1. Odd numbers. They should all die. I actually hate them, especially prime numbers. 7 is my least favourite number. Ironically, my French teacher, who also has OCD, LOVES the number 7 and hates even numbers. She’s wrong.

2. The number four must be attainable. If I’m going to eat something and have more than one of it (ie biscuits or sweets) I have to eat four of them or something catastrophic could happen.

3. Before I go to bed, I have to make sure that my black coat is hanging up on the coathanger on my radiator, and my hairbrush is on my bookcase next to my black hairband. This is a safety net and means I can sleep without being disturbed.

4. During the night, if I get up for any reason, when I go back to bed I have to touch my bedknob. This applies when I’m just going to bed too. This is necessary and if I miss it in the dark I have to go back.

5. When people speak or a song is playing I will often count the syllables and they have to add up to 10, but only at the end of a line. Then I’ll shut my eyes to ‘enclose’ the perfect pattern of 10 and count another series of 10 (or 20, 30 etc, as long as it’s a multiple of 10)

6. In the car, I count the number of cars going past the dashboard and when it reaches 4 OR 10 if I’m listening to music I shut my eyes to ‘enclose’ this number and keep counting. I like it when two cars come at once because then it’s an even number.

7. (I don’t want to end this list on 7!! I want it to reach 8 because it’s a factor of 4!) I count footsteps and have to take the first step with my left foot and the last with my right.

8. (Yay) If any of these can’t be achieved I get images in my head of horrific things happening but I can’t say what they are or they’ll happen.

This does not make me mad; to me this is a completely logical structure by which I live my life and makes complete sense to me. I can’t understand how people can not do them!

The crowd hadn’t yet settled into their seats when Mark Henick said:

“I was in the eighth grade the first time I tried to kill myself.”

The room became quiet. Henick paused for a moment, allowing his opening statement to sink in, and then he introduced himself.

Henick’s lecture on depression and suicide is a personal subject. He’s knowingly lived with for 8 years, although he believes he’s been unlike most people his entire life.

Mark Henick reviews his notes before his speech. Photo by Tammy Murray.

As a teenager trying to cope in a blended family in a rough neighbourhood in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Henick realized nobody was looking. Nobody looked until he pulled a knife from his bag while sitting in an office with the guidance counsellor.

“He just asked me, he recoiled a little, I remember that, he just asked me what I was going to do. I could hear his, I could hear the quiver in his voice as he asked me what, what I was going to do.”

Henick had left his classroom and wandered down to the cafeteria to ask for a long knife. He told the teacher there he’d been sent to get one to cut a cake in class. Henick’s requirements for the knife were quite specific; long, straight edged and non-serrated.

After securing the knife, he wandered around the school for awhile eventually going to the counsellor’s office.

“I went in and I was having this fight with myself. Well what am I doing now? I had this all planned out, but it didn’t seem like a great idea anymore.”

Whether too stubborn to give up on the idea or too desperate in his darkness to carry on Henick didn’t say but he twice refused the counsellors request to give up the knife.

“As I said ‘No’ I held the knife by the blade, I don’t know why, it had a handle,” he paused and chuckled. “But anyway, I held the knife by the very end of the blade… and I squeezed the knife in my fist, and I held it up to my throat… I could feel the blood dripping down my hand and down my arm because I was squeezing the blade. He said my name, he said Mark could you give me the knife please, then I said ‘No, I can’t do that. I need to do this’…”

Henick said they sat there for what seemed like forever until he got to a point of “almost clarity.”

“I came to a point where I just stopped thinking. I took a deep breath, I closed my eyes, and just before I pushed it into my throat he tackled me.”

Henick’s graphic testimony of this, his first of many attempts to commit suicide, is deliberate. He knows if he’s still feeling uncomfortable talking about it and the audience is uncomfortable hearing about it then there’s still a lot of work to be done de-stigmatizing mental illness.

Students, faculty and other guests crowd into the auditorium at Brian Mulroney Hall. Photo by Tammy Murray.

This was Henick’s fourth and last lecture at St. Thomas University. He graduates in the spring. Henick said when he first started the lectures he had only six or seven people listen to him, gradually expanding over the years.

“This was actually the biggest crowd I’ve ever had… I was pretty surprised when I looked back and saw that the room was full.”

Many students were present as well as some faculty and the director of counselling services for the University of New Brunswick.

Psychology students Erin Flower and Leanna Garrett waited their turn to speak with Henick after his lecture. Both had strong impressions of his story.

“It was really good to hear his experience and hear how he coped with it,” said Flower

STU student Samara Young talks with Mark Henick after his lecture. Photo by Tammy Murray.

Samara Young is in her third year studying psychology and criminology. She has heard stories like Henick’s before while counselling youths in the Yukon, she admired his courage to be so open.

Henick can’t recall the exact number of attempts he’s made to take his own life but he did relive one which he said was the closest he’d come to dying. Henick put down his note book and prepared to climb up onto a table in front of the crowd.

Mark Henick. Photo by Tammy Murray.

“Actually I’m going to take my boots off so I don’t kill myself, that’d be kind of ironic,” he said to a chorus of laughter.

All joking aside, Henick was making it real, reliving his attempt to jump off a highway overpass.

“I climbed over the railing… I could feel the concrete, I could feel my toes dangling over, there was about five stories below me at least.”

Henick struggled with the memory more than once as he stood on the table, arms outstretched, eyes closed, face scrunched up with concentration. He describes the bridge being closed off and people lined up on each end. The bar crowd heading home, police officers preparing to intervene. Henick recalls one person yelling at him ‘jump you coward.’

