Mental Health and Suicide

[Ungnome]

I'm in the middle of a maelstrom right now...... Coming out to my wife has kind of awoken something in me. It's getting harder and harder to keep the mask up ANYWHERE now. Was going to try and ride out the current administration before I really started transitioning but UGH, I just want to throw away this costume I've been wearing for the past 40 years and be ME...... But I can't. I have a family to think about. I'm the primary breadwinner of the family, I can't risk my job. I can't risk hurting my kid or my wife due to the repercussions of being out publicly, especially in the current state of this blasted country, but I don't know how much longer I can hang on pretending to be someone I know I'm not....

 

[wonko the sane?]

Hey. Hey.

Trust yourself to do what you need to do.

 

[Ungnome]

Well, there's the rub. I have a hard time trusting myself due to lingering issues with self confidence and self worth. Trying to set up some time with a therapist for the first time in over 20 years to see if I can start making some progress on that front now that I know my insurance covers it.

 

[Echowarrior]

So, yeah, not really in a good place right now.

My father went into the hospital early in the morning on December 31st. The doctors diagnosed him with a slight case of pneumonia and low sodium levels. The former appears to have been mitigated - either they mistook a bad cold worsened by emphysema for pneumonia or the pneumonia's being successfully treated, I don't know, but there's improvement there. The latter has been more tricky for them, as my dad doesn't appear to be retaining any of the sodium that he's taking in, or at least not as much as he should. Either way, he's going to be in the hospital for a while. But apparently, he's well enough to call me on the phone...and bug me over not having a car. Or a driver's license.

He's in the hospital. He's sick, in bad shape, and he calls me to remind me of something that he considers to be a failure on my part. To remind me of how much I don't measure up in his eyes. And point out that, if I had a car and a driver's license, I could get him things. I spend eight hours or more a day, five days a week, going around bending over backwards for people at my job, some of whom are idiots who make my job harder simply because they can't be bothered to put in more of their own initiative, and he's giving me grief over not being able to do the same for him.

I don't want to come across as entitled. I don't mean to. I don't want to come across as spiteful, or petty. I don't mean to. But I feel like jive, and I've lost a night's worth of sleep and have to go into work in less than five hours to work another shift where I'm going to have to deal with too much because my supervisor is out with a back injury and I am expected to pick up the slack.

Why does he insist on reminding me of how much of a hugging failure I am as a human being? Doesn't he know I can do that all on my own?

 

[wonko the sane?]

You are not a failure because you haven't someone else's arbitrary and random benchmarks for success.

You know, daddy is probably due some quiet time; so he can recover properly. I think setting him to "no notifications" for a few weeks is probably a good idea.

 

[Echowarrior]

Oh, he's due a lot of quiet time. The trouble is that he pretty much has nothing but quiet time nowadays. Now, me, I could use lots of quiet time.

 

[Caldwin]

So, I was just going through some mental exercises tonight, running imaginary scenarios, putting fictional characters into situations when something was said.

I was something I've felt for a long time, but never really allowed myself to put words to.

What if I don't want to heal? If I hurt, I remember. If I hurt, that means I still care.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

I think we want to feel pain sometimes. It's why tragedies have always been popular.

Sometimes apathy is worse. If you're hurt, you're still alive. If you're disappointed, the world has failed to convince you that you don't deserve more. It's trying, but you know better.

 

[Ungnome]

So, I was just going through some mental exercises tonight, running imaginary scenarios, putting fictional characters into situations when something was said.

I was something I've felt for a long time, but never really allowed myself to put words to.

What if I don't want to heal? If I hurt, I remember. If I hurt, that means I still care.

Yea, Humans do need a certain level of pain, it's how we grow. It's when it becomes overwhelming that is the problem. There's a reason why depression can often manifest as being emotionally numb, not necessarily feeling sad.

 

[Tuxedo Prime]

What if I don't want to heal? If I hurt, I remember. If I hurt, that means I still care.

I have been pondering that very question for a while.

I mean, time and distance have done their work to some degree, but.... this heart of mine is not just surgically scarred.
And as J.R.R. Tolkien himself wrote, some wounds simply do not heal, not on this side, at any rate.

