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Tag Archives: suicidal ideation

14th April 2019

14 Sunday Apr 2019

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anxiety, chronic pain, depression, graphic self-harm, intrusive thoughts, mental health, mental illness, self-harm, suicidal ideation, suicide

CW (Content Warning: suicidal ideation, self-harm, suicide):

Yesterday was the first day in a while that I woke up and felt like I wanted to die. It was beyond the feeling of wishing I didn’t exist anymore–that feeling is an old friend, and I try not to let it bother me too much–no, yesterday, I actively felt the urge to harm myself.

I don’t usually go into this much detail, but I need to get it off my prefrontal lobe (I’m out of practice, uni was 2 years ago, but let’s pretend that’s where the synapses for our current thoughts reside). I’m gonna give another content warning here, because this is about to get graphic.

When I woke up yesterday, I was overwhelmed by visions of me stabbing myself with a variety of rusty farming/maintenance tools. I used my own hands to drive wood-handled weapons (they were being used as weapons, anyway) that I don’t even know the names of, into my eyes, ears, neck, stomach, throat. I saw myself in a quiet, abandoned barn, far away from curious stares or offers of help, removing my vision, hearing, and eventually my life, forever. I felt sad (just sad–not depressed, or miserable, or like crying–just a normal, low-level sadness) during the stabbing portion of my thoughts, coupled with a bone-weary exhaustion. There was a flicker of anxiety (when do I *not* experience at least a flicker of anxiety?) that I might be too weak or tired to finish what I was doing, which spurred me on to finish the job.

(Looking back, I am rather taken aback by the undeniable normality of my feelings and responses: sadness at a regrettable event, a little anxiety that actually helps one to complete their task, rather than the debilitating type I typically suffer, etc. Such “normal” responses to such an abnormal situation… ordinarily, it happens the other way around, and I’m crippled by a minor setback that most people would hardly notice. Anyways. I digress.)

As the anxiety sparked a final push of energy, I imagined driving the final blade through my own neck, nearly severing it on one side, I felt such intense relief and even a frisson of pleasure. I saw myself topple to the ground, my body torn and raw in places, bright red blood already drying to the colour of tea stains in the bottom of an old mug (drying on clothing I don’t own, by the way–I don’t know if I’ve ever bought a flannel shirt and a pair of pale, straight-leg jeans). My hair was long, like it was until about 7 years ago (I still mourn my hair–like Jo March in “Little Women,” it was “my one beauty”) and I seemed a little heavier than I am, now.

Parsing through the memories of those thoughts, I suppose I might’ve been looking at me when I was about 17: starting to lose a little weight (which I gained back, never actually hitting a “normal” weight until hyperemesis with my 1st pregnancy) still with waist-length, curly brown hair, wearing some male relative’s clothing, and in a rural community not unlike the one where I grew up. I was near the sea, though. I never lived near the sea until moving to the UK… which I did at 19. 19-year-old me, a little slimmer than I actually was, then? So odd.

This wasn’t a dream–I was definitely awake–but it really knocked me, to have such an intense, self-harming…. vision?… out of nowhere, before I’d even sat up in bed. I was a little off with Hubs, yesterday. I suppose this explains that, to some extent.

I wonder if it’s time to increase my antidepressant. Or change meds, or request some talking therapy. I feel a little flat, a little worn-down, lately, and I’ve had a cold for a week or so… I didn’t think I was getting BAD again, though.

Maybe it’s just April. This is my least favourite month. Or–my chronic pain has been worse, lately. Maybe this is a stress response caused by intense physical pain, and I don’t want to kill myself, I just want to kill the pain/stop hurting. Then again–that’s what most suicides are.

And maybe I should go see my doctor.

12th(?) January, 2019

12 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by SuperDepressed in Uncategorized

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anxiety, depression, mental health, mental illness, psychology, suicidal ideation, university

I can’t believe I’ve kept writing in this blog–however sporadically–until I now spend more of my time feeling “super” than “depressed”… it’s vaguely fantastical, to think that I can type that, today.

Not that I didn’t have a major episode of anxiety and suicidal ideation last summer; but those are par for the course, with me. The important point is that those are fewer and farther between these days, even if when they come, it’s always the same shit on a different day: sleeping 2-3 hours or less per day; perpetual feeling of terror, of something catastrophic that is imminent and unavoidable; self-harm just to switch my brain off and take a nap; the unshakable conviction that everyone I love would be better off without me; a return to higher doses of antidepressants and, if I’m lucky and have an understanding GP, a round of sleeping pills to reset the internal mechanisms that have sprung so wildly off their tracks… and then several weeks of that fragile, almost newborn feeling: not sad, not happy, but intensively sensitive and at the same time removed, as if I know I’ll never form proper memories of this time, and so I won’t have to contend more than once with anything that happens during it.