“I again had a moment where I just cleared my thoughts, just stopped thinking… took a deep breath, took my hands off the railing, and I just let myself start to fall. It felt so good.”

“It was the first time I felt free in my less than two decades of life. Before I could fall I felt somebody’s arm grab me from around the back. I don’t know who it was, I still never did find out.”

Later Henick praised the unselfish efforts of the man who had saved him. He told his audience anyone of them had the power to change lives.

“The person who pulled me over that railing on the overpass, I never met in my life, never met him again. I don’t know his name, I’ve always wanted to thank him, but that’s not why he did it. He didn’t do it to be thanked. He did it because he saw somebody on the edge, and reached out. So I ask these things of you, to be the person who reaches out.”

A year-end pondering:

Is the Crisis over?

You don't even have to fork over one of these for my thoughts - for now

The thought struck me recently as a I chatted with a friend, lamenting the paucity of postings this month here at C?WC? It seems when I have posted, it’s been a reporting on something I saw or did, not the angst-ridden explorations of middle-aged yearnings and failures. So maybe the Crisis has passed.

Nah.

Maybe I just have less of a need to spill out all the kvetches and existential claptrap that flit through my brain. Or see the dangers of beating a dead horse and then wading through the bloody, pulpy mess so publicly, for all to see. And maybe a touch of holiday laziness has set in, as the happenings at the History Nerd have dwindled this month as well (though I hope to rectify that this week).

A recap, for my own benefit, of why I started this almost 18 months ago: At 48, I had just come off what I considered a theatrical failure, the solo show, even as I gave myself some kudos for taking the risk. The production did not lead to further stagings, as I hoped, and if it is ever performed again, it will have a different name and “fictionalized” content, thanks to the threatened lawsuit and actual legal agreement wrung out of me by someone not keen on being mentioned in the play (even though he/she was honestly and I would say fairly depicted. But perhaps he/she, like me, has regrets about some things of the past…).

And since then, the theatrical endeavors have been sparse and minor, on the whole. I also had to leave the small theater community I had finally tapped into to come back to CT (the other major part of the Crisis), where I feel totally removed from the making of theater, the discussing of it, the learning I felt I was ongoing in Chicago. To remedy that in 2010, I am taking some workshops; spending a week in isolation on an island retreat, where I will, I hope, work on an idea for something completely new, a musical; and I will ardently pursue my latest goal of getting at least one of my play published. All while still debating how long I can do this, write new work and send out old ones and call myself a playwright, when I still feel a bit of a fraud. Or at least an inadequate writer.

The move/resettling aspect of the Crisis need not be rehashed. I am here. I would rather be there. Yes, being close to friends is great, but at times it seems like getting together on a consistent basis is no easier than when I was 800 miles away. Ditto with family, except for my mother, who is perhaps the one person most glad to see us back here. I know there will be more calls to visit and help out as she gets older. 2010 is a milestone for her – 85 – and as active as she is, as much as other relatives marvel that she hasn’t changed a bit, aging goes on; the signs show.

Oh, joy...

Indeed they do, even for a youngster like me, quickly approaching my own milestone in less than 3 months. The spectre of 50 haunted me even as I turned 49; now, the proximity really scares the shit out of me. Oh, Burgan, grow up, it’s just a number. But when I look in the obits and see guys younger than me dropping dead unexpectedly; or read about the increasing knowledge of the dangers of CT scans, and think of all the ones I endured during my bout with cancer, and perhaps even more after as I wrestled with the fear or some new “noma” striking; or simply grapple with the growing list of chronic pains, unexplained and never-ending, I feel like 50 is pretty fucking old and I should really do more to overcome the fear of death that has plagued me for almost 25 years now.

One day I'll get a real standing desk

Even now, the latest inexplicable pain has brought a change. I type this while standing, using a jerry-rigged system that includes a CD rack, a large metal clip, my netbook, and an extra keyboard. All because of the newish pain in my hip that sitting exacerbates, and which is probably muscular, or maybe nerve-related, or could be bursitis, but there are lymph nodes around there, you know, the doc tells me, and when you talk about funky lymph nodes, well, it could be….Even lying down to sleep brings no comfort, and each day I wake wondering how much worse the pain will be, and what new ones will have crept in to join their friends.

Maybe someone will say that about me in 2 years...

Oddly – or perhaps not – I can write about the all the pains and failures without a negative frame of mind. Really. Mostly I accept the situation, or else pop the occasional Ativan. The cries of anguish, to myself or to Samantha, are not as frequent as they used to be, which I partly attribute to a new supplement regimen (SAM-e and ST. John’s wort, in the right balance, seems to be doing well for me). And I look forward to some things for the new year, like starting a class at a local community college so I can become (drum roll please): a paralegal. All right, stop laughing. My own ennui with the work writing and the bleak prospects for the industry as a whole told me I should try to find some other work, as a backup. More about this educational path as it unfolds. I also have that writing retreat I mentioned earlier, a trip to Alaska for our anniversary and my birthday, and I hope some volunteer opportunities in our fine town. Something to get me out of my head and remind me that many others face much more real struggles every day. I’m hoping 2010 also brings Samantha new joys, as she gets back into theater and explores her own volunteer gig. At least one of us is happy here.

So, the final verdict – a mixed bag. Things could be much, much worse. They could always be better. And there should be enough interesting events to keep the blog rolling, if not the Crisis. Oh, who am I kidding? There will always be plenty of elements to fuel the Crisis. If I can be bothered to write about them – still – is another question.

