part of him after that. Because if he could be so cruel that night, who is to say he wouldn’t flip out on us kids. He was very scary that night. I never seen him so mad before. Sure I seen him lose his temper but this was way different. He threatened my cousin and was intent on following that through. I have never seen him so livid. Course after all was said and done, I really needed to escape the craziness so I started cutting to deal with my pain. Not the best coping method but it was the only one available at the time.

constant physical pain makes me depressed

I am up early yet again. I just can’t sleep more than eight hours anymore. I sleep six hours and then I am up. My foot is hurting so I guess I should take something for it before it gets worse. I already went downstairs twice for bathroom reasons. My ankle didn’t appreciate that at all. I don’t know why it is so stiff today. But then today is going to snow so that might have something to do with it. Seems every week there is some snow going on. I can’t wait for it to stop. It makes walking very difficult, especially when people don’t shovel their walk. Drives me crazy. Then you have to walk in the street and the cars get mad at you.

I am thinking of changing my “about me” blog to just living in chronic pain and having suicidal urges. I realize that is all I write about. Sure there might be a few blogs just about my depression but most of it starts with me being in physical pain. I am in constant physical pain and it makes me depressed and often times suicidal more so than my depression alone. But now that I have the pain managed to a good degree, I am less depressed about it. But I still think that I should maybe add that I also suffer from chronic physical pain.

Yesterday when I went to pick up my prescription, I was asked for the first time what my diagnosis was. I had heard people tell me that pharmacists now need a diagnosis in order to process but it never happened to me before now. Funny on my main pain medication they didn’t ask me for a diagnosis but the one I take for break through pain they did. Very weird.

It’s Sunday and I hope there is a televised spring training game for the Sox playing today. I miss baseball so much. It is the one thing that I can watch without getting bored.

It’s almost seven in the morning. I have no idea what I am going to do today. It’s cold out and is supposed to snow so I guess I will just stay inside. Monday I have my appointment with my pdoc so I will be out of the house. I don’t think I will be getting a latte anymore as the last two that I have had, has given me the jitters. This sucks. I guess I am back to drinking coffee. Sad thing is that there is no new Clover coffees that I like or are interested in. I still want to try the Mexican coffee. Maybe I will tomorrow. Their sun-dried Ethiopian coffee I didn’t like. It had a very weird aftertaste. I don’t like it when coffee has an aftertaste.

I still have depression, though it seems to be lessening as I can now type without it bothering me cognitively. I hope this continues because I would like to work on my short story this week and maybe my blurb for my book.

a starbucks day

Sitting at Starbucks and pondering what to do today. I got chicken in the fridge that I need to prepare for dinner tonight but don’t feel like doing it. I am just so tired of life that everything is a hassle. You would think that my getting up early in the morning, before seven, I would have energy. But all I have is dread and worry. I really cannot wait until the editor can take me and I hope it is soon because the longer I wait, the longer I am just going bonkers with doubts. I know I have had two good reviews and I am grateful for that. And I know the editor will like what I write. I just have my doubts about things some times that makes me wonder if it is worth it all. I mean, I am putting myself out there in a huge way. Talking about my nerve condition, my depression, my suicide attempts, my psychosis, and most of all, being transgendered. Only a few people close to me know about this. And now I will be telling the world. But maybe I don’t need to get my story out there. I have this blog for that, but this blog is just my daily struggles. It doesn’t deal with my past events, specifically. I mean if I wrote about my past every day, I doubt I would get new readers and possibly the ones that I have now will lose interest and leave.

I was in a bad spot yesterday and the day before that. Today is too soon to know if I will be in that same bad spot. And my bad spot, I mean thinking about death and suicide. Course right now I wish I was dead just so I didn’t have to deal with my sperm donor (my father). So I texted my therapist about feeling poorly and she writes back “you deserve to live, you are worthy”. I am like WTF is that supposed to mean? I mean I get the words, but they just don’t sink in. I kind of am mad because she is going on the whole “loyalty to my father” bullshit. I don’t know what she means by “loyalty” and when I asked her about it, she said maybe that is not the right term. Ya think?? No wonder I call her a Bozo! And a Fink. But mostly Bozo.

