a dying boy

I seem to be reading a lot of  child sexual abuse stories lately...and I read one of a young man who'd obviously been through really awful stuff...then I read the young man was very lonely.

Then I read that he was dying of cancer, only going to live a few more years at best.

This bothers me very much.

I actually started crying (like I don't do enough of that!) on the way home...and I realized something.

I'm really glad I have been able to heal.  I have the therapist, the supportive spouse , the friends, the websites, the meds that keep my distress levels low enough to do the horrific inner work I need to do to live.

I have been through hell itself.  But there has also been joy. I am struck by how grateful I am to have that, how tragic that he will not. How much it pains me that he will never take this journey.

And I'm going to correspond with him, as I can handle doing so...because if I were incredibly wounded and terminally ill...I'd want someone to do it for me.

Admittedly, my big heart may be fully complemented by my thick head for so doing.

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.

The lonely androgyne

Alright, I've been neglecting this blog. Time to punch it up a bit, even if I'm talking to nobody...I'm pretty much leaving my old web hangout.  Not that I blame anybody...

Here's the deal...

I'm just rather forced by the level of healthcare I can access as a poor, uninsured person-at least, I feel forced-to start DIYing my own treatment...and I'm not happy about the care I'm getting. I'm not happy they ignore verbal reports of infection symptoms. I'm not happy they haven't done a good case history, or that I have to make sure I get refills, because the docs can't be bothered to check the list.

 I'm not happy about having to try weird shit to try and treat my resistant sinusitis. Like white tea and garlic in an irrigation rinse.  I'm not happy about having a mistrust of my doctors' competence and caring.

 

Also taking a potentially dangerous supplement with my happy pills-5htp.  Why, because when I pop a certain dose of it and the three other meds, I can suddenly function fully, get organized, be productive, be happy...in other words, not be depressed. Which I can't do without the 5-htp.

But if I tell the county psychiatrist I'm taking the 5-htp? He would probably d/c the other meds.  I accidentally forgot 1/6th of one dose once-of one of the psych drugs...and had a rotten next day...so I need the government medicine too.

So I can't tell him something really important.  I can't work with the guy.  I can't get blood testing to check my serotonin levels-see if they are near to a level of concern. 

I have a dishonest relationship with him, and I'm not pleased about it. But I feel forced into this by circumstance...or I could just accept being sick and crazy...and no, that's not a life worth leading.

 

I was on a support site, so I wanted sympathy for being in the situation I'm in...and get blasted for trying to fix myself, since the docs don't seem to be.

I wanted help with the stress, not an addition to it.

 

Waaah, waah, waah.

As my wife says, don't go to the internet for sympathy.

 

And that's another thing...we're doing couples' counseling and I'm taking DBT.  We're fixing the marriage.  It's good.  I do intensely love that woman.

 

Anyway, I will start posting select photos to here, political rambles, pictures of my critters (many of whom can become YOUR critters if you can prove you're good and responsible...)

 

I've also been taking L-theanine-btw, a safer chemical, not known for serotonin toxicity...and I would say it's increased my ability to focus-well, not greatly, but between the depression alleviation and it, *just* enough that I can mostly keep myself on task. With the assistance of listing, prioritizing, and paper brainstorming.

Which is awesome.

 

I've tried picamilon-I may take some tonight-but my feeling about it is it's somewhat overpriced for the amount of anti-anxiety punch I get.  L-theanine does just as well in larger doses without making me sleepy the way picamilon does.  The price on theanine's a little better, and not only am I calm, but I'm focused.

 

And...I'm going to enroll in a motorcycle rider's training program.  I'm feeling the call of the 60mpg savings, but first I want to see if I like riding and am any good at it, plus get a license to do it.

 

  You know, before I go buy a $1800 motorcycle...which seems like a good ballpark of the minimum a reliable commuter bike's going to cost me. Oh, and I should throw in $200 for safety gear without which I shall not ride.

 

Gah...just irrigated with H2O2...burns like hell, but brought a lot of green crud out.  And I just smelled odor...yay for smelling things. And for getting out bacteria.

repost:FtWTF

I'll keep it simple here. even if it's so complicated I don't feel like I can stand it.

I've got these feelings of androgyny. I think this is adding to my sense of isolation, which was/is, um, at a level that affects my mental health...Probably part of the reason it takes three drugs to manage my depression instead of just one like it used to, although I may just be getting older and harder to treat. I'm lonely almost all the time now.
( I see so little of my wife, and when I do, she's teaching herself how to program again...)

I'd like to start talking to people about it, but I'm also thinking it may be premature to do so. To put it mildly, part of me very much thinks this might be some weird phase, and another part of me, well, would prefer I never realized this. But then there's a part that's sort of saying-yes, it all makes sense now...
I'd tell my old friends...wow, all two or three of the ones that are still talking to me.(How did I lose them all? where did they go? I was too busy being physically ill...)

I'm feeling horribly alone-because I am really alone a lot these days... and frightened about this, and wishing it would just go away and stop bothering me.

The thing is, of course, with Androgynes, gender dysphoria is less intense, but it never really goes away. Because you don't really do much...and most gender clinics expect you to transition to the OPPOSITE sex, not to some sort of middle-a middle that's not very satisfactory either...
I don't want to go back to being a freak. I find I like to be liked, I like it when people smile at me instead of calling security (!) to follow me through a store. I find I like at least the veneer of acceptance, I like not getting sneered at by people who don't even know me. I don't want random redneck assholes coming up again and saying "Are you a man or a woman? HARHAR."

I find I can't be myself and be accepted, only this time, it runs deeper than being a dyke in the 90's...I'm not just a dyke, I'm of a blended gender, third gender, whatever...something the dominant western society doesn't even acknowledge exist.

I mean, intersexed kids they surgically alter right after birth, without consent or even the knowledge of the child, which often proves to be a totally fucked-up thing to do to the child in question...but what if you're intersexed in the head?

I'm...just feeling like nobody's going to accept this out of me, much less understand it. And I hate it. And I'm obsessed with it.
Being a butch girl was okay, but this? this is just...weird. Really weird.
And it feels like one giant challenge too much on top of everything else that's kicking my ass-the money, get a better job, get wife some therapy, get ass to school, finish losing weight., take better care of my insane dog, fix my own car, grow a big vegetable garden, get my sinuses fixed, fix up the trailer house so Mom can sell it...

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.