just briefly

I'm feeling guilt.
Why? because I kept going in to be with my dad.
And getting abused again.
I traded sex for comfort.

People keep telling me that a terrified, traumatized 6 year old had to take what she could get.
This seems logical.
But I can't believe them!

My challenge: a weekly affirmation-#1

Why?
Because I was a human blow-up doll to several somebodies, to put it really bluntly.

When that's part of your early childhood learning concepts?
It tends to cause self-hatred that has to be kept shaved regularly.

So, affirmation #1:

Only you know the tortured road you have walked, the stones that tore your feet open, the cold that ripped your heart to shreds, the demons that sucked your bones empty at night, the monsters that feasted on your soul.
You have been through hell and came out the other side.  You are stronger than steel. Do not forget it.

To the non-depressives: suicidality for the n00b.

Okay.  Since my depression's gotten to the point where I plunge into this level really fast, I thought I'd detail the scenery for those who haven't been.  Think of this as a guided tour of the interior hell depressives' misfiring brains create inside.
Do fasten your safety belts, please, and remain seated throughout the tour.

Suicidality is definitely a negative altered state of consciousness.   Your thoughts usually slow down, get very direct and simple.  You can't think very well at all, in fact.
Some people have numbness. They just feel like a walking zombie.  I usually have some of that, but I also have self-hatred and an emotional pain that's very intense.
The overwhelming feeling? Tiredness...so, so tired.  The kind of tired that makes you want to sleep.  Forever.

In terms of pain...if you've ever had someone close to you die? It has about the same quantitative level of emotional pain...but the feeling is different.
When someone dies there's a horrible wrenching feeling, but also...a profound gratefulness for having known them as well? There's incredible pain, but it's a clean pain, somehow?

Your heart just gushes open helplessly in agony, loss, and love.

Suicidality is different.  It's as if a thousand daggers are turned against yourself.  There's either a leaden deadness, or a loathing of oneself that passes all bounds. It hurts. It hurts.

The charge is often leveled "Suicide is selfish!" From the perspective of the suicidal person, not usually. They either feel like other people don't care about them, or that their suicide will be a good thing...the love of others around them...no longer seems real.

I used the analogy of a clear plastic hamster ball.  It's as if I'm in a person-sized version of one, and everyone else is outside the hamster ball, having fun, loving and being loved.  But I'm not able to participate, not able to penetrate the invisible, hard shell separating me from other people.  I feel dreadfully lonely, but totally unable to do anything about that...as if there is something uniquely and horribly wrong with me.
I feel like a monstrosity.
My own wrinkle-but I think it's typical-is to despise myself and think I need to be killed for the good of everyone around me. But that may or may not hold true for all the suicidally depressed.
Other people have used the analogy that it's like having an anvil drop on your head. Metaphorically, yeah.  Severe depression is...severely crippling. Thanks, Captain Obvious.

So I find it both soothing and frightening to think about ways to kill myself when in this state. Frightening, because, instinctively, I think most people fear death somewhat. Genetic programming.  Soothing, because the pain you are in is not only all you can stand and more...it feels like it goes on forever.
I also self-injure.  Some severely depressed people do that, without the intent of killing themselves.  In my case, the pain actually makes me feel soothed...I've been doing it for so long it's literally directly comforting to engage in something other people would find inexplicable and revolting.

But when suicidal...you are paddling your douche canoe on a sea of suck that you can't see coming to an end.
In fact, researchers have studied severely depressed people and found out their time sense is off.  When you're down, every minute drags by as if dragging steel chains...every....torturous...minute.

What I've learned is that for me...this passes...provided I keep doing things to shift it. I have to try and eat good food, get the correct amount of sleep, neither binge nor starve, work out, take my meds, try to be kind to my loathesome self.
If it doesn't pass I go to the doctor and get something done with my psych cocktail. Or go hop on the therapy-go-round. Or whatever.
The point is a mixture of tolerating the pain and doing something constructive about it has kept me alive...and on the majority of my days grateful to be so.

But if I were to compare this pain to a physical pain I'd have to say it hurts at about the level a fracture does.

So...if you've never been severely depressed...that's the tour. 

I hope you've kept all limbs in the car, we do so hate when we have to sew fingers back on.

where honesty got me

I made the mistake of telling the doctor what all I'm irrigating my nose with, and my antibiotics.  He told me that to continue to receive treatment I had to comply with their treatment plan.

