I'm afraid the idea of "following my bliss" seems absolutely ludicrous to me.
When I'm unsure if I'll have adequate food for the week or if my body will allow me to keep working or if my car will keep working so I can do my job or if the space heaters will be enough to handle another winter in my home where I don't have a working furnace or shower and I know the pipes are going to freeze like they do every year, the concept of "bliss" seems a lot like buying outlandishly expensive champagne when I don't even like champagne.
Fuck "bliss." I'll settle for simply not being worked into the ground and having nothing to show for it.
The trouble with the attitude of trying to force someone who is experiencing suicide ideation to go to the ER right away is this:
While people who are experiencing suicide ideation are more likely to actually commit suicide than people who do not experience suicide ideation, talking about FEELING suicidal is not the same thing as planning to commit suicide.
If I were going to commit suicide, I would just do it. Nobody would know about it until after the fact.
I was on a locked ward for a weekend when I was 16 because I cut my wrists. The cuts were superficial. Nobody fucking listened to a word I said about all the fuckery that was going on in my life at the time. They were quick to try and see if I was schizophrenic, asking leading questions like "have you ever hallucinated."
"Only when I'm doing drugs," I quipped, because I didn't like the self-important asshole asking the questions.
He told me I didn't need to get smart about it, and I said that someone in the room needed to get smart, and since it wasn't going to be him, it needed to be me.
He branded me a hysterical neurotic and, after that worthless diagnosis, let me leave.
I would literally kill myself before ever taking the chance of being put on a locked unit again. Even if some of them are nicer about it these days, they still don't see people as human.
While my bipolar disorder causes fuckery for me, I've learned to cope with it. However, I live in a world that wants to make me "normal" when I can never be "normal." I can never have normal sleep patterns no matter how many drugs you give me. I might fall into a tranquilized slumber and wake up in a puddle of piss, but this is not the same as having a "normal" sleep pattern, and I won't do it.
I will never have a working thyroid gland, and thyroid dysfunction also contributes to depression and weird sleep patterns.
The last time I really freaked out about shit, it wasn't my mental illness causing it, which is what everyone has been trained to assume. So, were I have gone to the hospital, they would have put me on a 36 hour psych hold. That wasn't what I needed. I needed my god damn cytomel, which the doctor hadn't yet given the pharmacy the okay to fill. Cytomel is not a psych med, it is a thyroid med. However, they would have treated me as if I were crazy and made my life an even worse pile of shit than it already is.
Lately, I have been experiencing very strong suicide ideation. I envision putting a shotgun to my chest and pulling the trigger. I don't think it's true that women avoid suicides such as gunshots to the head because we're vain. I think I'm horse-ass ugly. I wouldn't care about blowing my face away because I can't stand looking at it. However, I wouldn't want to traumatize my son by him having to see that mess. That would fuck someone up for life.
I can tell you exactly what's prompting this suicide ideation, and it isn't because I need to be on the damn psych meds that would only mess me up more.
What I need is a job that pays the bills. However, I don't do well with jobs that have a normal Monday through Friday nine to five schedule. I don't sleep well at night. I end up sleepy during the day. I fall into severe depressions working that shift.
I like working night shifts. However, I can no longer do the extremely physical work in a long term care setting or warehouse, the places where I would be able to find such shifts. Homecare work is extremely sporadic and not dependable.
Currently I'm throwing a very small newspaper route because I couldn't handle the larger one. Even with this small one, I'm in constant pain because my body never gets a day of rest. My hands and feet are swollen and my mental acuity, such as it is, is in the toilet. Everything is a never-ending blur of hell. I never have enough money.
I work all the time, delivering food and delivering papers.
I work every day of the week most weeks. I'm not lazy.
I'm the fucking square peg. I'm willing to work. I want to work. But I don't do "normal" well.
THIS is why I'm having suicide ideation. Not because I fucking need DRUGS. And no amount of having some self important twit telling me I need to "love myself" is going to remedy this fucking situation.
Nine times out of ten, people who are experiencing suicide ideation aren't planning to commit suicide.
If we're going to do it, we're not going to tell you.
The thing that everyone has been taught about forcing your unhappy friends to go to the ER is bullshit.
We need real world solutions, not pie in the sky and pharmaceuticals.
Fridays delivering food tend to be hit or miss. Yesterday was definitely a miss.
I'm now having to fight with Hyrecar to not have to pay lease fees on a vehicle that I couldn't drive after the 21st. I'll be out $600. I haven't even been able to get the windshield repaired on my once nice car.
I'm going to say how I feel, and I don't need anyone telling me how "God will provide" or I need to "see a counselor" or "get on meds" for my suicide ideation.
I'm a deist rather than a theist. Autocorrect keeps trying to get me to write "a theist" as atheist, so I will state for the record that I am not an atheist. I'm an agnostic deist.
If someone takes comfort in theistic beliefs, good on you. I'm glad it gives you comfort, and I hope it continues to. I used to. I just can't any longer.
I believe that deity, in whatever form it takes, is basically a creator energy and is not involved with the day to day existence of its miserable creations. If I had theistic beliefs, I would despise the creator for not stopping the suffering of its creations. Being a deist, I don't think the creator is involved after the fact of creation.
Counselors don't do anything for me and it's something I have to make time to do. If I'm going to pay someone to be my friend and adviser for an hour, I need to be getting something out of it besides the desire to bash my head against a wall in frustration.
I can't tolerate most medications. I take the only one I can tolerate, and I take it in a more effective form than the one that is available by prescription. Lithium Orotate is more bioavailable than Lithium Carbonate. The "therapeutic dose" of Lithium is just one small step away from toxicity. One really does not need that much for it to be effective.
