45 years and all alone again

In Canada, you can drink at 19.
My friends and family forgot my 19th birthday. I bought a 6 pack of Coors light and drank it alone in our basement.

When I was 23, I was in love and had been dating the girl I fell for in high school. Although she could have stayed in town for my birthday,  she left the day before because she didn't want to deal with holiday traffic.

I turned 40 the winter after I had my breakdown, choosing not to die, to struggle, to suffer because I realized I couldn't hurt my mother like that. On that birthday, I ordered myself a pizza and ate it in my bedroom.
I've gotten used to my birthday falling through the cracks. It's always just after new years and it seems everyone is done with celebrating.
I tried to put it aside this year. Despite still living on disability, I baked 5 types of cookies for family and neighbors, I took my mother out for Christmas eve, and blew over $100 so she could play some slot machines. I cooked Christmas dinner for all the family. I got my mom Ancestry DNA and spent money on my sister's family for gifts.

I got a pair of socks, a $3 bottle of sugar free mint coffee sweetner (I hate mint) and a box of egg replace so I could bake for myself if I wanted. My sister thanked my mother. For cooking dinner.

Today I found out my brother will be coming to town next week, two days after my birthday, staying with my sister and won't have time to even meet for a coffee.

One thing I learned in therapy was to speak out when you feel like your needs and emotions aren't being considered by those in your life. In 2017, after over 30 years of feeling like this I told friends and family that I felt neglected and unimportant. In Jan of this year, I went to the pub downstairs because they give you a free beer on your birthday.

Its hard to get through normal days. Five days from now, it wont be a normal day and I dont know how I'm going to make it through.
#anxiety #depression #bpd #borderlinepersonalitydisorder #mentalhealth #wellness

Another Day in Paradise

March 24, 2016

6:30am

I am an introvert with isolationist tendencies and darkness is a friend that gives me hugs whenever I need one the most. At home, I never open my curtains unless I have to and, if I had my way I’d open the door only when the pizza deliverer brought my latest attempt to quell my pain. I am also seldom awake at this time of the day unless I have been awake all night. So, the fact that it’s so bright in here at 6:30 in the morning with not a window to be found is unsettling, to say the least. Neither my body, nor my mind are, accustomed to this and I am struggling to make sense of my surroundings. The word that comes to mind is “antiseptic”, which I suppose is not a negative thing, especially as far as the staff is concerned I suppose. That said, being up so early has made me wish I could see the sunrise this morning. At the very least, it may give me a feeling of change, rebirth, of hope.

They took away all of my clothes when I was admitted to the hospital. A pair of light pants was courteously, and laughably, offered but their meager size rendered them useless to me. So, I am wearing two hospital gowns; one with the untied opening to the back and the other with the opening to the front, like an untied kimono. They are far too short and I seem to be constantly threatening to flash anyone who walks past, even when I am lying on my gurney with a blanket over me. It’s the closest I’ve gotten to wearing the kilt I’ve wanted to try on since I first saw a video of the highland games.

As uncomfortable as my outfit is making me, it’s the socks which are the most frustrating. I am not a sock person and footwear of some sort is mandatory here. I like my feet to be cold and these things are like little ovens for my toes, so much so that my piggies are beginning to resemble bbq pulled pork, I’m guessing. Sure, they aren’t cheap and even have a rubberized non-slip tread complete with happy faces but they are making me quite uncomfortable.

I’ve been up for three hours now and since no other patients are awake, the nurse on duty has allowed me to sit in one of the interview rooms to write this. I am very appreciative to her for the slight rule break. It’ gives me a small sense of normalcy, something I didn’t realize I was missing until right this second. Sitting in an uncomfortable, cheap office chair from 30 years ago is a comfort I never thought I’d appreciate but considering the pain I deal with every day, I suppose I should have gotten to this point before now.

I don’t think that most people understand the irritating and embarrassing feelings that psoriasis sufferers deal with on a daily basis, the flakes, the crusty skin itch and the constant pain of arthritis. From a secondary point of view, it’s hard to ignore the blatantly obvious flakes of skin but I have to wonder how many actually understand the embarrassment which accompanies them. Of course, those flakes come from plaques which often cover large percentages of our bodies turning our skin into, at the best times, an itchy hive-like scab and at the worst of times are akin to setting our skin aflame. What’s hidden from everyone is the arthritis which often comes with the disease, as it has with me, and has been a literal pain in my ass since my early twenties.

