Body & Blood

For the first time, I didn't look at my suicidal thoughts with rose coloured glasses. I was able to step aside from my shame, fear of rejection and worries about being commited to a psychiatric hospital and admit to my psychopharmacologist that I'm not doing well. There have been times I've danced around the topics of suicidal thoughts, suicidal ideation and complusive destructive hehaviours in emails and verbally with my doctors before. I've always been preoccupied with the notion that I will somehow be less of a person because of mental illness. I know that sounds like I'm lying based on how open I am on some of these blogs, but it's a different way to express how I'm feeling. On this blog, there is no judgement. People can read it, but they don't see me. I think to some degree, I'm terrified of those around me knowing the truth about how I feel about myself, because then maybe they will see me the way that I see myself. I've had moments like these throughout my life, lost friendships over my ups and downs-I can't blame all of it on symptoms. Some of it was my behaviour, behaviour through concious choice, wanting just do to certain things, not caring about the outcome, not caring who or what I destroy as long as I did whatever I wanted to do. I did things to put a comfortable level of wall between me and others. Or I wanted to test them to see just how much they cared about me. I needed to prove to myself that I wasn't alone, but on the other side of the coin, never really giving people a chance to get to know the real me. Only few people have ever seen the turmoil that rages on in me. I reached out to her and without a clever turn of phrase or a poetic notion, came clean and asked for help. I told her about the rapid thoughts, the repetative (bordering on obsessive thoughts) and the feelings of guilt for just being alive. It's always easier for me to express myself in written form. I struggle with expressing certain thoughts and feelings verbally, out of I suppose shame. It's different to read things and have them float through your mind curtosy of your inner voice/ inner monologue, whatever you want to call it, than to hear things with your own voice. Sometimes even having my words read to me by others sets me on edge. It's interesting that I have such a distain for myself, but I do admire certain talents of mine. I may have touched on that before. I honestly can't remember, I've written so many blogs over the years. I probably should sort through them and continue with archiving them by date and topic. While on the subject of conflicting thoughts, I even experience conflict within my suicidal thoughts, questions of morality aside, I experience differnt types of suicidal thoughts. Sometimes they occur together and sometimes they have their own distinct space to occypy in my head. There are times when it's really about wanting to die. About wanting out of a life that is too much for me to handle. A life that I don't feel welcome in. A life that I don't feel I have any control over. The main theme of the thought is, this will give me the ulimate control. I can make a decision that no one else has a say in. No one else can take part in. (And if they do it's murder and most people take some sort of issue with that.) It's about just wanting to stop. It's when I feel there are no other options for me, I've exhasuted them all and nothing will change. Sometimes the hatred that I have for myself is too much and I struggle to seperate my thoughts from reality. Sometimes my reality only exhasterbates these types of thoughts. Sometimes I feel that I don't deserve to be in exsistance, that my life is somehow a punishment and the only way to get out of this existance is to end it. Then there are the times where it's about wanting pain to end. It's never about physical pain. I live with pain most days. It's just a thing that I have to put up with and work around. Some days are better than others, that doesn't bother me, but mental pain really can get to me. I wonder if that means that I'm psychologically weak in some way. Sometimes it's just a deep sadness that feels as if it's rooted in my DNA, so even if I wanted to cut it out of my body, there is no way to. Sometimes I feel that medications and therapies are just plasters for psychological wounds that will never heal. It will still ooze blood and plasma, regardless of what anyone does. The sadness almost fills my lungs; I experience feelings of suffocation, but not in the physical sense. I guess I could describe it as similar to what claustaphobic people experience in tight spaces psychologically. That constrictedness, something internal. And of course to finish off this lovely trifecta is chronic emptiness. The feeling that my life will never be somthing fulfilling or satisfying, that I have done something to deserve these feelings. Then I try to work out what I've done wrong and I scroll back through my memory desperate to make the feelings make sense. It's a feeling that there is nothing really inside of me. I'm not sad, I'm not happy, I'm just here. Blank. It's as if someone has sucked every fibre of what makes me who I am out of me leaving only my shell. But that brings up another question. What does it even mean to be alive? In the last few blogs, I began to explore the notion that maybe all that I'm seeing and experiencing isn't real, just the result of a traumatic childhood brain injury. Or that I'm already dead. How do we even know what dead is? I mean besides the permenent ceasing of biological functions. And adding to that, death can be seen as tissue or cell death; part of the body dying while the rest of the body remains alive. That brings us back to the original line. What does it even mean to be alive? Maybe everything that we know about being alive is wrong. That what we are observing isn't the whole truth. There seems to be a lot of half-truths in this world and just not when it comes to mortality. (There's a lot more half-truths when it comes to business, the clergy and lawyers.) And if everyone has a different inturptation of things based on their own experiences, observation and level of understanding, how can everyone have a collective and unified vision of what being alive means. You can't. I could get into the debate with coma patients, vegestative state patients and braindead patients, but that's another ballgame. I'm not really interested in the ethical or moral questions that goes along with those types of patients. I don't even understand why death is considered a bad thing. This question leads me down another avenue of thought. How do people know when they are dead? Are they aware of it? What changes? Does anything? What affect does death have on what's inside a person? What tells us that we are dead? Do some people just experiece a constant blackness, a ceasing of everything that that's it. Once the heart stops, everything stops. There is nothing more? I really want to know. Sure there is the physical aspect of death, but I know there are more to people and animals than just that. There has to be a reason that we have different personalities, beyond that of evolution and experience. There's just something in me that tells me this. It's almost impossible to put into words. I don't know if I'm the only one here or something but it feels as if my mind is disconnected from my body. What I mean is, it's always as if I'm inside it looking out. I can move my body both volentarily and