Tag: suicide

Fall Apart

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

Fall Apart

I printed off some stuff for my therapist. It’s only been a few days that she has been gone, but I already miss her. I am really bored and can’t sleep. I keep thinking about how she will be devastated if I were to harm myself while she is gone. It’s holding me back but I don’t know for how long. Things are really tough for me right now.

I feel like I am falling apart. It’s killing me knowing that I can’t end my life this week, or possibly, ever. I am too much of a coward. I spent the night following the All Star Game on Twitter. It didn’t ease my ache. It’s after midnight now and I can’t help thinking about taking my life. I know that I should just go to bed but the thoughts keep swirling like a hurricane. I had a bad headache earlier this evening, but it seems to have dissipated. I took some Advil and it went away. I wish it took the heartache away, too. AL won so they will have home field advantage.

I had posted something about “stopping the use of committed suicide” on my blog yesterday. It was a successful reblog. My cousin read the article and she was grateful as her brother died by suicide in 1998. I didn’t know this. I feel bad for her. I see her soon, I hope. She invited me to a party in August.

I am emerged in suicide tonight. I can’t help thinking about it. But it’s getting late and I should be sleeping instead of falling apart. I hate my life and what it has become. I am tired of being in pain all the time. I am tired of fighting my deepest, darkest wishes. I just wish to be gone. There is no hope for me here. I am a useless SOB.

I don’t know what to do with myself. I feel like I am going nuts. All I can think about is death and dying. I really want to die. I wouldn’t mind it if a bus ran me over right now. Though it will be strange for a bus to run me over while I am in my room. Maybe tomorrow it can happen. Or should I say, later today. I just know I don’t want to be here anymore. I am too tired to go on living this way. It’s horrible to be in pain like this and not have a remedy to ease the heartache. I don’t even know what is causing me this pain. It just came on so suddenly and took my breath away. I hate when this happens and there is nothing I can do but listen to music and take an Ativan and hope for sleep. I am so exhausted and I didn’t do anything today to make me exhausted like I am. It’s like I pulled hard labor but I didn’t. Most I did was walk a few blocks to pick up my niece. It was like walking one big block from home to school and back. I usually don’t walk that far because it hurts my ankle. But the weather was really warm and it wore me out walking. I am not even 40 yet and I get so tired so easily. It’s pathetic. I wish my plan were on for Friday. I would end my life then and it would finally be over with. I wouldn’t wake up anymore. I just pass out and die. I won’t say how I will die. I just hope that I do die soon. I pray for death just like those slaves on the plantations that were treated cruelly. But I doubt it. I have a long genes in my family. Hell, my father is 83 and his sister is 91. I don’t want to live that long. I think 39 is a ripe old age.

Suffering going on behind the scenes

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

I finished “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. It ended sadly, as all slave books do. The hero Tom gets beaten to death by a master that has no regard for the black’s life, or any other life for that matter. The reason I read the book was to learn. I had no idea how cruel another human being was to another race than I did in this book. And it still goes on in other races. The human trafficking is just another example of slavery, though it is being brought to the TV shows, such as Law and Order: SVU and Criminal Minds, more than the news.

My sister just called to remind me that I am to pick up my niece around five. Not looking forward to going out. It is quite warm out. I hope the temp drops a little bit. It’s not humid just very hot. I got the AC on. I had turned it off because my room got chilly but now it’s back to being hot again.

I have yet to finish my editing. I want to get to it sometime this week. I think the reason I haven’t written anything new is because the editing is hanging over me. I wanted to write yesterday but soon as I opened the word doc, my mind blanked out like the page. I hate when that happens.