Psoriatic skin flakes get into and onto everything. It doesn’t matter how often you vacuum, how often you change the sheets or how often you clean your entire home, there will always be flakes you missed. As a child, the flakes that my mother would leave on the floor, especially in my parent’s bedroom fascinated me. I would look for the big ones, often the size of dimes, and study them. They were light yet thick. They were almost crispy, the way they would crack in half when I applied pressure to their outside edges. Some kids pick their scabs and are fascinated in this way. I had an almost unending supply to make me wonder about the way the skin worked, growing and healing. It wasn’t until my later teens that the flakes began to show up on me. Like dandruff, it was coming off my scalp and suddenly high school became a battle against my own body. How many 17 year olds do you know who carried around a lint roller in their backpacks? At choir competitions, I would lend it out before just before we performed ensuring that I was the last to use it because if I had used it first, by the time I got it back only a couple minutes later I would need to use it again.

I found myself near constantly brushing my shoulders, pulling at my shirts and letting them pop pack to my shape in hopes of forcing the flakes to release from the fabric. The battle of the snowy shoulders is one that you can never win, so at some point you just accept it and do the best you can. You begin to avoid dark and solid coloured shirts. You accept that others are going to see the flakes and immediately judge you with rather pity or disgust. When I turned 19 and began going to dance clubs, my friend pulled me aside one night and pointed out my shoulders. They were alight with little star-like sparkles, my psoriasis flakes glowing in the black light that was popular back then. I was horrified because even in the near complete darkness of cigarette smoke filled clubs, my shoulders were shouting “I’m a gross slob!” to anyone I would meet. Women get stared their chests stared at and to a degree I understood how they felt because my shoulders were getting stared at. The difference is that one attracts members of the opposite sex while the other repulses them.

As bad as my scalp psoriasis was, my cousin had it far worse that the same age. At twelve years old her head was covered in a layer half an inch thick over a four to six inch diameter area. Her early teen life was an exercise in finding equilibrium between the pressures of burgeoning womanhood and trying desperately to not have her entire school know her secret. She was however lucky in that it remained only on her scalp and was able to find medication which would control it enough to keep it at bay until her body grew out of it. I was not so lucky.

Eventually, parts of my body other than my scalp had breakouts, especially my back, stomach, groin and shins. I began having to tuck in my shirts or avoiding black pants as flakes began to appear on my hips if I was wearing my shirt loose. If I had been wearing my shirt tucked in to contain them, the minute I untucked it a blizzard would appear and it no longer mattered what I was wearing because there were so many flakes that I would leave a patch on the floor below me. What had once fascinated me as a kid exploring my parents’ bedroom had become an embarrassment so bad that I refrained from going to pools, waterslides or the beach. I was terrified of what strangers thought of me already due to my anxiety but now I was actively turning down invitations out with friends because I was worried what they would think of me.

My bedroom was becoming uncontrollably dusty. Entering it was like going in search of the home movies of your childhood, packed away years ago. On them were the images of a carefree childhood, now so distant that you can’t recall the emotions which made you smile at twenty four frames per second. Replacing them was a constant reminder that I was different, judged, and, as far as I was concerned, unlovable. While my friends were having relationships, I was the guy sitting in the corner longing to be them but certain that I could never be. Looking back now I can see that women were interested in me but I couldn’t conceive of that being real so even when women threw themselves at me, I didn’t even respond. The girl giving me a picture of her with her phone number on the back was just being nice. The roommate climbing into bed with me one night was just being playful, not wanting me to stroke her body. The girl in the bar standing two inches from me with her hand on my chest and dragging her fingers across my skin was being strange.

I had gotten used to the assumption that I was different than everyone else. It isn’t that this feeling was without merit for there were times when people would ridicule me for the strange patch of skin on my forearms or my shins. I also didn’t blame them for feeling this way. I can easily understand how a bad patch, or plaque, would look like a communicable disease. People with eczema or shingles are treated in a similar, despite general knowledge of these diseases in the public being far more prevalent. We tend to fear of what we don’t understand. This evolved response has protected us through the millennia but I have seen it used far too often in today’s society, to justify prejudice, bigotry and willful ignorance. The error I made was assuming that because one percent of people were judging me like that, so was everyone else.

One day at work about ten years ago, while waiting on a table a child of about eight years old pointed at the large plaque that had recently formed on my forearm and asked me what was wrong with it. His mother immediately scolded him for being so rude. Had I left the situation like that, the boy would have learned the lesson that his innocent curiosity was something to be curtailed, that trying to understand the world around him is not something to be embraced and encouraged. Neil DeGrasse Tyson says that “We spend the first year of a child's life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There’s something wrong there.”