I respectfully disagree. My neuropsych is a great person, and they have helped me tremendously, but when I’ve discussed my therapy situation with them and discussed finding another psychotherapist, they ultimately said that they didn’t think I necessarily needed to find someone who is a neuropsychologist or neurologically oriented.

I gave it some serious consideration and talked about it with my spouse. But we both agree that I really need to work with someone who knows neurology. Not just psychology. Someone who has familiarity with folks who have gotten hit on the head, so they don’t misinterpret my emotional lability (volatility) as some kind of emotional problem. It’s not an emotional problem. It’s a neurological problem. If it were psychological, it’s my understanding that the issues would persist, not come and go quickly, evaporating into thin air as though they never existed.

I’m thinking a lot about this, these days. I have to change insurance plans, and I can’t see a therapist until I have my insurance all squared away, so I have about a month or so to figure this out. I do plan to ask my neuropsych if they can help me find someone who knows about tbi. And explain to them why that is.

I just can’t be labelled mentally ill, when it’s my mtbi’s that are the culprit, not some psychological/mental condition.

I’ve already been down that road with people misinterpreting my situation, and it dug me into a very deep hole I’m lucky to have gotten out of.

Then again, maybe I just need a coach. Someone to walk me through my daily activities, without digging up a bunch of old crap. It’s an idea…

I’ve been reading all the pregnancy books and websites and they all say that in the third trimester, one can expect some crazy, vivid dreams.  The themes of these will include (according to the books and websites) feelings of being trapped, unready, anxiety and fear.  This will show up in plotlines involving looking for your baby, lost pets, reuniting with former lovers and flying.

I’m not sure how accurate this is and since I had, let’s say, “lived well” prior to getting married and getting pregnant, I assumed that at least a few of those themes and plotlines wouldn’t apply to me.

Once again, I was wrong.  I’ve had a parade of former boyfriends marching through my dreams each night.  In almost all of the dreams, I’m contemplating sex with them and in none of them has it actually occurred.  My husband is almost always somewhere in the background, just kind of hanging out, or is present in the conversation.  It’s a wierd feeling to be seeing all these guys again, especially since many of them are people I haven’t thought of in at least fifteen years.

And I wake up in the morning, confused for a quite moment, and then quite happy to be in the life I am, with the husband I have.  It’s a nice side effect.

Happy Holidays- I avoided a holiday post this year, mainly because our holidays were extremely low-key, which was what we needed.  We did mark the fact that it’ll be the last season for a long time to come where it’s just the two of us.  That gave us a little thrill.

Question

What does it mean to have a nervous breakdown?

Answer

from Daniel K. Hall-Flavin, M.D.

The term “nervous breakdown” is sometimes used to describe a state in which a person is so severely and persistently distraught that he or she is unable to function at a normal level. Nervous breakdown isn’t a medical term, however, nor does it indicate a specific mental illness.

Often, a nervous breakdown indicates depression. Signs and symptoms of depression may include:

• Loss of interest in normal daily activities
• Agitation or restlessness
• Persistent crying
• Appetite changes
• Sleep disturbances
• Trouble concentrating and making decisions

If you’re concerned that you’re experiencing a nervous breakdown, seek medical attention. If you have a primary care doctor, talk to him or her about your signs and symptoms — or seek help from a mental health provider.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/nervous-breakdown/AN00476

Going to the doctor is an interesting experience. The clinic is attached to the private mental hospital, which is at the top of a massive hill (designed to exhaust the crazy people before they get to the top, so they can’t go too nutty) and surrounded by trees. The walls are turquoise. There’s artwork. Some of it’s that dodgy patient-produced stuff they make in art therapy, but we can’t have everything. The surroundings reek of money. There’s a swimming pool in the hospital, according to the map of the grounds. Part of me likes how peaceful and nice it is, compared to Newcastle General and the mental health facilities there, and the rest of me resents it because public health care should be as good and as thorough.

The hospital dining hall is to the right when we walk in, and as we sit outside the clinic we can hear the clink of cutlery. People (presumably staff) walk past occasionally and are never seen again. The first time I go, I’m a bit agitated so make up a big story about how they’re actually eating the mental patients and that the building’s a giant pan-dimensional labyrinth and that the workers aren’t quite human. I’m only half-joking. There’s something unnatural about the place.

The second time, there’s actually someone waiting in the clinic waiting room. We can’t work out whether she’s a patient or not. She’s sitting cross-legged on her chair, texting someone. I catch her looking at me, and she looks away quickly (either terrified of provoking a Mentalist, or terrified because she IS a Mentalist). I feel quite smug when she studiously avoids looking at us for the rest of the time we’re there. If there’s a competition, I think, I won it hands down.

As it turns out, she’s waiting for someone to finish up with the dr, so she isn’t a patient herself. Whatever. I still win.

The appointment itself is ok. There’s a conspicuous box of tissues on the coffee table in the office and it’s a point of pride that I haven’t had to use it yet. It’s not like the good old days of sixth form or university where I’d bawl for twenty minutes about hating everything, then stare in horror at the sandbox I was supposed to play with to ‘express my feelings’. I’ve never had much truck with therapy. Funny, that.

I relate everything in a rather flat, dead voice, and studiously examine a scab on my finger. The only time I get emotional is when I have a little rant about Christmas–how much I wish people would shut up about it, stop talking about it, and stop asking me about my plans for it. I swore once or twice but he didn’t seem to mind. (Later, when I’m on the way out, he tells me he hopes I have a ‘reasonable’ Christmas, with a wry smile.)