I’m feeling very angry that I am made to have to live when I don’t want to. It’s been troubling me that I don’t know why I am still here. I should have take my life ages ago, yet I am still here. Makes me think that maybe I am just not “suicidal” enough or something. Maybe I am a coward. Now that I have finished the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” book earlier than I thought, I really don’t know what to do with myself for the rest of the week. Sure, I have other books to read. But I have no goals, nothing to really look forward to. I no longer work, so that is out. I can’t go for a walk because it will aggravate my foot/ankle. I just feel so melancholy all the time. Meds haven’t helped me, despite taking the vitamin D. I have a lot of time on my hands and it has contributed to me feeling sad and thinking about death. I am tired of being tired. As much as I try to convey this to my doctors and therapist, I don’t think they truly understand my suffering. I think if they did, maybe then they would allow me to die with dignity. I just don’t want to live anymore. Each day is the same. Nothing interests me, nothing brings me joy or happiness, whatever happiness is. I don’t think I have ever been happy. I don’t believe in it. It is too fleeting an emotion. I would like to feel content with my life, but how do you do that when you are in pain every day and think about taking your life because of it? It just makes no sense to me why I should be living this life this way. I didn’t do anything to deserve it, least I don’t think I did. I have not been mean to anyone on purpose, I haven’t killed anyone. The only person I want dead is me. My therapist wants me to live her sake, not mine. I hate her for that.

I have not heard anything back from the NY Times. I am not holding my breath because I know there is a one in a million chance of them reading my email. Or maybe they have and my story is just not good enough. I plan on emailing the AAS to see if they are going to review my book. It has been a month since I have heard from them and still no word. That might be enough to lighten my spirits for a little bit. It’s hard doing this back and forth living/dying thing. Yes, I want to die, but I don’t know how to really do it without hurting a lot of people. So I just continue to go on being. And it hurts so much because I would rather be dead than be in so much pain every day. Trouble is that no one knows the suffering going on behind the scenes.

Saturday Blog 27: Struggle with Suicide and Bereavement of Others

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

Saturday Blog 27: Struggle with Suicide and Bereavement of Others

I will never again go to the Square on a Saturday! I got stranded there because there were no buses to take me home. I waited two hours and Twitter was no help in finding out why or the public transportation system for that matter. I had gotten a text saying severe delays due to traffic but not that there would be no service to the Square. I was so pissed. I hadn’t eaten anything but a bag of chips so was starving when I came home. I was lucky my sister was home and could pick me up. Then I got a migraine that just made things worse. So I am writing this blog a little later than usual because of the migraine.

I watched this video about “Life after Suicide”. It really made me think about the people I would be leaving behind and the affect it would have on my “kids”. It also made me feel grateful that I can talk about my suicidal feelings with my therapist and psychiatrist, openly and honestly. I think that if I kept those feelings to myself, I would probably act on it. It helps to hear my therapist say that she would be devastated if I went through with my thoughts. I don’t know how my psych would feel. Probably the same as I have known her for over twenty years. The thing is, I don’t want to live. I had made a decision with myself when I was young to take my life so I wouldn’t be old. Here it is twenty plus years later and I still struggle with suicide. It’s like it gets bashed around, deeply thought about, planned, and just never happens. I haven’t made a suicide attempt since I was eighteen and then I spent two and half months in a psych unit at the local hospital. I had met a psychiatric resident who believed in me and we worked together for three years. It was the most stable relationship I ever had with a professional, aside from my current therapist. I was still in and out of psych hospitals. When I was first hospitalized, I was damned if I was going to end up like the people around me. I was in a lot of psychological pain that I wanted it to end. Even though that pain has subsided somewhat, I still think about suicide. I now suffer chronic physical pain and it keeps the thoughts swirling around in my head.

In the video, the woman who talks throughout it says that you need to talk about suicide. In London, they have a place called the Maytree where suicidal people can stay for up to five days to deal with their crises. It is run by none other than a suicide attempt survivor. I have no idea if a place like that exists in the US. I know in my town, there is something called a residential place that is similar to what they were talking about. It was so long ago, I forget the criteria for going there. I know you had to be a part of the Department of Mental Health system to go to it. I was so ill then. I didn’t stay at the place. It was run down and dirty looking, nothing like the Maytree. But it was an alternative to the hospital. I don’t know if they exist anymore with budget cuts to the mental health system. They closed so many psych units in the last twenty years. Even the world famous McLean Hospital isn’t what it used to be.

