Tag: suicide ideation

why do I keep fighting?

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

Why do I keep fighting?

I woke up from my nap. My pain level was the same. My mood was shifted a little bit but still dreary. And I just keep asking myself, why do I keep fighting the urge to end things when it’s so damn prominent. I again wanted to take a bottle of pills today. I thought about calling my psychiatrist. I thought of texting a hotline. I texted my therapist with no hope of her returning my text. I don’t know why I bother. She says she wants to be kept in the loop. What good is that if I feel suicidal and she doesn’t get back to me? Not a good system, if you ask me.

I didn’t do anything except listen to music. I read for a little while but then I couldn’t go back to it. My attention span for reading just wasn’t there. I haven’t finished a book in a while. I think February was the last time I did so.

I could have called my psychiatrist. I was afraid she would try and convince me to go to the hospital and I didn’t want to say no to her as I was feeling so crappy. I also didn’t want to argue with her. Most of the arguing was already in my head. I hate feeling this way. Now it’s late at night and I still feel like taking some pills. Why should I fight it? I can still call my psych but I really don’t want to bother her. Thing is, I would have to page her and my paging success haven’t been to successful in the past. There used to be a number that I had that you would get a person to page her but I have lost the number. I just have a paging system number that I don’t even know if it still works. I know if it goes through, she will call me back when she can.

What am I fighting for exactly? Why don’t I just give in to what I feel is right? Ending my life is what I want. I am tired of being in pain, emotionally, mentally, and physically. I am so tired of dealing with pain and today was not the worst day but when you get hit with psychache, nothing else matters except killing yourself.

I want to give in so bad. I don’t know why I haven’t. I guess I am afraid that I won’t succeed, that I will be a failure that I know I am. If I had a beam or a gun, things would be different. You just can’t trust pills.

Suicide and other things

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

I have so much going on in my head tonight that it’s making it hard to sleep. My sister called me a girl tonight and it really hurt me. I thought she understood about the transgender stuff but I guess not. I didn’t correct her. I was too ashamed. It set me off in a suicidal space. I just keep thinking about how I should be dead. I came really close to killing myself the other night. I know I didn’t attempt to do it but I really wanted to. And it was scary to me that I could have done it. Hell I can do it now but I don’t know what is stopping me.

I canceled therapy for the week. I just can’t bear to talk about this with anyone, except my blog. She called me man when she told me she was giving me the okay to cancel. She said under the “new approach” I don’t have to have a reason to cancel. I want to cancel next week but I think that will be pushing it. I just don’t feel like I am being effective in therapy anymore. We talk about stuff but I feel like it’s not enough. I still get depressed. I am still suicidal. I just don’t want to be anymore.

It’s hard when you are in the wrong body. I know I haven’t talked about this in a while. Mostly because it hasn’t really bothered me. But tonight when I got a message from my sister, it hurt. I will never be seen as the man my mind thinks I am. I know I will feel better when I get my haircut. Right now I feel like I am a chia pet as my hair is all over the place. When I see my psychiatrist today, I am going to ask her if she thinks I am a guy or a girl. I need her input because her opinion means so much to me.

I keep thinking about suicide. I try not to but it’s back and it’s there and there isn’t nothing I can do to stop the thoughts. I know there are hotlines I can call or text to talk about it but I am tired of seeking help. I just want to die. I can’t stand myself anymore. I am tired of being called “daughter” and “sister” and “miss”. It’s just so not me.

There is a conference going on in Chicago right now. I want to be there because it’s always loaded with information about suicide prevention and it always helps me feel better because it gives me hope. It helps me to realize that there are others like me who is interest in the study of suicide. Though I have a different agenda. I use the information to either affirm that I should be dead or use the information to help me get better. Like CAMS is a useful tool. I use it in my therapy and it has helped me over and over again. If I didn’t belong to the organization, I never would have known about this framework and I probably would be dead. Course, at the rate things have been going, I could still be headed toward pushing up daisies. Just use me as fertilizer. I am good for nothing else.