To the parent’s chagrin, I corrected them, getting down on my knees to be at his level so as to minimize the trepidation on the child’s part. I softly explained that I didn’t mind being asked and what the sore on my arm was, why he couldn’t catch it and asked if he had any other questions about it. I find it very important to speak to children about these types of things at their eye level while talking to them as you would an adult. You don’t have to use big words but there’s no point in dumbing it down either. It’s surprising how many “mature” things you can talk to them about without upsetting or overwhelming them. Unfortunately, the parents didn’t agree with me and lodged a complaint for contradicting them to their child. I hope that boy learned something from that interaction before his parents had the chance to drill it out of him.

One thing I hadn’t counted on when the plaques first started to appear was how uncomfortable they could be. At their best, they are best described as a slightly sensitive sunburn; mildly itchy and painful at the same time. At worst, they are like poison ivy rash covered in bee stings. And the things which can turn them from mild to hellish are varied and seldom predictable. What does not affect them for 364 days will send them into a firestorm on that last day of the year. Eating a tomato can do it. Being around a smoker. The wrong soap can set it off. A single stressful moment at work or a bad night’s sleep. It’s virtually impossible to nail down what single thing triggered the inflammation but it is not ambiguous when a flare-up occurs. I have had nights where I lay in bed desperate to not scratch, only to find myself unconsciously doing so to relieve the itch and then discovering that my sheets and legs are covered in blood in the morning. I once had a friend tell me that my scratching was making her uncomfortable because I the sounds I would make as I relieved the itch were like “someone is sucking on your dick”.

Trying over the counter creams were a laughable attempt at stopping the plaques from becoming so irritated often making things worse rather than being helpful. The few topical choices which would work were by prescription only, difficult for two reasons. Firstly, I could not afford the steroid sprays which worked the best, over a hundred dollars for a two week supply for only my forearms and scalp, and second because getting them would entail me paying for my medical insurance and actually going to a doctor. I hadn’t been to a doctor since I cut my hand after falling on and shattering a drinking glass when I was 13, requiring emergency surgery, seventy stitches and two nights stay in the hospital. Perhaps the only thing worse than my anxiety triggers of women was when I was forced to deal with doctors and dentists. It didn’t matter that they were professionals who had surely seen far worse. Opening my mouth wide or disrobing in any manner was to be avoided at all costs, lest the other person in the room voice their displeasure with my appearance.

As a result, the psoriasis plaques spread over more and more of my skin, eventually beginning to form on the backs of my hands, so long sleeve shirts no longer covered them. The spots on my shins expanded from the tops of my feet to my high on my thighs, wrapping around to the backs of my legs and knees, a particularly painful and itch place to have them. They also began to show up on my face, neck, eye lids and ears. The once small spot in my groin turned into a patch which ram from the top of my bum crack all the way down and up again, reaching 3 inches above my genitals. The one half centimetre patch on the tip of my penis was like the pièce de résistance. At one point in my early twenties, I had begun a sexual relationship with a girl I had known since I was 14. She’d had a crush on me since we were that age so I was able to accept that she would consider a physical relationship. Unfortunately, her claim of a latex allergy meant that our dalliances were done without protection, and the patch of psoriasis made sex incredibly painful at times. One night it was even so painful, as if there was an Exacto knife and a vat of battery acid in her vagina, that I had to fake orgasm so that I could end it.  

If I had been able to keep the flakes at bay and hide the plaques under clothing I would, at the very least, be far more comfortable going out in public but eventually the patches began appearing on the backs of my hands, my now quite bald head and even on my face. People had begun to stare at me, not like a man stares at a woman in yoga pants or a dog makes eyes at a piece of pizza from across the room. They were staring in wonder, fear and in some cases, revulsion. When I had finally convinced Chrissy to go out with me, after years of trying, it turned out to be a one date and gone situation. I found out through a mutual friend a couple years later that her friends had convinced her that I wasn’t ”pretty” enough for her, confirming what I had always feared. I was being judged by women, including the ones who were very attracted to me, the way I had always feared except that now it wasn’t my weight or my looks. My skin and immune system had conspired to keep me single and although it was something that that I had always felt I deserved, to that point I had still had hope that I could change it. That day I acquiesced. I was going to be alone. Forever.