I've been bipolar since I hit puberty, although it wasn't properly diagnosed until I was nearly 40. I know about meds. Meds are not one size fits all. SSRI's make me manic and psychotic. This is, surprisingly, something I neither want nor need. Also, it's pretty condescending to say to someone "have you considered medication" when they've been dealing with an illness their entire lives and have come to know the nature of the way it manifests in them.
In any case, no amount of pills is going to help my situation. I need money, not medication.
The only pills I've been thinking about taking involves an overdose of my blood pressure medication so I don't have to go through this shit anymore, and no, I am not literally planning to do that, so no need to suggest that I go to the ER, because the last thing I need is to waste three fucking days in a god damn psych ward where I can be treated like shit and not be making even the slim pickings I make delivering food.
I defy anyone to say that they wouldn't be stressed out in my situation.
I'm unable to write, which used to be my salvation because I'm so stressed by my situation.
The future's so bleak that even one of those bright ass lights they use in a lighthouse can't light the way.
My best friend in this damn shitty world died Friday. He was six years old. His kidneys shut down, and my son and I agreed that it would be best for him to be released rather than having to endure costly treatments that wouldn't buy him more than a week. He was a very sick little guy, but very brave to the end. If you want to read what happened in detail, I've published a post here. I honestly didn't know how sick he was.
This post is going to be long, rambling and ranty. It isn't going to be full of sunshine or unicorns farting rainbows. If you have a problem with long, ranty, rambling posts short on sunshine, unicorns, or rainbow farts, this is your cue to exit.
Anyone who sees the need to tell me that I need to be more positive, think more positive, or anything else of that nature needs to realize that you are a sanctimonious ass and you need to not tell others how to think or feel. I've more than enough of your kind of person in my life.
I am a very angry person overall, and life hasn't done much to make me less angry. It seems that every time I find something that softens my heart, the powers that be conspire to take it away.
Now, here is the difference between my mother and me.
I'm pretty sure this plane is purgatory. I've developed this belief over a lifetime of being kicked in the teeth at every turn. You don't have to join me in my belief. I will never say that anyone has to believe what I do.
I have stated that I am an angry person. I probably qualify as bitter, although I try not to be hateful. In spite of being angry and bitter, I actually am capable of caring. Sometimes I care quite a lot.
I loved Lafayette more than I love just about any other creature on this planet. I was the one person that he really trusted. His love for me was innocent and unconditional. That kind of thing doesn't come along every day, and I let this little creature into my heart.
When he died, I was utterly devastated. I wondered how I could have missed the fact that he was so sick. Logically, I know why. I'm currently working two jobs. I'm trying to pay off massive amounts of debt, mostly vehicle related. I'm helping my son, who is unable to work due to severe anxiety and depression. I'm just trying to keep afloat.
It wasn't until Thursday that I was aware that Lafayette was having trouble eating and drinking, and I made an appointment to take him to the vet.
He was much sicker than I thought, and there was nothing that could be done.
I ended up talking to my mother, whose comfort came in the forms of statements such as this.
"This is why I won't have animals."
Yeah...thank you for letting me know I'm an idiot. I was already aware, actually.
"Things like this happen so we can form callouses on our souls."
My response was "because that's what I really needed is more callouses on my soul. Look, I already resigned myself a long time ago to the fact that nothing good is ever going to happen to me. What the hell more does the Universe want?"
I wondered if this tragedy came to me because I recently got a new job and I was happy about it. It seems that I can't have anything good happen without having something really shitty happen in return.
"Well," my mother said, "we have to pay for what we get."
"Yeah, but this is completely out of line," I said. "This sort of thing is worth a vehicle breakdown or something of that nature, not something utterly tragic."
"Oh, you don't want car problems," she said.
Well, I'd much rather have car problems than to have a creature that meant the world to me die!
Now, in my mother's defense, she comes from a family with a really harsh world view. When her dog got hit by a car when she was in high school, she was devastated. Her grandmother told her "stop crying over that dog. Just think how you'd have felt if it had been your sister."
My great grandmother had a very difficult life and had developed a lot of callouses on her soul.
Thing is, I honestly don't think this is a good thing.
Somehow this conversation reminded me of the song "Soul Stripper" by AC/DC. Possibly because the band's founder, Malcolm Young, is getting the royal shaft from the Universe himself by having his mind stripped away. If you believe the Satanic Panic shitheads, you believe he deserves this. Please pull your head out of your ass if you believe those fuckwits for even a nanosecond. This man was far from evil and in no way deserves what's happening to him.
In any case, the line that I was reminded of goes like this:
She started moving nice and easy
Slowly getting into my spine
Killing off these nice little feelings
Every one she could find
Granted, the song is about one of those awful, doomed from the start, obsessive romantic attachments. But my mother's statement about forming callouses on one's soul made me think that this is what the miseries of life can do. Eventually enough nice little feelings are killed off that a person becomes cold and hard.
I may be angry. I may be bitter. But I refuse to be cold and hard. No matter how much it hurts to let myself feel, I will feel. I don't ever want to let my soul be entirely stripped away.
I contemplate suicide often. The only reason I don't do it is because my son still needs me.
Because this is my damn blog and because I love this band, here's Soul Stripper. One of the reasons it sounds so different from a lot of AC/DC's material is because Angus and Malcolm switched who was playing rhythm and who was playing lead. Malcolm really didn't like playing lead, but he was perfectly capable of it. This song was never meant to be a "single." They were having fun, and it shows.