Hope is a tricky thing. It can either make you or break you. I have been increasingly hopeless this past week. I have been trying to hold on to it but it’s so slippery and keeps slipping through my fingers. It’s like a bar of soap when you shower. Now matter how much you try to grab it, it still falls to the floor. You know it’s there but you just can’t hold on to it. And it just increases your depression.

sleeplessness, suicide, and other things

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

I took my night meds because I was feeling sleepy. Then I experienced some side effects. I think it was most likely withdrawal as I haven’t taken a pain med since last night. So I took one pill and now I am awake. I am listening to music and it’s keeping me awake. I know I should shut it off and try and get some sleep but I am not tired anymore. I hate when I wake up. It’s after midnight.

I started writing a blog/essay about my experience with dealing with the suicidality of the night before. I got to less than 200 words and gave up. I should have hand wrote it. Now the thoughts have escaped me. I hate when that happens. I really wanted to include it in my book.

The American Association of Suicidology will be having their annual conference in a couple days time. People are already meeting up and the conference doesn’t officially start until Thursday. I just care about what Jobes says. I hope he doesn’t have a pre conference workshop. I won’t be by my laptop Wednesday because I have an appointment with my psych. I also emailed her about my “episode”.

What strikes me about this episode is that there was no trigger other than intense psychache. My heart was being torn apart in a million pieces and I just wanted to die. I had the means to die. I just had to act but I didn’t. No one would know why I attempted to kill myself. I am not so sure either. I know I didn’t want to die in my room, not where someone close to me would find me. I never would be trusted again with my pills. And I am 40 years old to be treated like a child would be such an insult.

I honestly don’t know what would happen if I attempted and didn’t succeed in my house. That is something that I really don’t want to find out. I didn’t do anything to harm myself last night, as intense as the feelings were. And it seemed like they only lasted about ten minutes before they dissipated as fast as they appeared. I held out, again. My only question is, what about next time? Will I be so lucky, if that is the word to use?

In twelve hours I will find out if my therapist will honor my cancellation of our appointment. There has been no indication from her whether she will call me or not. So I am left wondering. I gave her plenty of time to cancel, more than 24 hours. But I don’t know if the blog that I sent her will void the cancellation. She will do that sometimes. I guess that is part of the reason why I can’t sleep. I am too worried about the what ifs. If she doesn’t call, I can leave my house earlier and get my Starbucks. I can also get my letter from my new PCP for my loan documentation that I need.

I continued the rant on Twitter about how the NP dismissed my depression as “stress”. I have never felt so offended before in my life. Stress is not something that causes depression or make you lose weight, your appetite, lose sleep, and feel worthless. I had all the physical symptoms of depression and she dismissed them. I can’t trust her anymore, not with my depression anyways. I have to keep the elephant in the room quiet now. I miss my old PCP. He understood. He was one of a kind. And the institution where he worked lost a great physician.

SPSM and Prezi and being a suicide attempt survivor

by Midnight Demon, posted in Bipolar Disorder, blogging, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, psychache, suicide, suicide attempt, suicide attempt survivor

SPSM and Prezi and being a suicide attempt survivor

For the first time in a long time, I felt I was useful to the #SPSMChat that goes on every Sunday at 10 pm EST on Twitter. I learned about Prezi, which I am not sure what it is yet. I thought it was a video thingy but I couldn’t figure it out and I am much to tired to try. I did make a couple of layouts but it crashed my Chrome and internet so I think I will stick with IE.

What I was talking about with Prezi was being a suicide attempt survivor. Twenty-five years ago today marks the actual day I got help, or tried to. It was a very confusing time and my mother had a hard time accepting me as being suicidal. She was worried about me, as is understandable. But I had my own world to contend to that she didn’t know about. I will write that in another blog, but for now, just know that I was living between two worlds, one that I created internally to cope with the external world.

It wasn’t easy the first few days after my attempt, if you want to call it that. My wrist hurt from cutting and then I found out that cutting really released emotion better than talking did. So I started having my cutting kit. I had to be very secretive but then, I sort of was as I was living in two worlds. I had two facades, the one that school saw and the one my home life saw. It wasn’t much different except at home I didn’t talk to anyone. I didn’t talk to my sisters and my father was not there after his violent outburst the day before. A week after all this suicide talk and me not getting any better, my sisters felt that he had to know. I had a large decorative knife outside my bedroom door. I swore he was going to tell me to kill myself by stabbing myself with it. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, he told me to jump off the Tobin bridge. He was giving me permission to kill myself essentially. Nice guy, huh?