What Goes Around

(Fall, 2013)

Last summer, as my mental illness pushed me over the edge, a defensive behavior of mine became uncontrollable and I pushed my friends out of my life at a shocking rate. I'm not saying that what they did and how I was being treated wasn't uncalled for but pretending what they had done didn't happen was, perhaps, the worst possible decision but it was also the only decision I could live with at the time. I hurt my friends greatly by doing so and after apologizing, some have forgiven me while others have completed what I tried to accomplish. I can't blame any of them for the decisions they have made. As my counselor used to say to me, "Most people are doing the best they can at any particular moment and we should remember the times when we hurt people by doing the best we could at the time."

Now karma has come back to haunt me. Two of my oldest friends, the ones I thought I could trust the most, have decided that the best thing for our friendship right now is not to be friends and no matter how many times I tell myself that they're doing the best they can, I still am pained a great deal. I really didn't need an education of how much I had hurt them and others in the past.  Nights of tears and strained apologies with vicious sobbing have scarred my heart, marking it for the rest of my life with a brand that will always remind me of the pain I caused even after I am finally able to forgive myself.

Five and a half years ago, a friend that I had found the courage to tell me how some of the things I was doing had hurt her. They weren't big things but they had bothered her and she was right to tell me but in the mental place I was in I couldn't see how hard it had been for her to tell me these things and instead I only saw how much it was hurting me to hear it. I felt like I was being attacked and that she had lied to me for so long rather than telling me the truth months before. I was self absorbed and had been unable to see the courage it took for her to risk exposing a piece of herself and jeopardize our friendship by bringing the conflict to the forefront.

Today I think of a friend that has done the same to me. After multiple occurrences of being treated like my time and emotions don't matter and conversations about it I put my foot down and said that I thought she needed to reexamine what her priorities were with our friendship. She replied much like I had five years ago with my other friend, pushing me away but throwing out another excuse like having reasons for her actions justified them. As I look at where we are I see that I need to keep perspective and give her the time to work through everything she's feeling. Knowing that I need to step back isn't making it any easier to give her the space she says she needs but if I make the mistake of pushing now I may never be able to speak to her again.

I also have another friend that trusted me with a serious problem she was having necessitating a move out of her current living situation right away. I did something that I would have never done in the past, throwing my life to the side and making myself as available as she needed to help her with the move. In the past I'd have found or created a reason to be too busy or simply unavailable to help, avoiding actually making an effort of any kind. To my surprise, my offer of help was returned with an accusation of having ulterior motives and I was accused of trying to take advantage of her situation to my advantage romantically.  Despite a wordy explanation of everything the accusations persisted and I was forced to withdraw the offer, fearful that if I pushed her the depression she's been battling for years would do to her as it had once done to me.

I was right to fear but too late in action to prevent her pulling away. I don't know exactly what's going on in her mind but I only know that I'm no longer welcome to be a part of her life and although that may change in the future I have no control and having to allow her to step away is rather difficult.

All I want right right now is a single friend I feel like I can be honest with and will understand. I don't actually believe in karma but if anyone wanted to make a case for it now might be the time because I feel a little like the Universe is punishing me, trying to teach me a lesson that I've already learned.

And I don't know if I'm strong enough to learn it a second time.

A Disquiet Follows My Soul

Most days I spend 8-12 hours trying to reconcile two contradictory thoughts; that everyone in the world deserves a chance at a great, healthy, fulfilling life while I deserve to lie here and await my death. I logically know it's not logical but it doesn't make the process any easier.

Since my access to proper therapy, counseling and  psychoanalysis is limited to one, 15 minute session every three months, I have to try and challenge these thoughts on a daily basis. I try to write about them and find a reason for the latter not to be true but I have failed constantly since October 1st of 2012. Six years is a long time to doubt every thought in one's brain, especially the ones which I feel I should be certain of and those I am certain are destructive despite them feeling so correct.

Once I clean my living space, finish my book, and ensure my mom is taken care of until.she passes away, I simply don't see any other reason to be here I'm i have no evidence that will ever change, or that I deserve for it to do so.

I have been single for nearly 20 years, not for lack of trying. No one depends on or needs me in a romantic way and I see no reason to think that will change in the future. Being alone, in constant mental and physical pain is draining and I find myself searching in vain to find an reason for hope that things will stay the same, rather than deteriorate,  which is my current prognosis.

I long to be drunk each day, ignoring the struggle for even a little while but even if I had the means to afford that, or the destructive will, i must put my mother first which only serves to elongate my suffering, like a rubber band being pulled ever tighter. The glue of my obligation  to my mother's health is the bond keeping the elastic together and when that eventually breaks, the band will snap back. I refuse to allow myself to be pulled taught like that, ever again. 