Also in the video, there is a segment with Dr. Rory O’Connor (person that I got the video from) that talks about entrapment and how a suicidal person often feels trapped and feels the need to escape. This is often true. I feel trapped because of the guilt I would place on others by my death. I die and others feel hurt. In the meantime, I am left to deal with my own suffering that no one else can feel. How is that fair? And don’t dare tell me life is unfair. I know that already, I live with it every single day. I pissed and crapped my pants today and didn’t know it so don’t bother telling me that life is unfair. Another misery that I have to deal with and don’t want to. Dealing with the physical pain is one thing; it’s quite another to deal with your bodily functions not working right.

Throughout the video, I thought about my friends David and Melinda, who lost their significant others by suicide. David lost his fiancé almost six months ago. His fiancé was my friend Chris. I had felt guilty about his death because I am so involved with suicide prevention and yet I never reached out to Chris. I never knew the demons he was facing. He was always a stand up guy and looking at him, you never knew he was depressed. He hid it well. We will never know what made him take his life. David has been open about his grief on FB and it has been one of the reasons why I am still here. The grief he feels is so palpable it hurts to watch him go through it. Chris was the first friend of mine to die by suicide. I have had other friends die, but not like this. It is a unique death that no one can understand or make sense out of.

Review: Development and Prelim Validation of a Scale of Psychache

by Midnight Demon, posted in depression, mood disorders, suicide, suicide attempt

Review: Development and Preliminary Validation of a Scale of Psychache
Holden, Mehta, Cunningham, and Mcleod, 2001 Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science

Suicide kills more people in a year than auto accidents and cancer combined. It is currently, the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. What can be done about this? Researchers in Canada have developed and validated a scale to detect the suffering associated with suicide. This suffering is called psychache. It is the unbearable pain, intolerable despair, guilt, angst, and anguish one feels when contemplating suicide. This is based on Shneidman’s work, “Psychache as Suicide”. He is the father of suicidology and believed that if one does not have psychache, one will not die by suicide.

This seminal paper by Holden et. al, is fantastic. It gets to the heart of suffering people and can also be used as a gauge of whether treatment is decreasing psychache or not being helpful. In my experience using this scale, I have found it helpful. It really states what the therapist needs to know to help the client work on the issues surrounding suicidal ideation. The scale is easy to administer and doesn’t take long to tally up the numbers in a session to give a numerical value to psychache. The higher the number, the more likely the client is thinking about dying by suicide. The lower the number, the lower the risk.

In this paper, the authors did two studies. One to measure the validity of the scale and the other to cross validate the study using the same sample. In addition to the Psychache Scale, the following measures in the first study were given, in order, the Beck Hopelessness Scale (Beck et. al 1974), the Unusual Thinking Scale (Mazmanian et. al. 1987), Reasons for Attempting Suicide Scale (Holden et. al 1998), and the Suicidal Manifestations Questionnaire (Johns and Holden, 1997). There were 294 participants, mostly women (76%). Of these, 197 reported suicide ideation at some point in their lives, 46 thought about suicide in the past four weeks, and 30 participants reported at least one suicide attempt in their life with 21 attempting within the previous five years and 8 reporting multiple attempts. The mean age was 19.1 years (SD 1.6). No racial or ethnic data were collected.

The study found that the psychache scale appears to be reliable and valid in measuring deep psychological pain. It also seemed to be effective in weeding out those that are suicide attempters versus non-attempters.

The second study focused on the childhood abuse exclusively on the women. It was found that the scale was reliable and replicated the previous study in determining psychache.

The Psychache Scale is a thirteen item self report written to be responded on 5 point scales ranging from either never to always or from strongly agree to strongly disagree. It was originally longer than thirteen items but after trimming down the essence of psychache, the scale was finally brought to be a thirteen item report.

What I love about the scale is that it is very easy to spot suicidality. From my own self-report, I have found that the first 9 items focused on my psychological well-being. If the number was great or at its max, I was doing poorly. The last four items dealt with suicidality. It, in my opinion, states how imminent suicide is on the client’s mind. Taken together as a whole, you can monitor treatment goals and see if that decreases the numbers. The lowest to score on the item is thirteen. The highest sixty-five. My interpretation of the scale is that if the number is lower than the medium (33), the person is not in danger, unless the last four items equal a twenty, which I doubt will happen. It will depend on the measurements of the items to determine suicidality. The items themselves will provide clues to the client’s mental state. See the article to see the items.