Tag: writing

Lucky Friday 13th: Taylor’s Birthday

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

Lucky Friday 13th: Taylor’s Birthday

Today is Taylor Swift’s birthday. In her honor I have been playing all her music that I own. She was born 24 years ago and 13 is her favorite number. How fitting that her favorite number is also the day number she was born on. I was thirteen when she was born. My favorite number is also the day of my birth, twenty-three. So we have some things in common, though I will never be able to tell her these things.

My favorite songs of hers are Love Story, Fearless, Hey Stephen, Story of Us, Red, Begin Again, Invisible, and Tied Together with a Smile. I think that is a song from each of her albums. If you are a Taylor fan, you can correct me on this.

My day has been ok. I woke up in pain but was able to get my latte and a crappy doughnut from Starbucks. Their doughnuts are usually good but today I got one that wasn’t so good. I have a funny story, as I brought in my own mug today. One of the girls didn’t know what size it was, even though it was clearly written on the bottom of the Starbucks mug. She was knew and said to the other girl that she has never seen the mug before. I have had this mug for the last few years. It looks like a Starbucks cup and they don’t make those kind anymore. I really thought it was funny.

I lost two blog followers. Oh well. I will get a few more and then some. I am past 500 so I am happy it happened before the end of the year.

I gave my therapist an ultimatum yesterday. She just pissed me off because she scheduled me into an appointment without my permission. I told her that I don’t want to see her next week, at all and that I won’t text her while she is on vacation. If she does call me anyway, I won’t answer the phone. I feel that I need a break from her. I know she will be away for the two weeks for Christmas/New Year’s but I rarely ask for time off. I also feel like she is the only one that can ask for time off and I can’t. I don’t think that is fair. I am just asking for a week off. Nothing more. Then I can see her on whatever Thursday she is back in the office.

I sent yesterday’s blog post to my doctors. Surprisingly, I have not received a response. I would have sent it to my PCP but he doesn’t like email and the last time I sent him a message through his office, it backfired horribly on me. The message was misconstrued and the meaning devalued. So I will never send another blog to my PCP, unless I print it out and hand it to him. But he doesn’t seem to care for my writing so why bother.

Today I was at Starbucks and it felt strange being there with just my journal. Usually I have a pad of paper, a book, and my editing. Now that the editing is done, I am no longer carrying that around. I used another backpack today so I could hold the mug so it didn’t have a book or pad of paper. Strange feeling. And now that I am done with editing, I don’t know what to do with my time. I could work on my second book but I want to take some time off from writing for a bit. NO, I am not taking time off my blog. Please comment if you would want me to though!

you learn to live with it

by Midnight Demon, posted in blogging, cauda equina syndrome, chronic physical pain, depression, suicide

You learn to live with it

It didn’t happen overnight. It didn’t happen in a week. It took some time but you learned to bare it. Except on nights like this when the pain keeps you awake and nothing eases your mind to bring on sleep. You think of death as your only way out. You think of what more your doctor can do to ease the pain but he doesn’t know because it’s fucking midnight and he’s not on call anyways. Besides, they don’t want to hear you cry in pain. They just want you to live with it. And that is the toughest thing to do.

I have been battling pain since seven tonight. And it’s been a trigger for me. CES started when my left leg went out on me and then I was left with foot drop. I wasn’t told to live with it. I was told my ass was going to have surgery for a condition I had no knowledge of. I still don’t have complete knowledge of cauda equina syndrome because it varies in so many people. Sometimes the right side is affected. Sometimes it is the left. In my case it was the left and I still have nerve damage twelve years later.

Yet I haven’t been told to live with the pain. No, not yet. But you have to or you lose your mind or your life. It is a conscious effort every day to not stare at the bottle of pills or some other weapon of destruction and not think, why not? You have to take the walls down piece by piece of the strength you have and build it back up again with new ones to block the pain out the best you can. But sometimes, like tonight, the walls fails you and you are in mega pain. My foot/ankle/leg are hurting all at once and all you want to do is scream. But you can’t because it’s after midnight and everyone else is asleep. Thoughts of wanting to amputate run high on these nights. It’s a good thing there isn’t a chainsaw in the bedroom.