I was a straight A student at school. I also had perfect attendance until that night. I think I had to skip school one day to meet with a counselor so that ended my perfect attendance record for the year. It didn’t matter, I lost interest in school. Nothing mattered to me except for dying. I was 15 years old. The school nurse helped me a lot for the rest of my years in high school. I don’t think I would have graduated if it wasn’t for her. She gave me hope every time I saw her and I knew that I couldn’t let her down by being depressed. She wanted me better so I saw the school counselor instead of going to a private therapist. Unfortunately, when the school year ended, so did therapy. I was deeply depressed, more so than I already was. The nurse got me in touch with a social worker at the community school. I saw her for about ten months before she got married and left. I had a breakdown. I skipped school for a week and then in April of 1992, I tried to kill myself again. I threw up the pills and thus saved my life. I lost all hope that I ever was going to die. I felt like more of a failure than I ever was. That summer, I had my first hospitalization and thus started the cycle. I was hospitalized every three months because my suicidality reached its peak and I couldn’t cope with life anymore. The third time I went into the hospital, I came out as being gay. I had dissociated while cutting because I felt an attraction toward a woman on the T (public transportation). I thought I was going nuts until I met someone in the hospital who was also gay. I came out with my treatment team and felt a huge burden off my shoulders. It wasn’t until two decades later I would come out as being transgender.

My teenage years were filled with hospitalizations and cutting. It was a vicious cycle that continued into my twenties. After graduation from high school, I had my longest hospitalization because I overdosed again on the antidepressant I was taking at the time. I was determined to die and no one was going to stop me. Except, a Jewish doctor that felt I had some hope. She told me the only way out of the hospital was if I were to see her. The outside therapist I saw didn’t want to see me anymore. She couldn’t handle my suicidality. So I started seeing her but my suicidality increased. I was in and out of the hospital from August of 1994 to Jan 1995. I felt like no one could love me. Until I met a boy from Nebraska. He was gay and he loved me unconditionally. He didn’t care about my past. He wanted to help me. And he did. I felt that if I had him, I could heal. It took a while to trust him and I did. We had long conversations about school and life and being gay. We joined BAGLY and met others like ourselves. I still felt like an outsider because I really felt like I was a man. I was too scared to tell anyone this. So I was called a lesbian or gay woman instead. My self hatred rose to new levels. But I always held it in check.

Amazingly, I graduated a two year school for medical assisting. I was still cutting. I changed therapists, again. This time I was seeing a male therapist. It wasn’t too long before I fired him. I had obtained the medication to overdose again and when I told him, he asked if I was suicidal. It was the most stupidest question I was ever asked. Do people obtain large quantities of medication just for the hell of it? Granted I didn’t tell him I was suicidal, but getting asked point blank was kind of silly.

After this therapist, I really didn’t want to see anyone else again. It was really tough because either they left me or I fired them. Most of them couldn’t deal with my suicidality as an outpatient. They just thought the hospital was the way to go. By the time I was 25, I had about as many hospitalizations in ten years time. I just figured that was the way life was going to be. I was going to be in and out of hospitals for the rest of my life and I didn’t like that option.

It took years for suffering till I was an undergraduate at a university where I was taking psychology classes. My cutting had stopped, least for now. I had met my current therapist and she wanted to help me. I was taking a class for psychometrics testing. I researched stuff about suicide and couldn’t find a damn one that dealt with pain. There was an overview of assessments, twenty-five in all, and not a single one dealt with psychological pain. Then I came across the works of Dr. Edwin Shneidman. He lead me to David Jobes and the world of suicidology was open before me. I still felt like a hypocrite when I became a member in 2007 but I learned so much. My hospitalization started to decrease. I was using Jobes’ work in my therapy. I was also using Holden’s work as well. My pain finally had a name, psychache. And with it I could finally stop the bleeding. I couldn’t control the bleeding because I still bleed to this day, but it’s much less now that it’s acknowledge and talked about.

I still don’t have supportive parents. My sisters try to be supportive around my transgender issues but I can tell they would just like me to be my birth name and gender. They don’t know how much my suicidality surrounds me not being in the correct body. I hope in time they will.