Christmas-woes aside, the dr is a little concerned with the things that have gone on over the past week and a half and decides that amitriptyline is Not For Me given that it’s one of those old-style medications that actually can kill you if you overdose on it. He advises R to flush my amitriptyline down the toilet, and gives me a prescription for Pristiq (an antidepressant that actually doesn’t knock me unconscious) and some free Seroquel (an antipsychotic that would sedate a rampaging tyrannosaurus rex) to be taken as-needed. I’m also advised to book my CT scan as soon as convenient (presumably to get the epilepsy question settled one way or another as soon as possible) so I’ve an appointment for that on the 8th of January.

The question of private hospital cover is raised once more and it’s kind of obvious (but unstated) that he’d probably be happier if I could be admitted for a few days to the hospital for observation, if nothing else. I tell him I haven’t got it because it’s too expensive, and he lets it drop. This time I don’t feel sceptical about money-grubbing private doctors as I understand why he would suggest it.

State mental hospitals are underfunded, overstretched, there are very few beds, if you’re not actively delusional and running around with an axe trying to rid the world of the lizard government, you’re probably screwed. Much like the NHS, actually. I remember how the Crisis Team at Newcastle General sent me home after an overdose in 2003 with absolutely no follow-up care scheduled. Maybe I am a bit too middle-class for my own good these days, with my private dental & optical insurance, but why the hell would I want to go back to that level of ‘care’ if I could possibly avoid it? Anyway, I could use the swimming pool at this hospital without getting any funny looks. That’d be worth the admission in and of itself.

Later, R finds some cover that would suit me for about $80 a month(which is about what I pay for my pet insurance). I say I’ll think about it.

After seven years of marriage I finally “stepped” out on my marriage. Not because I don’t love my husband or family but because I have this overwhelming craving for the “high.” I feel so dead inside, void of passion in any form in my life. When I capture the attention of someone, male or female, I become obsessed. It makes me feel so over the moon that I am worthy of someone else’s attention, I can’t stop. It becomes a game for me. It consumes me. I think about it night and day. And this time it became sexual. I don’t even like sex. When with my husband I just want it over with.

I know that it is wrong but I still want more, it is like a drug. Maybe it is because I am not getting what I need out of my marriage. I’ve told him about the other man, a man in which he knows and is in the same line of work. He was angry. I told him about how this man listened to me and how that was so attractive to me. We used to talk for hours on the phone and it wasn’t one sided conversations like I’m used to with my husband.  Despite explaining that I need more from my husband in our marriage, the emptiness remains and my mind (and eyes) continue to wander.  

What human doesn’t want to feel needed and loved? My obsessive compulsive tendencies take feelings of wanting to feel needed and loved to a new level. Probably a level that isn’t healthy. From a psychological standpoint, it is likely I have underlying issues that haven’t been dealt with which exacerbate these desires. I haven’t found a therapist yet that will help me deal with that though. I sometime have trouble opening up to my therapists because I worry about her judgement. My paranoia makes life difficult to deal with most of the time. This is yet another symptom of bipolar depression and OCD I have to deal with and would give anything for it to go away.

I feel this desire to act on the attention I get from others is going to get me into trouble. I get so wrapped up in the good feelings from it, I lose the ability to think logically. How do I stop myself from acting on these feelings? I don’t want to go on another medication. I’m tired of feeling flat as I have on some of them I’ve tried. I’d also have to deal with the weight gain as many of the new psychotropic drugs cause. I refuse to do that. So what are my other options? Do I continue seeking the attention of others? As I write this I am already needing that “high” again. If I am able to keep myself from acting on it remains to be seen.

I am so relieved that Christmas is over. I’m not usually like that about Christmas, I’m usually so disappointed when it is over. Frankly, I am looking forward to this year being over. 2009 was quite possibly the worst year of my life. Too much emotional baggage to discuss in this post, maybe I’ll discuss those details later. To be honest, I wasn’t even excited about Christmas for my kids. I sort of resented the fact that I was the parent responsible for buying and wrapping all of their presents this year. While I had a good time at my family Christmas dinner, it was my husband’s family Christmas (and all other family get togethers) that I loath. I never feel welcome. I feel as if they look down upon me from their pedestals. They talk down to me like am so beneath them. And it isn’t just me that notices this. At my kids birthday parties, my parents, other family members and future sister-in-law notices this as well. They don’t like coming to family functions where my husband’s family is in attendance. Some of us were sitting around talking about what we were going to be doing later on Christmas Day. Usually some of them go to the casino, but they’d decided not to this year. I invited them all to our house and explained that we would be having a small dinner for those who don’t have anything to do. My mother-in-law asked if my mom and dad would be there. I said yes, and without hesitation she said “well, I’d rather just stay home.” I really couldn’t believe what I had just heard. After years of telling my husband how his family made me feel and how they treat my family, I thought this would be the incident that would finally push him to talk with his mom about it. But no, he doesn’t like conflict and just ignores the situation. Thus adding to my building resentment toward him.

Today I was exhausted. I had just started my period, which I just recently started having again since I began taking Synthroid for a low thyroid. He knows from earlier in our marriage that when I have a period, I am pretty much useless. It literally knocks me off my feet for a few days. So, as hard I as I tried to get up today, I could not. I made it from our bed to the couch and then fell asleep again. We had talked about taking the kids to see the new Alvin and the Chipmunks movie but nothing was set in stone, so I opted to do it on another day. He had been snapping at me all day. I told him I wouldn’t be attending another family get together this evening and seemed pissy about the whole thing. I asked him what was wrong with him today and his response was, “well, I’ve been alone all day.” I wanted to scream at him. I wanted to tell him I am “by myself” EVERYDAY! He is never home and when he is physically, he isn’t emotionally, so I am ALWAYS home alone. Well, the kids are always here but that doesn’t really count. I just wanted to scream “SUCK IT UP!” But I didn’t, I explained that I just wasn’t feeling well, which he already knew.