Lists.

Once, I had a bucket list of things to do before I killed myself. I accomplished them all except for the last entry.

Today, I have a new one to remind me that even during my lowest days there are things that make the future a more appealing prospect.

the list

A
make love one more time
B
watch something launch into space
C
Choose 5 people that do not know
how you feel about them, tell them, good or bad
1) Heather's brother
2) Jaime Milligan
3) Gord Haid
4) kirstie's sister
5) Bob Hunt
D
Meet at least one of
1) Trevor Linden
2) Jamie Hubbard
3) Aaron Sorkin
4) Sarah McLachlan
5) Neil Degrasse Tyson
6) Anthony Bordain
E
try and outlive mom
F
Eat a taco Omlette
G
Buy a kilt
H
Meet Nicole face to face
I
Help those I love when they need it...
J
...without sacrificing myself.
K
Possess one of the following
1) A fossil
2) a meteorite
3) aerogel
4) A Klingon bat'leth
5)
L
Bands to see live:
1) Garbage
2) Pet Shop Boys - check
M
Go see a crater, such as Berringer crater
N
Hug an otter

Morning in the Loony Bin – Part two

March 23, 2016

8:30am

I don’t think there is much I wouldn’t do for a couple pieces of bacon or a thick slice of ham right now. Despite their knowledge of my allergies I have been served two boiled eggs and a biscuit of some sort. The nurses can’t tell me one way or another if there are eggs in it. At least the tea is hot. I’m hoping to scam a fellow patient of two out of their fruit cups so I can get more than a kiddie sized box of milk for my breakfast.

The TV is tuned to the news this morning, perhaps not the greatest choice considering the state of the world right now. The refugee situation in Europe has brought out the worst in some people resulting in three bombings in Brussels last night. At least 31 are dead and over a hundred are injured. I’m hoping they change the channel soon so that I don’t have to watch those numbers tick up, like a telethon’s tote board. They will rise. They always do. This is the earth after all and the human ability to hate and attack each other seems boundless.

The news is talking to people jumping to assign blame to the refugees themselves, not even considering the possibility that it was right wing radicals trying to make their point, and this brings to mind two thoughts.

The 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by sixteen non-refugee men. In the fifteen subsequent years, how many attacks have been on American soil have been carried out by Muslim extremists? One, perhaps two (what I wouldn’t give for access to the internet right now so I could find out for sure) and neither of those were carried out by refugees. Instead, it was men and women living in the country by completely legal means.

I am trying to focus on something of consequence rather than the minutiae of life but my brain has other ideas. Did the Canucks win last night? #teamtank My blood pressure was way down this morning. 131/81 is almost normal and far less terrifying than the artery bursting 171/104 reading that I got last night while being admitted. It makes me wonder what meds they gave me last night. While my heart beats are better, I have heart burn. I really do need more than milk. Dry toast is even appealing at this point.

I know I had a second point to make about the bombings but it has left my mind. My brain is often like this and it’s why Dr Jahmeel tried me on Ritalin when I first got my depression diagnosis. Even as a small child, I remember my mind being four or five steps ahead of where I was. Every possibility opened before me like a branching tree, reaching skyward for the sun. Early in grade school, this meant that I was not only ahead of where the class was in whatever lesson we were doing, I was often ahead of the teacher. When we were doing addition, I could already see how subtraction worked. I was reading at t third or fourth grade level while the concept of “sun”, “fun”, and “bun” rhyming was just becoming apparent to the rest of the class.

This skill had its advantages but, while I didn’t know it at the time, it had far more disadvantages. I was so far ahead in my assignments that I was often extremely bored and would get myself in trouble while trying to occupy my mind. I often found something in my bag to surreptitiously damage my desk, just to see what was under the next layer of fake wood. I got good at it. In the third grade, I drilled a hole into the front edge of my desk that was deep enough to fit an entire crayon in it, lengthwise. My chairs were a monument to scratching with makeshift shivs and extreme boredom. It’s hard to convince an 8 year old to do the lessons being assigned when he’s read six chapters ahead in the textbook and could teach the class if necessary, so the habit of not bothering with homework was well established, following me into high school. It was never that I was lazy but rather I was quite bored with most of school and what few topics and subjects which interested me never challenged me in any way. I really don’t like this about myself and it is something I have fought against nearly constantly since my diagnoses.

