Words Sent and Received….

 My therapist sent me another letter, replying to my reply. At the beginning of it she basically made me feel ashamed for feeling like I want to kill myself at times. Saying that I’ve not really had much loss in my life–no devastating war or death and whatever else she threw at me. I basically told her in my letter that I was totally unmotivated for life and that I wanted nothing, and would rather not be here at all than to pretend I want what everyone else my age (or otherwise) is supposed to want.

So anyway, when she started telling me how I’ve really not had it bad in life, I started to get angry. But as I read on I could see she was trying to make the case that she thinks I have “biological chronic depression” and that it’s gone a long time without being “properly treated”.

Chronic depression might be what this is, but with the beginning of that letter still fresh in my mind, I was starting to feel once again that my moods are all made up, that I’m causing all of this, allowing myself to stay obsessed and stuck. She went on to suggest that I get a psychiatrist who can give me some medication to help it out.

I’d also mentioned before in my letter to her that I could never say all I needed to say face to face with any therapist I’ve had. I was and still am afraid of the consequences of even hinting to an outsider that I’ve been suicidal–whether right now or in the past. She responded to that in this new letter by saying that only if a plan is included would there be any consequences. Being held for a time and all that.

I’m guessing none of that’s going to work with me, because if I have a plan I’m not going to tell a soul. Especially someone who has the power to tell and have me held up. Since I told her I think my parents insurance is going to drop me because of my age and unemployment, she included a list of mental health centers I could go to for a psychiatrist who wouldn’t cost me an arm and a leg to see.

I don’t think I’m going to follow through with any of it though. I just don’t care anymore. I should be in better spirits right now, because my brother who’s been away in jail for a year comes home sometime tomorrow. But all I seem to be able to do is wallow in how stupid my existence feels, and in shame for feeling bad for even one moment of it.

Distraction. I’ve got lots of stuff to read; I’m writing a lot (unfortunately it’s all about the same thing), and I finally have ink to print my art. None of it means a thing, but at least I have not injured myself. A glimmer of hope came about today when I heard of the job openings at my father’s second job. It’s a job where you call up people for surveys. I’m just going to apply and keep my mind as far away from failure as I can while I do so.

Last Option

           Today I went to see my new therapist. She is pretty cool actually. I’ve been more hesitant than out right anxious about stuff (talking on the phone with strangers, following up on calls and all). Too tired from the insomnia I’ve had the last month to think far enough into my anxiety I guess. I am recording a new song too, actually a few new songs. My voice is the only thing ruining it all…lol. My songs are more like slimmed down poems anyway-I don’t know what I’m doing, haha. And there are some canvas drawings I’ve put off painting; too lazy for it right now to make sure it looks like I gave it effort.  

I really do feel like a shell of whatever I was. While talking with the new psychologist, I had to face the fact again that I have no outside social life. And that I’ve never had any real relationships with guys I’ve met in my life. She found it kind of hard to believe I’ve never had a boyfriend, but I told her I didn’t look how I look right now. Not to mention the fact I was never looking for a boyfriend, being so depressed when I was finishing out school. It’s just not something I care about anymore. Relationships with people in general….My personality will never be enough to keep people very engaged, for whatever reason I might want them to be. I’m too introverted and have stopped apologizing for it.

I might love life if I didn’t have to sustain it you know, if I didn’t have to eat and have a place to stay to survive…if the basics weren’t needed to keep the body alive. I may sound confusing here, but that’s where all these issues seem to stem from- having to sustain. I don’t have a reason to, I’m just doing it because I have not built up the will to get rid of myself yet. Nothing has sent me spiraling that far, not even near it lately. I’m not excited about school starting next week, I just know it’s necessary. It’s a way out of my avoidance from everything. I’m going to try, because this pretty much is my last option. Otherwise, for someone like me, getting a job will be impossible. I don’t see it happening any other way now. And I’m too close to throwing my hands up.

Terrified, not much of a plan here…

     It takes a long time to do anything at my college, so I am not totally withdrawn yet, and unfortunately it has me thinking again about what I am doing at all. I tried looking for jobs today and it hurts knowing how unfit I am for every (seemingly) simple, out of the way job. Cashier?- not me, just thinking about that has me high in anxiety.

I also filled out two change of major forms just a few minutes ago actually. One for a degree in Graphic Design, and another for a Production Artist Certificate (this would take way less time to earn). Those titles fit me more than “Coding Specialist” or “HIM tech”. Now I don’t know how far I’ll get with actually switching my major, money wise. I hate having loans like this, it is so messy and puts a lot of guilt on me (as if I needed more). But right now I don’t care because I am satisfied that I made a move I didn’t expect to make. How long have I been talking about changing my major?…lol. For too long. But it scares me because I’d be starting over, once again with no clue what I’m in for.