I’m thinking of returning to university, later this year. As it turns out, even a 1st class degree in psychology is good for literally nothing, unless you’ve got clinical experience as well (I have not). And aside from the suicide prevention helpline, I’ve not even found a volunteer post that’s related to my field of study… so. It seems I should return to the drawing board, as it were, and go from there. One question remains: do I return to psychology, or my first love–language and literature?

No one ever comments on my blog, but I’d love to hear anyone’s thoughts. Hit me up. And have a good January… I seem to be having one, somehow.

More About Depression–A Less-Quick Intro

21 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by SuperDepressed in Uncategorized

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clinical depression, depression, despair, fantasy, hopelessness, suicidal ideation

I’m depressed.  Now, before you go reading ANYTHING into that, let me clarify.

Every day, I am so grateful for so many things in my life, I don’t have enough toes and fingers to count them on.  By contrast, I can count all the things that are *really* disappointing in my life on one hand, probably with a spare digit or two left over.  I’m not saying I have a bad life, or that if something changed, I would feel good; I’m saying that no matter how great my life is–and it is, overall–I struggle to be happy.

It’s not about circumstances.  Anyone who occasionally cries themselves to sleep when something bad happens to them, or they get their period, or they have a really bad headache, is not experiencing depression as I understand the term. Even someone who is, technically, depressed, but is depressed in a way that new friends or a better job or losing some weight etc etc etc can fix, is not depressed in the way I’m using the term.

It’s not that something is so wrong, it’s making me miserable.  It’s that NOTHING is wrong, and I’m still miserable.

Try to get your head around that, if you can.  Imagine having almost everything you’ve ever wanted, and being on-track to get even more of it, and it just… doesn’t matter.  You take the pills, you try to do the best you can to be healthy and happy, and yet, every day, you spend hours fantasizing about killing yourself, or just not waking up tomorrow; or maybe you just sleep 14 hours straight, dreaming dreams about being abducted by a sexual predator (one of my actual, recurrent dreams) and you’re so sad you start to cry when you wake up, because you *want* so desperately to be back in the dream.

Where you felt happy.  Where you felt something.

Imagine that *any* day when you feel happy, you talk too much and laugh too loudly and hit on anything that moves, because for a few hours or maybe, at most, for a couple of days, it just feels so GOOD to be alive.  Or you just feel alive, and that’s good.  Something like that.  But by the third day, you can feel yourself slowly spiralling back down, into a feeling that’s so grey and dank and leaves you feeling so helpless, you wonder what’s even the point?  Why be miserable for two, three, four weeks at a time, to then spend maybe one weekend feeling good about yourself, about life in general, before you go back to feeling like getting out of bed every morning is too much trouble?

And you try to motivate yourself.  You try to cajole yourself out of bed with promises of treats and rewards, you try to interest yourself in something, anything, to get yourself up, but…. *sigh*  Really, what is the point?  You’re so tired you can barely roll over or pull the blanket up to your chin, and you’re supposed to get up and dress your kids and pack their schoolbags and take a shower?  You just don’t have the energy.  If you did, you’d probably only walk outside into the nearest road, and wait for the inevitable… so maybe it’s a blessing in disguise.

Some days you try a different tactic.  Lying in bed, wishing your heart would just stop beating, you try to rouse some anger in yourself. They say that depression is just anger turned inwards, right (somebody said it once) so you try to focus some of that anger AT yourself, try to use it to force you up and into doing whatever it is you need to do.  You call yourself every name you can think of–I don’t mean obsolete, meaningless ones, like bastard or slut or bitch, I mean the really awful ones–I mean the ones like useless human being, embarrassment to your family, or even the worst one of all, bad mother… and nothing works.  You just lie there, and ignore the alarm, and pray for sleep to a God you usually believe in, but not today.  Today, you know that if He existed, He would end your suffering…

I’m pretty sure that one day, I’m going to pull a Virginia Woolf.  I sincerely hope I’ll manage to write a few novels first, maybe leave something behind for my family, but I’m beginning to doubt even that will happen.  Maybe it’s for the best; maybe they’ll find it easier to hate me, and move on with their own lives, if I leave them nothing at all.

And that, boys and girls, is depression as I know it.  More coming soon–the next one will be a 2-or-3-parter.

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