Fear

I don’t think I’ve realized how much fear I experience. Like, I knew there was the fear of getting better, and that I’m not the only one who experiences that. But while that is a thing, it’s not a big deal to me because I’ve pretty much given up on the concept of getting better anyway.

But I’ve been talking over an idea with a friend that is a huge change for me, and I am fucking terrified. Like, I throw around grandiose ideas probably every other day, and they’re fun precisely because they’d be awesome but they’re never going to happen. But this is something that could happen, could happen soon, a major change in my life, and it’s enlightening just how very scared I am. Apparently for all my talk of needing purpose and change and fulfillment I become a frightened child at the idea I might get those things. It makes me wonder how many other potentially awesome things I’ve been close to and not done because I scared myself out of it without realizing it.

And it’s hard, because not two hours after finishing that conversation, my head starts up with suicidal thoughts, and I start worrying. Because I barely make it through a lot of really easy days in the life I have now. The change I’m proposing has the potential to be super exciting and awesome but it’s not going to be easy mode like now.

And I don’t know what to do. Continuing like I am now isn’t impossible, but it’s not what I want. I got what I wished for (the freedom to be a lazy ass and play video games all day) and found out how much it sucks. And maybe it just sucks because the culture we have here pounds it into us over and over that unless we’re working a job and contributing in some tangible way to society, we’re worthless. Honestly, I think that’s a huge part of it. Because there was a time I was just fine sitting on my ass playing video games all day, but it was a time when that wasn’t the only thing in my life. I was a spouse, and a parent (which tbh sucked and I don’t miss at ALL), and a friend. I had more than one friend! More than two! But I don’t have that anymore.

And I know that that isolation drives me further toward depression, just as depression in its turn drives me further into isolation. It’s a vicious cycle that I don’t know how to break, and that most days I’m just too drained to even try. And I’m not sure the awesome idea will help with that, at all. In fact, it might make the isolation even worse.

The bottom line is that I don’t have a guideline. I don’t know what’s best or right for me. I don’t even know what I want, and I probably wouldn’t be able to accomplish it even if I did know.

Honestly, it’s an interesting idea, even if it’s terrifying. But maybe it’s not the right idea for me, right now.

And I’ve no idea if that’s true, or if I’m just too terrified to change.

Had a fantastic time with a fantastic friend and her presumably fantastic boyfriend.

And it’s time to get super depressed. This happens nearly every time I have a good time, and I’m starting to wonder. Is it because subconsciously I’m punishing myself for having fun? Is it that it’s happened so often it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Or is it maybe just my normal depression, but it seems worse because of the contrast with a brief brush with normalcy?

I was very prepared to kill myself this evening. I had everything planned out very carefully. This was no spur of the moment affair. I knew I couldn’t swallow pills, so I spent an hour grinding them very very fine, last night.

So tonight, I got my yoghurt, a big old container. I spooned a healthy amount into a bowl, as much as I thought I could eat in one sitting. Then I sprinkled in the crushed pill powder and stirred it up very well, took a bite…and gagged. It was too bitter, and I cursed myself nine ways to hell. I couldn’t add more, because I wouldn’t have been able to eat it all, and I don’t think even the whole container of yoghurt would have drowned out the bitter taste. And now that the powder was mixed in I couldn’t do anything else with it.

I’m obviously still alive. I had other ideas, but they weren’t great. And I’m careful. I’ve been trying to kill myself for two years now, and I’m still alive, because I don’t choose the most lethal methods. See, I want to die, but I don’t want to live disabled more than depression already hobbles me. It took me over a year to make good on my threat of jumping off a bridge because while it had a better chance of killing me than anything else I’d tried, I was well aware failure could leave me paralyzed, as indeed it almost did. I came very, very close to losing the use of my legs.

That’s why I chose the pills instead of the next option down on my list, which was hanging. The pills would probably have killed me, but if not, there would be no lasting side effects. If I manage to botch hanging myself, I could come away with brain damage. So now I have to come up with something else that will work, hopefully before I get too desperate to think straight and jump off something that doesn’t have water at the bottom. I’d rather die, but if I’m going to live, I’d like to be whole. After all, it’s hard to commit suicide when you’re paralyzed.

I heard that once upon a time the most common form of suicide in England was turning on the gas in the oven and sticking your head in. So they passed laws and did something to where you couldn’t really kill yourself that way anymore, and suicide rates plummeted. It seems that you can literally inconvenience people out of suicide.

I just said I was at the lowest point I could be without being in the process of committing suicide, and that is true. But you know why I’m not in that process? Because my chosen and on-hand method involves overdosing on some meds. I have the meds. I even crushed them because a) I can’t swallow more than a couple pills without throwing up and b) they’re extended release and I wanted them to hit all at once. I have pudding and yoghurt to put them in. I have alcohol to exacerbate the effects. I have everything I need to kill myself right now, this moment. Yet I haven’t. Why?

Because the meds would kill me, sure. But in the meantime I’d get the runs and shit myself, and I just really don’t feel like doing that right now.

Sometimes it’s the little things.

Oh look, I’ve reached that point.

What point? you ask.

The lowest point I can possibly be without being actively involved in the act of murdering myself.

So, you know, if you don’t see me again, I passed that point.

Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Putting aside that fourteen years of depression out of twenty-six are hardly temporary, let’s look at that. Don’t we usually want permanent solutions to our problems? Like my cats chewing my ethernet cable is a problem. A permanent solution to that problem kind of seems like something I’d want!

So yeah. Bring on the permanent solutions to life-crippling problems.

I go to all the trouble of making a new gmail address to call a suicide hotline from (cuz I am wary of letting anyone get a hold of my actual number in case they called the cops or something) and it doesn’t even ring. All I get is fucking soothing hold music.

I predict either a mental hospital, a normal hospital, or a grave in my near future. Or maybe all three, though the grave would obviously come last.