It’s better than assuming my options are out, knowing I’ve not tried all my options yet, I’ve not tried. And while I know art is what I go to, it has done nothing less than save my life, I am not confident in being creative you know? Who cares though right? It’s not the college’s money that is being wasted, it’s mine. It’s the money I don’t have to waste being wasted….

Whatever though, this isn’t easy. It’s written all over my poor arm at the moment- I am losing and shutting down fast. I’m going to make an appointment with my therapist one last time, just so he knows I’m off my medication and that I’m not gone and dead yet, or maybe not….If I did, I would not hold back anything this time. The funny thing is I don’t feel depressed, I just feel completely out of options. I can’t become a brand new person over night, or even over twelve months time because it took longer than that to become the mess I am. So, my mother can be angry or feel at a loss with me, and my father can stay clueless as usual, and the rest of my family can cut me out, it’s not going to fix me and it’s not going to give me a reason to want the rest of the life I have. I can only try so much, and continue to see it fail so much before nothing matters anymore. Until my family’s feelings are nothing, and until my thoughts about disappearing and breathing no more aren’t even important, but are all I think about and all I am left to work toward. Do I make sense? It doesn’t shock me that I’m thinking about suicide, and neither does the fact I’ve sliced my arms open again shock me. It’s all so small and insignificant compared to what’s been going on forever in my head.   

I am already disappointed in myself. It doesn’t help that people in my life don’t know how far on the edge I am. They need to know I am hanging on desperately for something to work and for it to save me you know? Why I have to make things so hard, I don’t even know…why am I still here is the real question. I shouldn’t be and I don’t want to be, yet I’m still trying…silly right.

        

Shadow… an old drawing; it’s relevant now though.

A disgrace, a failure, and maybe I’m just lazy. Who cares? I don’t.

      A cousin of mine, who’s in her second year of highschool, gets to go to Japan soon. It’s part of something like a “People to people” thing. I used to get those mailings when I was in highschool, but we never got into it. I always figured that of course, my family doesn’t have the money to waste on a trip like that. And I will admit, when I first heard she has this “chance of a life time”, I wasn’t happy for her. I was bitter once again about the opportunities I manage to miss out on. That bitterness only leads to more self directed hate. Very harsh thoughts about what I am limited to; not only limited in a general way by what I look like or where I am from and what my means are, but I am limited by my own (lack of) personality, my fear, my lack of skill at anything practical. Basically, it all falls back to wondering cold about what I am doing here.  

Anyway, truth be told, I would love to go to Japan one day, but there’s no way I am ever flying again - which means I may very well never see that part of the world. Fine (what would it mean anyway? It’s not as if I am going to really do much at all with my life, sending me anywhere would be a waste at this point.)

And school…oh, I think there’s only a matter of days now before I snap about the situation. Hopefully it will be ugly, maybe then I will be convinced that my feelings are very real, and do something irreversible. God, I am not fit to be here. I don’t know what good looks like anymore, what progress means- no way of thinking seems to connect well with what I actually do (absolutely nothing) in regards to taking necessary risks to get along in life.

What do I have to do before I can actually live doing what (I think) I want to do? I have been painting, drawing, piano playing, crocheting and writing for the last three days, persistently. Trying to forget and stay distracted. No thoughts of school, or of the future, or of what I need to take care of myself on my own, or of how I will react when I lose everyone in my life eventually. No thoughts of what worries me. I haven’t wanted to eat or drink or move or look away from what I am doing because it all reminds me that one day, so soon, I will have to find away to sustain myself alone. I will have to find the motivation to keep going and I won’t have time for my distractions, for doing the things I only live to do and be part of.

Do I have to suffer decades of sleepless nights? Or day after day of looking at myself in the mirror with darkened eyes for who knows how long? I see my mother, she’s tired. So tired of everything she’s brought onto herself. Tired of work, of seeing her sons get themselves in trouble, tired of paying bill after bill, and I know, tired of me and of the progress I haven’t made. Tired of me for being something she doesn’t understand anymore.  

Should I feel guilty about this? I have no illness killing me, I am not in poverty or in a terrible neighborhood. I have both my parents. Some may say I have no right to bitch about anything. But while it may look right on the surface, it all disconnects beneath. It is so stupid and pointless and disgusting beneath. Or what is wrong with me? (Left alone too long) Why do I go from one second believing my life is impossible to fix and figure out, to the next second scolding myself for thinking anything could really be wrong.? Once again diminishing the problem or saying there isn’t a problem at all…

You can probably tell I have stopped going to therapy all together. No one has called me in about my medication or sessions. See? They don’t really care. Because they just don’t have to. See they only care if you can pay up and if you actually want their help. Well, I don’t want their help anymore. It wasn’t enough, and I don’t think I’d be willing to seek or accept any more help. I’ve stopped trying. Nobody can save you if you don’t want them to, if you never let them know you’re even going under.