So later after they’d returned and the kids were in the other room watching a movie, I told him we needed to talk. I am always the one to initiate conversation. I’ve sensed that he isn’t happy and God knows, I am not!  He said that I am always mad at him, but I explained he is always like that with me. I explained that when I ask him to do something I always have to remind him, and even then it sometimes doesn’t get done. I told him that the resentment toward him was growing. I hate when a situation arises that he doesn’t know how do deal with he just ignores it. I told him that I felt like he was totally disconnected from our marriage and has been for a while. I also said that I haven’t felt love from him in a very long time. I told him that I feel other woman (strangers & those he knows) has more of his attention than I do. He said he is angry because I never feel good and he wants me to be happy. He said that he knows that I cannot help it but yet he still takes it out on me. After several other issues were addressed and nothing resolved, he went to bed.

I’m still angry, angry because nothing ever gets resolved. Sometime I just want our marriage to be over, but I don’t want that for our children. I feel as if I have put time and effort into changing and trying to improve our marriage. But I feel like he doesn’t put forth the same effort. He’s so passive sometimes I just want to shake him, screaming that he is just letting our marriage slip away. He’s mentioned marriage counseling but of course it is “MY” responsibility to find a counselor and make the appointments around HIS schedule. Everything I do is dictated by HIS schedule. And I am sick of it. What do I do? Walk away? Are we too far gone? Or am I just in my bipolar low and feel like my world is crashing around me. No matter where I am in my bipolar depression we still have issues that are NEVER dealt with. I can no longer ignore them. The question is will he continue to?

There was an atomic explosion inside yesterday

Picture: By me

I took tons of photos today, some of them where good.  Went through some old pictures today, I stumbled across photos of me and him. He always looks so calm and happy, so do I. It’s true that a picture says more than a thousand words.

I’m so lucky I have him and myself

I’m starting to feel better, working through it. Why am I so negative when I’m alone? It’s important to focus on the good things in my life, remember the good stuff. That is what matters, and stop thinking too much about the future.

Live now.

The past can’t be changed and the future can’t be predicted so there is no point trying to secure it. Just be you, do the things that you do. Stop dwelling, stop thinking the worst always. So typically women. Allot of girls struggle being away from their boyfriends, it’s stupid.

The number one issue is myself esteem.

I find myself fishing for complements from time to time, I should really not do that. I don’t have to, I should not need for another person to reassure me of those things, I should know them. I better practice some mantra. Or maybe buy a book about Nero linguistic programming.

I need to stop preparing me for the worst, and instead work on myself esteem.

I realized something on my long walk today, I should not accept the fact that I am damaged. Cause its very negative, and not true on many parts of my personality. Maybe I’m digging myself deeper into my own problems by viewing myself in such a negative way. I’m smarter than that! Yeah i am damaged, but i should not give that focus! I should focus on my good strong parts!

And I need to believe that I can fix allot about my emotions, I just have to practice. Get out of bed, exercise, eat healthy and enough, take vitamins. I know it won’t fix it all, but it’s my responsibility to try. I have to take better care of myself, that’s just how it is.

I need to stop running, i just have to realize that! I’ve had so many jobs, moving every year or six months… Short messy relationships (in past) everything about me have been so temporary, until now. I’m learning how to settle down. Parents moved me and my sister around allot when I was younger, always leaving me the “new girl” Been a runner since I was sixteen, moving moving moving.

It’s not strange that my soul is restless, I’ve never had any foundation or environment I could settle down in, but now I do. It’s just new to me..

Soon I’ve lived there for four years and I’m not going any place. I love the town, the people, the smells, design, culture, night life I absolutely adore this city. I’m going to stay there!

I need to stay healthy for me, for him and for the future.

My dream is to live outside the City with him, small cute blue house, cats and the rooms decorated with stars, my art, photos, computer room, books shelfs everywhere, and a room for all his comic books. Definitly going to have gaming zone in the living room, all the consoles! Some sort of garage i can do my messy art in, im full of dreams. oh and yeah no kids!

Scary

I deserve to be happy, I deserve to be loved and I deserve to love others.

I think my life would be easier if I started to love myself.

And even better if I could love myself as much as I love him.

I need realize that I’m a good person and really believe that.

How do I do that?

O.oOOO..OOoo I know, I Google it!

… go read the UK treatment guidelines for ‘complex’ needs, or I’ll save you the bother and summarise them here:

treatment may make them worse, so don’t offer it them.  That way they won’t get disappointed when it doesn’t work.

Would explain what is happening to me.

I also like there concept of “social slippage”:

social function will continue to decline and they will repeatedly fail to achieve expected outcomes

So basically:

“You’ll keep getting worse, but we refuse to help incase we get blamed for it”

Cowards.

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Rest of this post became mindless drivel so I’m putting this here to warn you and save you some time reading it.

Do you think I could just re-use the old letter if I put a PS in about being a bit late?  Just wondering since I can’t be bothered writing a new one.  Been reading other peoples’ on the internet (yes I know how to have a good time).  They are all far more eloquent than mine.  Can’t even do that satisfactorily – not that they teach you how in GCSE English or anything…

There’s no urgency anymore.  It’s not even like I want to perform the act, I just want this over.  I’m dead inside and right now the only real emotion I seem able to elicit in myself is depression.  Can’t even cry anymore.