 

The thing is, their treatment plan seemed to be letting me get sick as hell again and then very gently poking at my infection with a light, refreshing application of topical antibiotics...the thing is, of course, that when the infection's raging my sinuses get swollen enough that I can't get them to drain. 

 If stuff can't get out when I stick a dental irrigator up there-essentially pressure-washing my sinuses...how on earth do they think the topical antibiotics are going to get in???

 

Basically, whenever I report symptoms, if they can't see what I'm talking about when they're scoping my nose...they completely discount it.

So I have to present with flagrant symptoms in order to get treatment. This also implies that they will discontinue treatment before I'm actually completely clear of infection.

 The fact that what I'm doing has reduced the discolored crusty stuff by about 90%-well, they again do not believe me because they don't see the crusting.

 Because I can't stand to have that stuff in my nose...I irrigate it out.

 

At this point the county ENT people definitely think I'm a hypochondriac.  I heard the word "psych" when they were discussing me.  This is why I need to take my wife with me from now on when I go.

 

The thing is, I don't want to be made *just well enough* that they can't see infection when they shove a 'scope up my nose. Because they cannot see the sphenoid sinus, they cannot see the frontal sinus...and that's where any remaining yellow crud/green crud/brown crud seems to be coming from.

I really should have brought them some more discolored snot in a jar. Next time I absolutely will.

 

I want to have no infection present...meaning I see no discharge that's green, or yellow,or whatever other interesting color my nose can make, when I irrigate.

White or clear postnasal discharge is the color it's supposed to be, right?

 

I think I am going to have to go pay to talk to my ex-allergist about my treatment, because...these people are not listening to me.  Not at all.

I want a second opinion and I'm likely going to have to pay about $200-300 for it.

 

So much for communication.  I'm furious and tearing up at the same time just thinking about this.

 

I have three choices: quit going entirely-meaning my condition has no monitoring at all, comply with them and get sicker, or lie.

If I quit going entirely, I'm wasting a probably-needed, useful resource.  If I comply with them-I get sick again. 

 

I've already seen that to be the case...and found that when I presented with flagrant symptoms, they still didn't give me oral steroids or antibiotics. 

Which is the freaking gold standard from what I can tell from ENT doctor's sites about this.

 

Lying seems to be the most advantageous thing to do in this bag of dicks.

 

I am going to have to find a way to afford my old allergy doc's advice. 

I really need him...to at least x-ray my head and tell me when I can stop taking antibiotics, and possibly to tell me if I'm being insane or not.

repost :mood

I...realized a lot of my depression was because I felt very betrayed by the way my wife doesn't necessarily put a priority on keeping a job. She quit because she was sick of the job. It was a job worthy of being sick of, and I think her moving on was a good thing...but she just walked off and quit after one really rotten night. No other job lined up, not even two weeks' notice, just "I quit tonight."
I felt like she'd just pushed me over a cliff, because it then meant I had to pay all our bills for however long her unemployment lasted.
And she's blown off multiple jobs in various ways. It freaks me out harder each time.

So last night I talked to her about it and said she needs to do better about trying hard to stay continuously employed because it just ups the terror I feel about everything and function by repressing. That I was likely going to ask her to move out if she blew off another job, and that if it was her choice to save up and leave now,

And she said she was thinking about divorce too, because of the temper issues...I get really screamy, as I said-not verbally abusive, but shouty...and I don't know how to stop myself.

And this one incident where she felt really threatened by what I did-and I didn't mean it to be threatening, but I wasn't thinking clearly...and she had every right to be scared as heck.

She just moved a bunch of stuff around, that was all. But this was after I said, "Please only move a few things..."I kept telling her that I get really confused and upset when things get moved, and that you have to do it a little at a time or I get overwhelmed...She didn't hear what I was trying to communicate. I kept repeating,"Do it slowly, a little at a time, don't move too much at once..."

We have some major communication issues and are going to do couples' counseling ASAP.

When someone moves major things in my immediate environment it's like they rearrange the inside of my brain, and she didn't understand that's what I was saying to her. I was already severely depressed, under an enormous amount of stress.
SO... I got up to find the house turned upside down, EVERYTHING MOVED. I was trying to get ready for work. I went nuts.