I could never tell my doctors the whole truth. And they are nothing special. They cannot read my thoughts and know what is real and what I’ve really done. I need to stop pretending my life, or the sudden end of it matters, because it doesn’t.

Here’s an image I drew and painted to represent the hand full of good things I keep breathing for. I liked it a lot more a few days ago. It’s sucks now, but I thought I’d post it just to show art is where my hope is.

  

Night

     My mother got very upset today after failing a test for the second time required by her job. She missed the goal by one stupid point. She got an 89% instead of the mandatory 90%, and the people grading the tests weren”t decent enough to bump her grade up. But they don’t know that she’s got severe test anxiety. She came home early crying about the situation. As I was trying to talk her through it, she made the decision to go to the emergency room and talk to a counselor there. 

I am slightly envious that she so willingly decided to go to the hospital like that for emotional distress. I’ve only been close once I can remember about asking to go to the hospital, more than a year ago, when I didn’t want to go home and was suicidal. I didn’t end up going that time because I just couldn’t get the words to leave my lips that I needed to. A few bad things resulted from that, but i still don’t know if I’d willingly make it known that I needed to go to the hospital for a crisis like that. At times, it does scare me. The way I can so easily keep quiet and be secretive, even if every part of me knows it’s wrong and is fighting against it.

My mother’s alright now. From what she told me, she felt much better after she was able to talk to someone about what was going on at her job. Even though there are times I hate thinking about my therapy sessions, I will admit I like having someone to talk to like that. Face to face without worrying so much about judgement. But of course, I can’t tell my therapist everything. If I did, I am sure he’d suggest putting me away somewhere to be watched for a time probably. I don’t know what he’d suggest, but I know I wouldn’t be alright with it.

I am too good at lying…Beside that, I don’t think I know exactly what the full truth is anymore. If someone asked me how I feel, I wouldn’t have an answer. What does it mean when I don’t have an answer to that?……Anyway, here are a few lines I wrote a few weeks back.

 

Eyes of a soft shimmer, burst with glimmered tears

Tiny shards of sable songs

They fall and fall forever

Voices of desperation scratch gray until it bleeds

Beautiful insanity, lit spectacles of ruin

Drunken delusions slurred a world that made more sense

A timely dose of nightshade

So asleep, I’m almost dead.

 

 

All the lonely people…

    I’ve had all the friends I’ll ever have, and they’ve all gone away. I avoid making new friends in the real world now. I don’t answer the phone because it’s never anyone for me. Why am I still living? What kind of life is this where I’ve trapped myself so severely, isolated myself beyond the point of insanity? Why go on? I’ve lowered my dosage by another 25 mg, meaning I’m taking the least amount I can without cutting a pill in half, and I feel like dead weight. Throw me away already, I am nothing good. Damn…I can hardly get out of bed now simply because I can’t find the motivation to do so. Sure, there’s a lot I can do, many hobbies, but I just can’t move some mornings. It’s to the point where my legs and hips will ache as I lay, and I still don’t move, despite the increasing pain. It’s as if I don’t care if it hurts to lay there, I just don’t want to leave my bed and face the task of occupying another day.

50 mg, of Zoloft. That’s all I’m taking now. One tiny pill, and I guess I got what I wanted. It’s not so scary to think about pain anymore.  Not like when I was on 150 mg of Zoloft..lol. That’s only because I was twitching and moving and thinking too much, and too fast to consider pain and death. I was actually living during those few weeks. Not anymore. Now I know I truly can’t expect anything to work out for very long…this medication’s effects wore off too soon….at least that’s what I’m guessing happened.

There’s a feeling welling up inside that tells me something has to die soon in my life. Maybe it’s a way of thinking I have, maybe it’s a relationship within the family, or maybe it’s simply a bad habit, but something needs to die. That includes my physical death. Wouldn’t that be a weight at least off my family’s shoulders? My inability to get a job, or to make contacts and relationships makes me believe I can’t live and be independent. That scares me, because it means I might be a leech the rest of my life, and I don’t want that. But then I ask myself what I do want, and I come up with nothing. That doesn’t scare me; it makes me think I’ve just figured out the answer to every problem. If I want nothing, I shouldn’t take anything, not even another breath.

Things got complicated. And I realize I’ve not gotten better, just more tangled in the nightmare, too involved without anything to offer. I can not solve it.