I can’t get help because I’m not considered a high enough risk to warrant it.  I’m ill enough that they have to take my career away from me, but not ill enough that they think I need treatment.  And talking isn’t enough.  It’s too late for that, it’s gone past that.

Yesterday when I told the support worker that I’d be alright, he said that he “might be inclined to believe it, if you’d said it like you did.”  Even he recognises that I’m “not going to make up that hill under my own steam”.  In truth I’ve given up trying to climb it, I’m just sitting at the bottom in a pool of tears.

And why am I writing this stuff?

The voice in my head tells me I’m attention seeking, that I’m just doing it to worry other people.  Why else would I talk about it.

I don’t know, there’s nothing much else in my head to talk about.  I spend most of my days fantasising about it, planning for it, worrying about it.

Even invited my parents around.  In truth part of this was that I wanted to make sure they got their presents before I go.  Part of this was to postpone what currently feels like an inevitability looming on the horizon, a dark black shadow lurking just out of reach.

The visit went quite well actually.  After my mother’s initial complaints about the state of my home, and need to start picking things up and moving them (I can’t stand people moving my stuff, it always feels like some kind of violation) they generally behaved themselves.  I fed them cake, mince pies and coffee; we exchanged gifts (from their expressions, they didn’t really like them, but what could I do, I was on a limited budget…).  Then after a couple of hours or so of mindless small talk they announced that they’d better be going.

And always with the quandaries.  Are they going to be really pissed that they spent money on gifts for someone who wasn’t planning on sticking around.  I’d refused to give them any ideas, I told them I didn’t want presents.  But at the same time, am I really going to stick around for the sake of an unwatched DVD?

I know that I should call someone.  Trouble is I won’t feel it is desperate enough to warrant that until I am literally putting my shoes on and leaving the house, and by that point it’ll be too late, I’ll have tipped past the point of return.

I wish that I wasn’t procrastinating so.  It was so much easier with the OD three weeks ago.  It’s always so much easier when you’re not making a conscious decision, just leaving it in the lap of the gods or the hands of fate or for lady luck to decide.  Not that I did much decided, or thinking, just doing.  I guess I must still be ambivalent, but I don’t want to be.  Tempted just to toss a coin.  I get so sure that it’s what I want, the best solution, the only solution, certainly the easiest solution.  Then I start worrying, who’ll look after the goos (sometimes wish I hadn’t got them, it would make this so much easier, and besides I’m worried about uprooting them etc, but I doubt they’d remember me for long, they’d soon move on and they’d probably be better cared for); I worry about what other people will think; I worry about failing and what’d happen.  I can come up with a million excuses: it’s too cold outside, too slippery, boyfriend would notice, blah blah blah.

And if I don’t act, then once again they’ll tell me that it obviously isn’t real.  That it can’t have happened.  That I’m exaggerating.  That I’m making it all up for attention, for a reaction.

And there’s people who’ll tell me that I should keep going, that somehow eventually it’ll get better (although it’ll get worse again sometime after that, and I can’t bear it anymore); that I can learn to manage it (I don’t want to, I want rid) and that by the time I’m 40 or 50 or 60 or whatever that it would feel so bad, that it only hurts so because I’m ‘young’ (but I’ve already lost so much of my life, already missed out on things that I can never get back).

It feels like I’m just treading water, rather than getting anywhere.  It seems that that is all anybody has any hopes of me achieving.  They get to swim around and play and all I can do is keep treading water, getting more and more exhausted, but anytime I try anything else, anytime I try to rest I start drowning again.

I have a GP appointment on tuesday (rearranged from the one I missed after being admitted to hospital).  I need buscopan and a sick note for uni (yep they ban me from placement and I still need a sick note – personally just think it was the tutors way of finding out what was wrong, before she was told all by the nurse).

I should tell her all this.  I know I should.  I also know that I won’t.

Right now, I’m not convinced that I will even see tuesday.  And when I do (let’s face it I am rather feckless and useless at carrying out projects through to their end), then the fact that I’ll still be breathing, despite a lack of professional intervention, will once again prove that I don’t need it.  It’ll prove it to myself and more importantly it’ll prove it to everyone around me.

So yes I have no idea why I write this crap.  And if you’ve read to here and managed to follow any of it, then you probably deserve a medal.  Truth is I don’t want to worry people, but I also can’t bring myself to write positive, upbeat posts.  And I’m not sure if this, or silence would be preferable.  At least if I’m typing crap then I must be breathing right? (Well assuming I’m not holding my breath for some reason).

Not going to stay in under self-enforced exile tomorrow.  Probably half of this is cabin fever anyway. Gosh over 1000 words of drivel…  Still on the positive side my stat counter has shown a dramatic increase in readership, always does when I’m depressed, assuming these are the same types of people who rubber-neck at motorway accidents, wondering if I’ve topped myself yet…

…has been fucking awful. I had a complete psychotic break on Christmas Night after the stress of engaging with the MMcFs (and in particular Paedo) all day and heard ‘They’ telling me to kill MW. Obvioulsly I didn’t. I also told A, apparently believing completely, that ScumFan was a drug-dealer (he’s not) and that A was actually his sister in disguise (!).

Boxing Day has been a fucking nightmare too, though on a lesser scale. But the psychoses of last night are what matters. It is time to be hospitalised.

‘They’ told me that smothering MW would be “a mercy”. Maybe or maybe not, the very thought of harming him is beyond contempt.

Enough is enough.