At that point, I guess it is more about pain management, and making sure one can still live and do tasks.

 

[PlasmaWolf]

My uncle recently committed suicide (blew his brains out with his gun) in his bedroom. He was living with my mom. My brother and his wife were in a restaurant eating breakfast before going on their trip to see mom when they got the call. When they arrived, it was shocking how much blood was all over the room. After the police did their thing and the body taken away, my brother had a lot of cleaning to do. No funeral for my uncle, they just cremated him. It was then decided that mom was going to come back with my brother and his wife to live with them because she's not capable of taking care of herself. I talked to my brother about how she's doing, and she's been a pain in the butt for them. My mom told me a few days ago that she and my brother found documentation that said my uncle was dying of cancer. So that explained why he was growing and smoking so much weed. He was trying to deal with the pain. Ultimately, he chose to end his life rather than wait for the cancer to do it. Everything that happened has been overwhelming. On top of all this, my mom got scammed by someone on Facebook. She gave this person practically all of her money. And then she canceled her good medical insurance because she couldn't afford it, and got some cheap insurance off a TV advert. She then put her house up for a reverse mortgage. My brother did what he could to get her good medical insurance back, but he's at a loss on what to do about her house. He now has power of attorney over mom so he can make proper decisions regarding her care. For awhile he cut off her access to Facebook and any other apps she was using to talk to the scammer with. But now since she's got nothing, he's restored one of her cell phones so she can use Facebook again. Facebook is how I've been communicating with her because she doesn't answer her cell phone when I call. Her mind is slipping and every time my brother changes clothes she thinks she's meeting a new person. At one time, she thought my brother was his wife, and when he came back into the room she told him that his wife is home. He told her that's not possible because she's a nurse and wouldn't be home until way later due to long shifts. Mom got confused, then asked him who she had been talking to, and he told her that she had been talking to HIM. Mom's dad had Alzheimer's, so it's very likely that she's now experiencing it herself. So, my brother has our mom living with him, and I've got our dad living with me. I'm glad he is willing to take care of her, because I'm not in any position to do it myself. There's another element to all this in that our mom didn't really want to be a mom, so my brother and I hadn't really had much to do with her over the years. She never allowed us to ever come visit her. She was all for having other people as family, but not us. I'm still bitter about that, and I know my brother is still hurt about that as well. But he's putting aside those feelings in order to do what he can to take care of her. Sorry for the paragraph, it's a lot to take in.

 

[Ungnome]

Did my intake for therapy yesterday. Hopefully it will help me with the borderline crippling anxiety and self-worth issues I've been carrying around for most of my life. Also marks the second time I've told anyone in-person about my struggles with my gender(and I almost chickened out of doing so, damn anxiety).

 

[Caldwin]

One of the side effects of Fluoxetine is that it suppresses certain things I was more than glad to have suppressed. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be doing the trick lately.

I haven't been sleeping well. I'm pissed off at the world. I want to throw up. I want to scream. I honestly want to do some potentially harmful things to to make the jive go away.

Over all, I just want everyone and everything to hug off!

 

[CoffeeHorse]

If it turns to thoughts of self harm, tell your doctor immediately. It doesn't matter if it's an unsurprising side effect. Tell the doctor and get the dose adjusted.

 

[Ungnome]

First therapy session down. Optimistic, at this point. I think it went well.

 

[wonko the sane?]

First therapy session down. Optimistic, at this point. I think it went well.

You're going to get a good grade at therapy, which is normal to want to achieve.

 

[Ungnome]

Well, I did come VERY close to balling my eyes out at one point, that's something I consider progress. Something still kept me from actually crying even though I wanted to, though. But I did come close.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

After everything I went through last year with the code violations and then the expired permits, somebody thought it would be funny to send me what looked like an official county notice about the house but it was actually just an ad for impact-resistant windows, and this is why I cannot be allowed to hold the Death Note.

I'm fine. It was nothing. But my heart didn't need that today.

 

[MEDdMI]

Yeah. I hate it when they make things look Official/Important to get you to open it and it's just trash.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

After everything I went through last year with the code violations

I hate my life.