Unintended Consequences

About two weeks ago, when I stopped for some sleep while driving up to my brother's house, I ran up one flight of stairs and walked to the door of my hotel room. As I slid the card into the lock my breathing got heavy, my heart began to race, and my stomach churned. I opened the door and I started to heave, but I kept my mouth shut. My backpack was hurled to the floor and I headed into the bathroom and hovered over the toilet bowl. If I was going to lose my dinner, so be it. I didn't, though. My breathing and heart-rate evened out and my stomach settled. I wondered if I was getting sick. Wouldn't that be fun -- getting sick just as I show up at my brother's house where he lives with a teacher and two children under five?

The next morning, after a longer than expected sleep, I hurried down the stairs and through the hall for the free breakfast. About halfway down the hall I had to slow down because my breathing got heavy, my heart began to race, and my stomach churned. I hadn't eaten anything for at least 12 hours and hadn't felt sick all night long. I continued on more slowly and by the time I found a table I could claim with my book, I felt okay again.

When I finished eating I hurried up the stairs again and guess what happened? If you thought I thought I was about to color the world with hardly digested food, your right!

Could this be a coincidence?

I figured not. It had been just over a week since I had been on the 80mg dose of the new drug the brain doctor had prescribed. Just long enough for everything to kick in.

I had already been getting the sweats. That was a side effect of the old pills, but these sweats were stronger, sweatier. Pretty sure that's the new stuff forcing it's way in. This has continued. At night, especially since this week has been so cool here, I go from extremely hot, sweat pouring from my pores to freezing because my body's covered in a layer of moisture and my body's not hot anymore. This happens if I'm under covers, or not, in sleepy pants, or not, in a shirt, or not. With the old med my sleep didn't get interrupted and it wasn't fun, but it didn't feel disgusting like this new sweating thing does.

I'd been having these muscle shock sort of things. They lasted as long as it usually takes to pop your ears, but they raced through all my body, head to toe, and made me dizzy. This happened several times a day and I was glad they were short because it's scary to have it happen while driving. There's no way for me to know if this was because of the new drug or a withdrawal thing. I still get them, but not nearly as often. At this point I'm saying withdrawal.

There was also this low- to mid-grade headache. It's just kind of there. Usually it's not anything to worry about because it doesn't HURT-hurt; it's just annoying. But it is always there. The rare times it has HURT-hurt the asprinolfrin has helped tamp it down to a mild enough level that I notice the headache, but it doesn't disturb my concentration or keep me from sleeping. Didn't have this problem before the new med.

All of that is to say that if this new drug made me feel better, which it doesn't, I probably would have stuck with it until this nausea thing started. I can live with the sweat and the mild, but permanent, headache. I can't deal with this nausea, though.

While visiting my brother I had to stop us going on a walk because I thought I was going to blow chunks and we were maybe 100 feet from his house. It kinda put a damper on the visit, for me, at least. My brother and his kids like going on walks, lots of walks, and I couldn't do it.

My brother and I went to a comic convention that weekend. I kept pausing and asking him to stop because I felt sick. I know he understood, but I didn't. I don't understand.

Thursday I see the brain doctor again and I have to convince him that we need to go with something that's generic. I can't be sick and sweaty and headachey anymore.

I'd rather be dead.

Just Go To BED!

Going to bed can, sometimes, be the hardest thing.

I don't want to wake up tomorrow morning. Wouldn't my problems be so much easier if I just didn't wake up? Wouldn't your life be full of less misery because this depressing blog wouldn't change? Wouldn't I make my family's life easier by removing my problems from there lives?

The thing is, I expect to wake up. And waking up will only be a disappointment to me. So, here I sit, in the dark, with the TV tuned to background noise.

If I wake up with my alarm, I won't get eight hours and that's not good. Saturday I slept for more than 16 hours and still woke up exhausted Sunday.

I can feel the ramble coming on and that's not good either.

I want to sleep because I'm tired, but the sooner I sleep the sooner I'll wake and have to get up and move. I try really hard to pretend to be okay at work, but I know I'm not achieving it. I see the looks. I've explained my problem to my supervisor. Is it abuse to call in because I'm afraid I may just crumble to pieces? Christ, even I can't get over the whole depression isn't really real and it's just in your head and all you have to do is stop being sad and start being happy.

Fuck.

Just Wondering

Do people with normal brain chemistry sit and think about reasons to continue on tomorrow?

Reasons

1. Finding out how The Song of Ice and Fire ends.

I've been sitting here for ten minutes with just the title and first sentence. Seriously, I thought I'd be able to make it to at least ten.

Shit.

The Finger Guns Are Not Loaded

Ever since I saw the brain doctor last week I have felt like there is a hole in me.

The hole sits beneath my heart and above my stomach and is still partially behind my ribcage.

I can feel the pull of the hole; how it's trying to curl me up and suck me in.

Into what, I'm not sure, but I know what I hope it is.

My feet are dragging and I'm afraid of how horrible a guest I'll be when I get to Oregon later this month.