I literally started screaming in frustration crying, howling, bobbing and jerking my head while my impulse was to get this thing and that thing I needed for work only to realize after taking half a step that she had moved EVERYTHING. It felt like I had been hit by a strong electric shock or a blow to the head.

I snapped. I wrote a psycho-looking note asking her why in god's name she did that to me, then stabbed it to my desk with knives and left them like that. Y'know, because it's not okay to tear up her stuff. And I self-injured also.
:(

(I know I went way, way over the line that night, and I can't allow myself to do that again, but after I did what I did in reaction...it immediately became about what I did...but thinking back about how horrible that night was for me, I once again feel that sense of someone horribly betraying my trust on a whim. It felt like she'd done it deliberately to make me that miserable. I was upset enough to start pseudohallucinating.)

So, she's been thinking about divorce, yeah. Even saving money for a lawyer, and I told her I wouldn't try to hold her back, she wouldn't have to pay an attorney, I don't think, I'd do my best to be helpful, co-operative and fair if she wants to go. We spent inheritance money of hers on sinusitis surgery for me in Mexico-which made us broke. I wish I wasn't such a loser-because I ought to be able to pay her back for it, but I'm so poor it would take years.

A lot of this is poverty-if I wasn't so close to the bone-if I made a real living wage instead of a wage that allows me to just make it to another day...well, I wouldn't be so freaked out.
Another way I fail both myself, her, even my Mom.

My wife looked at my blog too, and now she's forbidden me to buy 55 gallon metal drums. Drat. She already locked my pistol up, darn her.

So that's why I'm depressed, I guess...my marriage may be in its' dying days. Couples' therapy only has about a 50% success rate. I'm not inclined to optimism. I...know whatever happens, I don't ever want to hurt again like it's going to hurt if this ends. Which means never letting someone be this close to me again, never caring this much again.

I need to get another appointment, probably with a different county psychiatrist...the one I saw was the department head and was too busy managing the department to take the time to let me explain "horrible". I told her I was doing "horrible" when she asked.

I meant "Severely depressed, irritable, self injuring about once weekly on average, suicidal enough to make plans, feeling hopeless as well as a sort of distant terror, tired yet having trouble sleeping eight hours, despising myself, feeling very incompetent, getting intrusive thoughts of past things I feel guilt over, poor memory and concentration, feeling disconnected to anyone who cares about me, crying every night."

repost, but added to...

I pick fights over stupid crap! Stupid, stupid crap!

Today I started an argument because my wife tried to plant a tree in a plastic pot after she pulled the tree up up like I asked...and she got all mad because I wouldn't let her use good potting soil that was bought retail to stick some random tree in-I wanted to use the bucket and soil for growing herbs.(I looked it up, the tree was a green ash) .

And I just can't seem to stop arguing with her...I'm tired, I'm angry, and any time my wife does something or fails to do something...for instance, she did laundry once this week, and by today, when I woke up and found that, again, I couldn't find any clean work pants...and my wife hasn't bothered to fold and put away the giant pile of clean, disordered clothes on the dryer, or do any loads since Tuesday... because she's busy making this lovely, artistic mandelbrot program..I got really pissy.

Y'know, I had a painting I wanted to paint last month...but I was a bit busy trying to make sure the fucking bills got paid, honey...that kind of took precedence over my desire for artistic expression, no matter how much I felt like I chopped off a bit of my soul.
She isn't chopping off bits of her soul for survival's sake...she quit a job because she got called "sir" once too often.

Yeah, I think I have a right right now to expect her to do more housework, and the house is trashed. I work 48 hours a week, drive another 12 hours to do that...and I'm busting ass because she has no job. Admittedly, she quit for a fairly valid reason, but...her choice to walk off the job. I don't feel like I was offered a choice, I just feel like I get to deal with the consequences, and I'm fucking angry.

Also, very, sad.   I love and trust this woman more than I trust anyone else on the planet, and she seems to impulsively do stuff that turns me into a nervous wreck...since this isn't the first time she's just blown off a job for whatever reason...or told off the wrong person and gotten fired...and I'm really beginning to hate the awful unpredictability this adds to my life. I can't trust her to keep a job.  I've  been with her for eight years.  This is her life's pattern.

And that may well end up making me ask her to leave someday. As it is, I've demanded she get into DBT or CBT as soon as she gets a job. I also want her to go see a gender therapist, because she obviously has leftovers.