unvolentarily, but I don't feel a part of it. At the risk of sounding crazier than I already have, it's as if I'm two seperate inteties. The physical and the (for the sake of argument) soul. I like the idea of a soul, that inner consciousness that transends. I don't really have out of body experiences (unless you count that mushroom trip and that blog is coming soon.) but I've almost alwasy felt this seperation. I don't know what it feels like to be a whole person. Does anyone actually feel that way or all they all too insecure to admit it? Then again, I've seen a lot of people and higher reasoning doesn't seem to have reached them yet. Sometimes I'm envious of those who don't think like this; that aren't tormented with these continous thoughts. And when it comes to inner conciousness that transends, I don't believe in a good or an evil. I don't believe in paradise. I don't believe in Heaven or Hell. I don't really think that there are other consequesces to our actions besides the ones in this physical plan of existence. And with different dementions and alternate realities the consequences could play out there. Oh shit, did I just open pandora's box with this line of thought. Maybe all that really matters is the here and now. I'm not claiming to know the answer to anything, just expressing the view that I have now. As I've grown up I've changed my viewpoints as all children and adults do. I was raised Roman Catholic and as you know they put a big emphasis on Hell, Heaven, Purgatory and Limbo. I'm gonna hold that thought there because I have a question regarding purgatory. Okay, so supposedly it's a place that your soul goes in order to attone for misdeeds or sins commited in life, right? But then if that place exists, do we have consequence and punishment in life? Isn't that enough? Or is God just out for double Jepordy on this one? (Judging by some of the biblical passages that I've read over the years, it seems to be a little bit of both. He certainly had a taste for vengence in his early days on the throne. Not that there is anything wrong with that. Personally I think that revenge can be a great motivatior for personal/professional success, it boosts endorphines and self esteem and probaly best of all, it's fun.) Maybe there is something wrong with me but I don't really understand what the big deal about suicide and murder is. I understand that they are just two sides to the same coin. Both end in death. The only difference is one involves consent and the other usually doesn't. I'm throwing in that "Kill me so my family can live thing" as consenting to murder, but not really wanting to die. I'm not sure what the difference is morally or legally. Doesn't really matter to me, I suppose. Death is death. I also don't understand why people get upset when loved ones die. It's always seemed a little selfish to me. It often confuses me too. I'd really like people to share their own view on this one. I don't see why people are upset about death. The ceasing of a person's existance in your life can be traumatic, but it doesn't have to end your life. It opens you up to new oppertunities, new experience and new relationships. I'm not saying run out and replace the person that died, but give other people a chance to bring their own uniqueness to the relationship. I think that we meet everyone that we meet for a reason. Everyone we meet, have any relationship with will change us, even if we don't really notice it. I think this existance plane is for experience. I guess one could ask me why I'm unbothered by death and I'm scared of rejection or in some cases loss of a relationship. Relationships, any kind, only have any sort of relevance or meaning to people that are living. I should rephrase that somewhat, people who are conciously living. I'm sure the loved ones of someone in a coma experience a sense of loss. Now that I think about it, I don't really think I'd be upset if someone I cared about was in a coma. You can come out of a coma. It might be nice to have that little vacation. I really wonder what does on in the minds of coma patients. What do they experience, if anything? How does the experience differ from different dream states or being awake? I bet you most people would have a unique answer. That's what I'm interested in. I might feel different if someone was in a vegetative state with no chance of recovery. I might just feel the way I did when my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Id want them to die. Death would end their suffering and would allow them a freedom that they don't have in their current state. Life has to have some sort of decent quality. ((Maybe I'm asking too much with that one.))When Barb was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer, I asked her what her wishes were. What did she want to do. It's not my body and I certainly wasn't going to pressure her into a decision just because I thought it would be best for her. I listened to what she had to say and told her that I would respect her choices, but if they were based on a lack of information or wrong information, I would point that out to her. She trusted me to be honest with her and I respected her to follow her wishes. Watching her die wasn't hard for me. I would do what I could to help her, comfort her and ease her fears. I let her take comfort in her belief that she was going to get better. It gave her the will to engage with us by saying that she'd beat it, they made a misgiadnosis. I think to some degree she was fully aware of what was happening to hre body, that she would die soon and she wanted to make things easier for those around her. On her last day of conciousness she told me that she knew it was almost time. She didn't elaborate, but I knew what she meant. And when she did die the next morning, I was relieved and happy. I struggled with these feelings after her death. I thought that there was something wrong with me to feel this way. I was sad she was gone, but I wanted her suffering to stop. I think if more people had this way of thinking when it comes to illness and death in general, there would be less suffering at the time of death. (Although if you're a child molester then I think you deserve to be skinned and boiled alive, but that's for another day.) I think that there needs to be more open discussions about this topic. It would better prepare people for loss of loved ones in their life and euthenasia for terminal patients wouldn't be such a taboo topic. Maybe I'm like this because I've had suicidal thoughts and have attempted suicide before. I really don't have an answer for this. There are times when I do miss Barb, because of the times we spent together, what we shared. No one can take her place. And doing things that I did with her won't be the same because she won't be there. It doesn't mean that it has to be something bad or less ejoyable. I think she'd like me to do some of the things we did together. Like she loved shows, Broadway, The Rockets, perfomances like that and I don't think that it means that I can't go enjoy them. To me, it would be a warm remeberence of a time shared with a special person. Would I love to be able to do those things with her now? Sure, I would, but it's unrealistic. No one lives forever. Illness, disease, disabilities will always be a part of life, no matter how far medical science will advance. (At least in my lifetime.) People need to accept these hard truths about life, loss and everything that falls inbetween.