I just sent her off a package of letters that I wrote while she was on vacation. It’s the thing I do when I am stressed and need to vent when she is not around. She is looking forward to these letters. What a weirdo. I don’t even remember half of what I wrote, which is usually the case when I write. It goes on paper or the computer screen and is promptly forgotten about. I usually have a good memory but when it comes to my writing, forget about it. It’s like I have a writing alter or something and once it gets written, that part of me is closed off to it. And when I read what I wrote, I am like WTF, I wrote this?? It’s in my handwriting as bad as it is, so I know it is me. That is why my journals are so important to me. Granted lately I haven’t been so good in writing in them. But what fascinates me is that whatever I write, doesn’t change over the years. I keep writing about my pain and all that changes is the date. SOSDD—Same old shit different day.

I think because my mood has shifted from not being suicidal every day, is why I don’t write as often as I used to. Plus with me blogging, writing is just another chore to me. It’s been ages since I last had the writing bug, in which I would have to write something all the time. It is called Hypergraphia. I learned this term from the book Midnight Disease. It was written by a neurologist at Mass General Hosp. I forget her name, I want to say Anne Flaherty, but don’t quote me on that, I am too lazy to switch screens to Google it. It was a good book and I related a lot to what she was talking about. It gave me the hope that I could still become an MD or PhD with my illness, though right now my biggest goal that I want to do is get my Bachelors degree. Then I will decide whether to pursue graduate level courses. I do want to be a therapist one day and focus in the field of suicidology. Unfortunately, there is only one program in the country that focuses on suicide and that is in either Mississippi or South Carolina. I just know it’s down south and I hate the heat and humidity so not sure I can move down there. Course, that is if I get accepted to their program.

NSSI and twitter chat

Just read a blog about suicide ideation. The writer was able to distinguish that her thoughts were due to her illness rather and not have further thoughts about them. I wish I could do that in the moments I think about death but once I start going down that road, it is hard to do. It is hard to pull back. She wants to live, I still want to die. I don’t want to live this life anymore. It is just too painful.

Last night I was on a twitter chat about non-suicidal self injury (NSSI). It was interesting. I know I have been there many times in my cutting days. But the discussion focused on how to differentiate between NSSI and suicide attempt. For me, if I needed stitches, it was always viewed as an attempt and I was sent to the inpatient unit. The discussion focused more on law enforcement but they are not always first responders, unless a family member or someone close to the person who has cut has called for help in dealing with the issue. But that is a different scenario. Most NSSI people are just looking to release their pain and once they do, they get trapped into the cutting/burning because it becomes an addiction. It is very difficult to try and stop this type of addiction. I know because I once left a wound open for two months, repeatedly cutting until I felt no pain. But I was able to stop because it stopped giving me that high that I needed. Now I just have an ugly scar to remind me of that time period.

I like the fact that the President of the AAS (American Association of Suicidology) is a person that doesn’t like the “no harm” contracts that therapists often use to try to stop suicidal or self harm behavior. He knows they don’t work and would like to see more of a “life worth living” contract in this scenario. I wish I could meet him for the annual conference but it is in Los Angelas and that is way too far for me to travel and too expensive to boot. I hope I do get to meet him one of these days, just to say hello and have a person to person contact rather than an online one.

I was rather surprised to hear him talk about contracts. I wish I could remember his exact words, they were very cool. As I just came across David Rudd’s “no suicide contract” journal article, I thought about the wording that he used. It is similar but not quite so “life worth living”. In Rudd’s article he talks about a commitment to treatment contract for the use of suicidal persons. I suppose the same can be made for NSSI, with some modification but it would be really difficult as cutting is so difficult to treat. It just is a lot of pain and misery the person is feeling and also hate. Can’t forget that hate is a main factor in cutting, least it was for me. I hated myself so much I just wanted to destroy myself anyway that I could.