Meds kicking in is a joke. They may lessen the pain some but they do nothing to ease it 100%. At my best, the pain is always on the level of 3 on a scale of 1-10. At my worst, like now, it can be an 8-12. So I will have to take a third pain pill to quiet it down or I won’t be waking up at 0645 like I need to. Got to take dear old Dad for his tests.

I hate my leg right now. And I should be able to live with the pain. And I will. But not tonight. Tonight I am writing and writing until I pass out because people should know that despite having surgery for CES, you are still left in pain. It is called nerve pain and it sucks. Nothing eases it except narcotic medications or some anti-convulsant drug and that is some of the time. Oh how I wish I could call my doctor now. Have him see the veins popping out on my foot, how swollen my ankle bone is and how I can’t get it down with ice or elevation.

But I got to live with this? I can’t kill myself? That really sucks when you know you are in so much pain, physically, and you can’t end your life because of it. I have too many people I’m responsible for. People say they will miss me. I often wonder if that is true.

My psychiatrist told me tonight to take my meds and get some rest. How am I supposed to do that when I got pain this bad? I keep hearing her voice telling me to go to bed. But I can’t sleep. Pain is just too fucking bad.

I didn’t do anything to cause this. I didn’t stand too long, I didn’t walk too far. I didn’t go up and down the stairs too much today. Well, maybe I did, now that I think about it. I went downstairs a few times to empty my recycle bins and get rid of some boxes in my room.

I wish I could just disappear, permanently, where there is no more pain and no more agony. No more depression. But I don’t want to be happy all the time. That would be too weird for me. Just being content is all that I want. Content means being neither sad nor happy but not being miserable either.

I just want the pain to stop permanently. Then I maybe I could live my life a little better. Third dose of meds and an Ativan have kicked in. And this is how I live with it, without putting a noose around my neck. I put my hat on backwards and I write, until the meds kick in.

It helps to write. It really does.

this is me swallowing my pride

by Midnight Demon, posted in cauda equina syndrome, Chronic pain, chronic physical pain, depression, mood disorders, suicide

I worked on my book and I think that it is a good book. It might not make the New York Times list but as long as it sells 100 copies I will be happy.

I have been in a disgruntled mood. My therapist never got back to me because of her commitments yesterday. I just wish she could have texted me something so I wasn’t hanging all day. I am not having so many flashback symptoms but I think that has more to do with not being in a lot of pain today. I have been experiencing more side effects from the Abilify than anything. I have to take Ativan to deal with it. And it makes me feel sluggish and sleepy. But as long as it takes away this rubber band feeling, I don’t care. I can’t lower my dose because the psychosis will come back, and quickly like it did before. I also don’t want to be in the hospital for Christmas. I haven’t called my psychiatrist yet. I am hoping they will settle down some so I won’t have to. Not much she can do about it anyways other than tell me to take Ativan. If that doesn’t work, I am sure I can take benedryl to help. I have the need to be snowed anyways. I have been in an awful frame of mind and my stupid therapist wants to activate Mr. Hyde. WTF, really?? My suicidality has been on an all time low and you want to activate the demons? I was toying with her today about it. But it’s not going to happen. I can’t risk taking my life for no reason. I have an appointment with her all this week to make up for Monday I guess. And next week she is trying to get me to open up about the personal reason why I need the 17th off.

I need the 17th off so that I can think. It is going to be a very depressing day for me. And I want to spend it alone, without having therapy. I think I am going to finish drinking the rest of my crown royal bottle. I think alcohol will go nicely with the end of thinking of suicide, but no one has to know about it. I don’t want anyone to know the real reason. My therapist doesn’t read my blogs unless I send them to her. So I am safe.

I have no idea if what I wrote makes any sense. Please leave comments if you think this is a good idea or if I should see my therapist on the day that I am not going to be thinking of ending my life anymore.

I don’t know what this blog is going to be like after I set this into motion. I know there will be blogs where I talk about death. It is the nature of this beast called pain. And of course the first song from my “Just Taylor” playlist is “back to December”. “so this is me swallowing my pride…”

on my soapbox

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

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…