I'm also just tired...depressed, lonely, frustrated, angry as hell. My moods are whipping around like crazy-up one day, down the next.

BUT ALL THAT does not excuse me being a douche. It might excuse me thinking about ending my marriage...but not being a douche.


At this point I'm making a conscious bad decision...
I'm giving myself blanket permission to SI because it's the only way I know to control the level of bad that keeps happening inside me right now. I'm going to do something I've not done before also-explicitly buy razor blades for cutting.

Because I am not going to wreck my marriage stupidly. Am not, am not, am not.

Later:  I bought a package of ten razor blades.  I took one out of the package, and did my first cutting with it.  Ohhh...it is very sharp indeed, and the feeling of using the new razor to cut is...very soothing.

She gets to walk out of a job because the customers hurt her feelings, then I get to self-injure as I see fit. Fuck it.

I'd rather bleed than cry, to be honest

A reminisce:repost, sort of...and despair

The topic of suicidality came up on another site I go to.  There was an article linked about it.
Well, ever since I got chronic sinusitis in '02, my quality of life has gone all to hell. 
I need more money, but am far too sick to go get it.  I can't afford to live without mom's help, I can't save money, I have to live out here in the country, where the loneliness eats away at me.
My life has become this very painful and sharp-edged thing.  Sometimes there's moments of soaring happiness, but my overwhelming feelings are of frustration, fear, loneliness(soul-eating loneliness!), sorrow, anger, disappointment, and resignation. And tiredness, very often tiredness...unless I take caffeine pills, in which case it's replaced by a jangly nervous energy that isn't pleasant, but is better than the bone-deep tiredness and sorrow.  I may be hooked on caffeine pills and sudafed, at least a little.

My life hurts.  A lot.  Some days more than others.

I can barely remember the time I tried to blow my brains out a few years ago.

I ripped open the padlocked plastic box the pistol was in...only to find that my wife had put the trigger-lock on, without telling me, and that I didn't have the key, because she took that too.

I took a razor and cut "people suck" into the top of the box...probably cut myself up too, because I do that, it makes me feel better to cut myself up, and went to sleep.
A year or two later I couldn't remember having done all this until my wife reminded me that I had been the one to do it-for a while I thought she had cut the "people suck" into the top of the box, and I couldn't remember how the plastic hasp had come to be ripped apart, thought maybe I had trash-picked the box like that....then the incident came back to me, although in an oddly dim and blurry fashion.

So...

And it was impulsive, yes, didn't write a note, didn't have everything organized, was just going to get in the bathtub so the mess could be cleaned up in an easier fashion, stick the barrel of my gun in my mouth, and pull the trigger.  (Gotta aim for the brainstem, use hollowpoints.)

Was just feeling totally defeated and furious with myself for screwing something or another up yet again, or maybe just failing to do any better.

  Had I chosen to go to college instead of spending a decade being depressed, then bohemian, I would even now be making okay money, not wearing trash-picked clothes and repairing my own car.
Poverty does not allow for mistakes, you see, and I made a big one: I failed to go to college early and hard.  I should have done whatever it took.

(Learn your lesson, kids, or you too will spend nights ass over teakettle in dumpsters picking the rich folk's leavings.)

When I was on Effexor this spring I was starting to try to make plans and get my affairs in order...get things set up so my wife could get the car no problem...but I was too mentally disordered to do much of anything beyond go to work and school.
I was probably going to jump off one of two bridges. Either would have sufficed, although the one had a larger breakdown lane to pull off in, and was taller by at least 100 feet, so I probably would have used that one.

( It's also a prettier bridge.  If I do kill myself in the future, I will jump off the nicer bridge...better view on the way down.)

I also thought about taking a bunch of sleeping pills and swimming out to sea-hoping my carcass wouldn't turn up.

Right now, my meds are working...and I feel like living.  Right now.  That tends to be pretty tenuous, though.

And I know nobody else reads this damned thing.
Even if they did, I'd say it: there is a high probability I will look back on my life at the end, wherever that may be, and I will think "All that suffering...and it was such a mediocre, boring little life.  No great thing was accomplished, no great purpose served by all that agony, the agony just was, pointless, like a blind, screaming, idiot lunatic ramming their head into a concrete wall over and over."

 That, oddly enough, is the saddest part of it.  There is no point to it at all.