More About That

It terrifies m'better half that I'd ever felt or that I understood something akin to this; I've tried to explain it, but, whoops, it just terrifies her deeper. It's good to know I'm not the only 'someone' trying to explain, not explain away, and understand their own tendencies.

I think, through that, I pretty much get why most people don't understand, don't want to understand, and don't want to learn about the topic.

What I've told you in the past is me-talking-about-me, which is the best I can do to relate suicide to friends and family. It's never easy for them to take. Thank you for posting about you. It's meaningful to me. It might terrify mine, but it's a nice deep meaning to me, and I'm CERTAIN it would be to others, unless I'm unequally, unequivocally unique. You're touching a subject that's very private (extremely personal) for a lot, and I mean 'a LOT' of very silent people.

------Comment from AE

I've been thinking about this comment a lot since I first read it because it's happened to me, will continue to happen to me, and is me all at the same time. What I mean is that I don't like talking about this stuff either. I don't know if it terrifies me anymore, but it did.

Talking about it terrified me because of the dismissal so many people have for this topic. Hearing them dismiss a serious and sincere matter by ignoring it or, even worse, saying you’re just looking for attention hurts, and that hurt is deep. Deeper than any hurt that I've ever known because it's a rejection of the only non-physical feeling that I'm feeling. When I say I want to return this "gift" that no one is supposed to want to return it should be taken seriously, shouldn't it? Then comes the doubt, maybe I am just looking for attention or maybe I will just get over it even though the only attention I want are for the things I do that I think are good and what if something is extra wrong with me because I have had very few moments of gotten over it?

And then what if they do listen to me? How often do severely depressed people hear that this will just pass? Or they're told it must be their situation and they just need to get out of it and find something better? They are hearing what's said, but their experiences are based on the typical human melancholy that does pass in time or disappears when they change jobs or leave an abusive relationship or whatever it is that was bringing them down. This is why when someone like Mr. Williams takes his life the most often thing said is that he had so much to live for because they assume that his feelings would have passed and his stuff, his career, his family would have help the feelings to move on more quickly. Except this kind of depression doesn't work like that.

Also there's the fear of being taken seriously, so seriously that I end up being taken to a facility of some kind. The cost of that, even just for the three days many people stay to get over the hump and onto medication, is astronomical. And I promise that if I end up at a place like that I'm going to give up for a while. Not like kill myself give up, but just not caring anymore give up. I will not participate in group bullshit unless forced and even then I won't speak except, maybe, to outline the logical reasons my brain keeps giving me to make it okay to kill myself. Not really to cause problems, but to just let it all out.

Even writing what I'm writing now, and have been writing recently, is terrifying for me. I have an ache in my stomach that wasn't there before because I'm writing about something that I'm not comfortable with and have trouble understanding completely about myself and I work hard to understand why I do the things I do.

I also get why a spouse would be terrified at the idea of suicide. The knowledge that your best friend, the person you've chosen to stay with for the rest of your life has, in the post, though about ending his or her life, what would that mean for your life? Places never visited, people never met, children never birthed. It's a large quantum change on one life without the spouse they choose. And what if the spouse considers, or worse attempts, while married? What then? And are these things passed on to the children? What if the children feel this way at some point? How do you cope? How do you help? How do you stop it? How do you keep it from happening? Or happening again?

I don't know.

One thing that made me feel some relief was finding out, recently, that my mother, throughout my lifetime at least, had many nights where she'd lie awake in bed and think it would be okay for her to not wake up. Her children would be fine because their father is a good man. I also learned that one of my great-grandmothers once just went to bed and didn't get out again. The kids had to do everything around the house; lucky there were seven of them.

I can't say that I felt better learning this, but I felt relieved. I felt relieved because this isn't something that spontaneously generated during this generation of my family. It's been around and member have been fighting it or giving into it for at least three generations. I just get to experience it differently because I live now, because I don't have children, because it started a long time ago and hasn't ever really backed off. I don't like the idea that these women had similar thoughts to mine, but I like knowing that I'm not just some extra-freaky freak.

One of the hardest parts about trying to talk about/explain this is how intensely personal it is. What I mean is that everyone reacts to this level of depression, this amount of suicidal thought, in different ways.

I force myself to roll out of bed each morning after the alarm goes off and take a shower. I force myself to get dressed and make a lunch and then get on to work. I force myself to stay at work all day long. I force myself to pretend to actually be okay. (That one's become a lot harder since my meds were changed, though. I know I'm not hiding it like I used to because I can't.) Yes some days it is easier than others, but it's still a lot of work and mental pressure I put on myself. I don't want to get out of bed or shower or go to work, but I do. I do because if I don't I'd be better off in some facility somewhere where I don't have to try. Where it just doesn't matter.

I know that other people get up each morning for other reasons. Some have children. Others have a significant other. Some just have a hobby or a project that they want to see through to the end. I'm sure there are even more reasons. There's probably at least one different reason for every thousand people whose brain tells them that they'd rather not be around. Some of those reasons are going to be more common than others.

Writing about all this doesn't make me feel better. It also doesn't make me feel worse. However, I do feel a little guilty because I don't care if any of this helps someone else. I want it to help me and it hasn't, yet.