This is surely not intended to be a social commentary, but just a recollection of events that happened last night.

After the Christmas excitement wore down yesterday, I decided that it would be a good idea to go out for a run.   Too many of my runs have been stuck inside on a treadmill, and I was longing for some fresh air and a little wind.

Gyms are stuffy, smelly and HUMID.

I left my house and took a couple of right tunes to get onto a side-walk on a main thoroughfare.    It is the same road where my elementary school dodge ball days have come in handy, as an occasional passing motorist decides to pass their empty beer bottles at an innocent runner.

But my “dodge ball skills” were actually catching the balls and not dodging them.    My success rate at catching beer bottles with my hands is ZERO.   The rest of my body has been more successful.

It has been a while since I had to dodge a bottle and maybe I have been getting too confident.

After about a 1/2 mile, the third small square from the left on the photo above (an overlay of my Garmin 405 over an image of Google Maps,)  I saw a flash of bright light.

The light didn’t register immediately because it was followed by a muffled “BANG.”

The “BANG” carried a distinctive noise and to those who own, or have spent time around, firearms would immediately recognize it as the sound of a .22 caliber pistol.

Although the “flash” was visible before the sound, It didn’t register as a gun shot until about the fourth square.   I slowed down as I processed the information that told me that if a heard the shot and actually saw the flash, that I had to be in a position to have the muzzle of the weapon pointed in my direction.

Being close to home, my first reaction was to head back there…and I turned around, which would have carried me right back down the same sidewalk that I thought I had just been fired upon…As you can see, I changed my mind after getting back to the edge of the front building.

Since I wasn’t  looking for a flash of light, it was hard to determine exactly where it came from other than the end of the building running perpendicular to the street and sidewalk.

The back yard fences are about 5′ tall and the flash either came from there or the front porch.    The height of the flash was what seemed odd…it was from above my eye level, which is odd because the grading of the soil in that area actually puts the sidewalk about the foundations of that building…there is a drainage ditch behind that building and everything flows in that direction.

I do not run with my phone, maybe I should reconsider…and therefore waited to get home before I called the police.

A patrol car drove past, but it didn’t appear to see me doing “jumping jacks” in the street.

I made the call when I got home to the “non-emergency” number…for some reason (people “wrestling naked” in cars in front of my house every couple of weeks) I seem to have the number committed to memory.

An hour later, I was in a patrol car going for a ride.    We stopped at the location where I saw the flash and heard the shot.  I told him what I knew…which was quite a bit of detail since I have a unique ability of recollection and remember events in great detail.

It isn’t like I am expecting things to happen, but that our brains are constantly absorbing data.    I had someone teach me years ago how to quickly access and process that information and it really changed my whole level of consciousness everyday.

It is learned behavior.

After my trip home, the patrolman asked if I wanted to be updated if they found out anything and I declined.

My police scanner was going to tell me enough…but they already know that about me…if they choose to look.    I know people in the police department and they keep a database of registered gun owners AND an unofficial list of police scanner owners.

It came up for me a few years back after I was a victim in a hit and run accident and I heard the police go back and forth looking for a stolen car with the tags of the car that hit me.  The issue was that the car was stolen FROM the neighborhood that I followed it into BEFORE it was reported stolen.

A few of phone calls to two precincts and a detective put all the pieces together for everyone and the person who hit me was convicted.  Of course the police were interested in how I obtained the information I called them with and the missing pieces of their investigation…which of course was my police scanner.

Back to the gun form yesterday…

My information, and its’ believability,  was enough to obtain a warrant for the property at the end of the building.   I think gun play in government subsidized housing is frowned upon…and that complex falls in the Section 8 category…

Shell casings were found and the search of the house located an unregistered weapon.

One illegal gun off the street.

Like I said at the top of this post, this is not meant to be a judgment on society…we are where we are in this world for whatever reason you choose to believe.

I do know that someone with an unregistered weapon fired at an innocent and unarmed citizen yesterday.

But, just so you think I am not ducking the issues here…

I am not against firearm ownership and, in this time of BIG GOVERNMENT and I am not even going to judge those that believe that they need to own unregistered weapons.

I also believe that this is a safer society because of our right to bear arms.    The threat of law-abiding citizens having the ability to defend themselves is a bigger deterrent than any threat of jail time.     If weapons were banned, then the only people having them would be law enforcement officials and criminals.

If someone comes to my front door, they are greeted by a nice decal on the window adjacent to the door informing them of my membership in an organization that advocates some of the freedoms I believe in…should they choose to try their luck on my home.

If such a situation presented itself and an intruder made their way into my home while my family was upstairs, I don’t think I would engage the intruder down there.  My duty is to provide for and defend my family, not my television.  Once someone comes up those stairs uninvited, the rules change.

As distinctive as the sound of a .22 caliber pistol is to an experienced gun owner, it pales in comparison to the sound of a shotgun shell being chambered…and that is a universal sound.

It could drift even more, but the fact is that there is one illegal (and very misused) weapon off the street today.

Aftermath of Christmas

I thought sharing passive aggressive holiday stories might be fun, or at the very least, therapeutic.

My kids are home for Christmas and they think I’m a little nuts because they don’t really understand true passive aggression. Of course that’s the passive aggressive’s aim isn’t it, to make everyone think we’re the ones who are nuts? The other night they said I claim everything the passive aggressive BF does is passive aggressive. I told them “Not everything, but pretty close” and then proceeded to point out exactly what had happened Christmas Eve.

