Tag: suicide ideation

doubts and fears about my book

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

I don’t know what kind of day I have been having. It started very early, like 0430 early. I got some writing done. Had breakfast but that was the only thing I have eaten today. I am too tired to make something to eat. The leftover Chinese wasn’t enough to fill me up. I just had a banana. Hopefully that ties me over until tomorrow. Missing two meals is a big deal but there is nothing I can do about it now.

I saw my PCP today and he is trying to reassure me that I don’t have CES again with my foot problem. Meanwhile I am trying to convince him that I still have nerve damage in my foot. He wants me to see yet another flipping doctor. UGH. I will but I am going to keep my tongue in check when he says there is nothing wrong with me or that I just have a case of chronic tendonitis. If he decides to put me in a damn boot he has another thing coming to him. I am not wearing a boot. I wore one for almost three months and it didn’t do shit. Well it did do something, took out my hip flexor muscle. That felt so good (insert sarcasm here) NOT!

I had a chat with my therapist today. We talked about my doubts about my book. We also talked about my fears that I have. And the more we talked, the more I didn’t want to publish. Then my editor says she is changing her policy and I freak out so I IM’d her to find out if this includes me. I sent her two chapters of my book so she can get an idea of what my writing style is. I am hoping she will be ok with it. I really want to work with her and I think she wants to work with me. I just have one more payment for her and then it still is a waiting game on when she can fit me in. But all this waiting is driving me nuts. I have decided to print off the copy of the book and there are like six blank pages. I am printing blank pages that are costing me money! DOH! I figure I can read the book again and see of something pops out at me that I should change or add to. And what is really killing me is that I emailed my book to some people and they backed out of reading it. Didn’t have the courtesy of letting me know, for a MONTH now. I am kind of pissed but I understand that life gets in the way. But they should have let me know sooner rather than later!

So my therapist wants me to get someone to read it to give me some feedback on the book before it is published. Problem is, I don’t have many “real” people to do this. I don’t have a best friend that I can talk to about this and give him or her my book and let them tell me how it is. I might have to ask someone on Facebook to help me. I don’t know who else to ask. Course most of my status posts go ignored. Course I am at the point where I think publishing is going to open a can of worms I might not be ready for. This book is very personal, like my blog. But I don’t think my family reads my blog and knows how suicidal I have been over the years or that I poop and pee my pants every now and then or that I am even transgendered. They know that I suffered from a nerve injury. They know that I am gay. They know I suffer from depression. They know I have been hospitalized numerous times but they never knew why. This book is the why. Just thinking about it is making me nervous. Part of me just wants to say the hell with the editor and hit send to publish it and another part of me wants to just delete the book. Do all writers feel like this when their baby is finished? Or is it just me because I am a suicide attempt survivor? I don’t know. I never have written a book before now. If anyone reading this can provide some input in the comments, I would be most appreciative.

My therapist thinks it’s a wonderful thing that I have written a book because no one has before. I find that hard to believe. Granted my book deals with a lot of issues and illnesses. I just hope that I can make it coherent enough to explain the different sides that all contributed to my suicidality. My therapist thinks that I should write an Epilogue to say all this stuff. But I think the intro will do that just fine. My only fear right now is that it will be too much for my editor. I don’t think she has dealt with this kind of stuff before. And I am worried that it will overwhelm her and she pulls out an all stop.

Enchanted

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, depression, suicide

There I was again tonight
Forcing laughter faking smiles
Same old tired lonely place
Walls of insincerity
It was enchanting to meet you
Your eyes whisper have we met

And it was enchanting to meet you
All I can say is It was enchanting to meet you
This night is sparkling don’t you let it go
I spent forever wondering if you knew
I was enchanted to meet you

These are the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s song “Enchanted”. Every time I listen to this song it I think of the night that Dr. Jobes read my poster and I was enchanted by what surrounded me that night. He shook my hand and said good work. I was floored. I still am. He is my idol, my superstar. But that night and the next day changed me. I wish I could hold on to that feeling forever and this song takes me back to that time when I knew I belonged in the suicidology world and not a crummy lab working as a lab assistant. The next day, I got to meet David Lester and Antoon Leneears. Big names in the suicide field. I had just read their article the night before that they co-wrote along with Mauricio Pompili about Shneidman’s psychache pain scale. It can never work in the real world as it is a very complex scale not for the person taking it, but for the person interpreting it. I wish I could remember the name of the article and post it for those that want to read it but I would have to dig for it as I don’t know where it is. Anyways, I met these guys that I read the night before and how cool is that?? Total Enchantment!!

It was my first conference at the AAS, American Association of Suicidology. I still can’t believe that they accepted my paper for a poster session. It was unbelievable. I got to meet people and other grad students. I was probably the only undergrad there. It was such an amazing experience. I was on cloud nine for days. It made me want to get my degree faster but that would end later that year as I suffered a psychotic break and never fully recovered from it. All the pressure of that year through me into a psychosis that was hard to manage. I was also taking at the time a very difficult psych class and I guess it also didn’t help me. I ended up failing that class. I went from enchanted to disbelief. But nothing can take away that feeling of meeting Jobes and him shaking my hand.

In a foul mood

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

In a foul mood

I woke up early yet again today. It seems that I am not destined to sleep past six in the morning anymore. I woke up with cramps in my foot so took some muscle relaxers. I was not happy. I am now cold and just so angry for some reason.

I played my game and now I think I am going to take a nap. Foot is being a bastard so I might as well pop some pain pills to make sure it doesn’t get worse. I am just so annoyed. For the first time in months I am thinking about dying again. I am not suicidal, just thinking about what it would be like if I were dead. I know I am headed toward the abyss. I have been trying to stave it off as long as possible. I had a good night last night with my Patriots winning their game. Now I just want to sleep. With any luck, maybe I just won’t wake up.

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.