The PA BF was pre-cooking some of the veggies for Christmas dinner Christmas Eve day.  (Yeah, he cooks and he cooks really well. LOL) It starts getting around dinner time, the kids are asking when we’re going to eat or what we’re having for dinner. I ask the BF when he thinks he’s going to be done because the natives are getting restless. He says about 10 to 20 minutes. No big deal. I go back to work, the kids go back to visiting with each other and watching some tv.

After about a half hour one of the kids asks if we’re going to start dinner anytime soon. I go out to the kitchen, everything’s turned off and the passive aggressive BF is sitting in our room watching TV. He never even let me know he was done, let alone that he wasn’t cooking dinner. When I say something to him, he says “well if I’m doing it, what am I doing?” Now the funny part of this is he’s the one that went to the store and picked up what we were having for dinner. We had discussed it, he went and got it, and then it’s like there is some big surprise! Then I’m just being a, well, you know. We did make it through Christmas pretty much unscathed.

I changed the poll on the right-hand side today. The results of the last poll were 50% of you said you think of leaving your passive aggressive spouse or partner everyday, 42% said you think about it but are still hoping to work things out, and 8% say you’ll never give up. Now as we get past Christmas, what are your plans for the new year?

I also know that for many of us, the holidays were just the “icing on the cake” so for many of you I have put up a new “gift page”.  I have loaded John Shore’s series of  “Why Women Stay In Abusive Relationships” and a book by the people at Creative Conflicts on “Leaving A Passive Aggressive Relationship”.  My sincere thanks to them for letting me share with you and, my gift to you for sharing my life and yours. You can get them at the Free Gift tab on top of the blog.

Any stories you want to share? Any plans for the new year? Feel free to share what’s happening with you in the “leave a comment” section below.

Here’s a post from an interesting blog.  I read this article and although I understand both sides of this argument, I am not sure which side I reside on.  I believe that owning a gun is a right granted to every American by our Constitution.  I also know that when a person is actively psychotic, them having a gun is dangerous.  So on those two points I am in agreement with this author.  However, I also am in a quandry about who should make the determination of who can and can not own a gun and why.

Please, read this article and then let’s begin a discussion about this topic.  Leave me a comment.  If you read a comment you disagree with or even one you agree with, leave your own comment.  Let’s have a dialogue, okay?

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The killer has depression, OCD a history of suicide attempts and two new guns By Christine Stapleton December 4, 2009 The mother of the man accused of killing little 6-year-old Makayla Sitton said her son, Paul Michael Merhige, recently purchased two guns. She said her son had a mental breakdown when he was 19-years-old and has suffered from severe depression and obsessive compulsive disorder since then. Among the drugs he had been prescribed: Ativan, an anti-anxiety benzo, and Seroquel, an antipsychotic used to treat depression, bipolar and schizophrenia – which worked well for me.

She also said this:

“A person with a history of mental problems should not be able to get a gun,” she said. “This is such a big country. Why isn’t there a database of mentally ill people?”

Actually, there is a database of mentally ill people and a federal law that prohibits gun sales to people who have been declared mentally ill by a court. But neither the database nor the law would have prevented Merhige from buying a gun.

There are loopholes. What if you are mentally ill and come from a family that can afford to send you to a private hospital, treatment center, take care of you at home or pay your rent? You have a history of suicide attempts and violence but you never enter the court system because your family protects you from the law.

Or, what if you have been involuntarily committed but your state does not enter your case in the FBI’s database? The law only works if the clerks of court report your commitment to the state law enforcement agency that enters your name into the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System database. Gun dealers must consult the database before selling a gun. That law has been on the books since federal lawmakers passed the 1969 Gun Control Act. The FBI’s NICS database was created in 1994 to collect and store names of ineligible buyers. But many states don’t bother to report mental health commitments. Only 22 states were reporting in 2007, when Seung Hui Cho bought a gun and killed 32 people at Virginia Tech. A judge had found Cho mentally ill and ordered him to treatment but Virginia officials failed to report his commitment to the FBI.

But the law and database did not – and could not – protect Makayla and three others killed on Thanksgiving, including the gunman’s twin sisters, because Merhige was never declared insane, incompetent or involuntarily committed. His court record was clean – although his mental illness is well documented, according to his family.

The law is well intentioned but makes me queasy. Maybe it has prevented other massacres. We will never know. But I do know this: If you want anything bad enough, you can and will get it. Just ask any addict or alcoholic. I could drive a mile north of my house and buy a gun right now. It’s 10:30 pm. Or, I could go to the county fairground the next time a gun show comes to town and buy a gun without any checks at all. Or, I could look in the glove box of my neighbor’s car – where he keeps a loaded handgun (despite my yelling at him one Saturday afternoon when he left the car’s windows down and doors unlocked.)

And who is to say that a person who was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital 20 years ago for attempting suicide is still a danger and should not be allowed to purchase a hunting rifle and go deer hunting with his buddies? What about alcoholism – also a mental illness? Should an alcoholic who is court ordered into treatment be forever barred from owning a gun after years of sobriety?

I don’t know the answer to this conundrum. The journalist in me, who covered the trials of many mentally ill killers, says “Hell, no! Don’t let them ever get near a gun.” The recovered alcoholic with depression and bipolar inside of me says it is not fair to take away a citizen’s constitutional right to bear arms because they were very, very sick at a point in the lives.

Some of us do get well, you know.

The U.S. Marshals Service has launched a nationwide manhunt to find Merhige.

Christine Stapleton has been a reporter for The Palm Beach Post for 23 years and in 2006, began writing a column entitled, Kicking Depression.

Here is the link to the original blog.  Feel free to check it out and read other articles while you are there.