It is why going back to school and getting my high school diploma meant so much to me. It was the first time in decades then I had set a goal and followed through on it. It’s also why writing down these thoughts are important to me right now. I don’t know if they’ll be useful in the future but, at least for now, they are something I’m working on which has no specific purpose and is also a means to try and slow my mind down. Right now, in this place it doesn’t seem to be working.

My bed is in a specified area, my very own five by five space, separated from the person on my right by a curtain and a wall to my left. Halfway up the wall are stains in the paint looking suspiciously like a splatter of some bodily fluid. There are five or six of these of these spaces in a row, making privacy flexible and important but a complete illusion at the same time. However intrinsic and flawed the uncomfortableness of this situation is to me, I am one of the lucky ones. Just outside this are three gurneys lined up along the wall with no privacy whatsoever. I wonder if I get a curtain because I am not likely to need emergent care or if it’s because I just happened to get here first. There are also patients to whom a bed is an unattainable luxury for they await a better situation sitting in a hospital style recliner chair. About a half a dozen people have been in those all night. For them, I’m sure a goodnight’s sleep must have been a fantasy, unless of course the nurses were able to knock them out with a cocktail of meds. The only one I’m sure slept well in those chairs is the young man with the mark on his face. He seems to have been comfortably asleep throughout the night, his hat pulled over his eyes as a shade from the pulsating fluorescent lights above that I doubt are ever turned off.

There is one thing about the curtain beside me that I have not mentioned. I have been reluctant to do so for it is a reminder of why I’m here, more than the bed situation, or the bracelet on my right wrist. I could have easily deluded myself, created a delusion as to why those things are present. The curtain is of a cheap artificial fabric of some source, although I doubt it’s nylon as it has a tendency to go up in flames like a flamethrower. It must be thirty or forty years old, perhaps even the surplus from Super 8 motels from across North America bathrooms. I am in a section of the hospital where clean, new and soothing is not a concern because those states are reached through the use of Thorazine, Xanax and Valium. I am not meant to be comfortable. I am meant to be alive.

The nurse has taken pity on my empty stomach and found me a fruit cup and grabbed me a tea from her private stash. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I wish it was decaf.  It makes me feel completely uncomfortable because I feel like I’m getting special treatment as it is so to but in a special request is completely out of the question.

The mental image of me being on a fat camp reality TV show has jumped into my brain. I feel like I’m getting ready to do my last-chance-workout, all the contestants sleeping in the same room but I won my bed and curtain space in this week’s reward challenge. The state of curtain betrays that thought.

As I turn and lean on my left shoulder to hide these thoughts, I am faced by the discoloured wall. Twisting to keep my legs on the bed I am face to face with the one foot square section of wall which is now clearly a stain from arterial spray. I am currently both glad and upset at having seen so many episodes of CSI over the years. I can falsely speculate on speed and directionality based on the size and shape of the droplets. I think I can discern a void in the stain, as if there used to be something in the way; a person perhaps.

This is the beginning of page twelve in my notebook, which means I’ve written more in the last 16 hours than I have in a very long time, perhaps ever. Doing it curled up on a hospital gurney is very uncomfortable and my back is beginning to get sore. I only hope that, if not today, it helps me at some point. Otherwise, I’m just spinning my wheels again, distracted by my seething mind, destined to end up in the same place I began.

Morning in the Loony Bin - part one

March 23, 2016

7:30am

Morning has come, far too early for my liking. While snoring is rampant here, my little corner is full of people very much awake and yet somehow making less noise than those sleeping. In the hall are two people sleeping on the thinly mattressed gurneys they put you on in here. Presumably, mobility can become unexpectedly important, even in the psych ward. I'm curious if there are leather straps stowed under these but I'm just too nervous about the truth to try and find out. The small size could explain why I am curled into a ball, hugging my chest, trying to keep my bulky front from spilling over the side of the gurney. It's more likely that my extreme mental discomfort has me craving the fetal position. It also explains why my back and hip are killing me, although not literally. A large, vocal part of me is sad about that literally thing.

Close to me is a new recruit to our little encampment. Sitting up, he is talking to himself, embodying the lostness I feel inside. He is mumbling in Punjab or Farsi, I can't tell the difference. His face is frozen in a mask of concentration, as if spending all his energy trying to comprehend what is happening to him. In this matter he is a kindred spirit and I feel a little less alone.

Two curtains over is a young girl talking in her sleep. Her words alternate between those expressing terror and bliss, like a scene from Fifty Shades of Grey, unable even in her sleep to escape whatever it is that put her in this place. Before I had realized she was asleep, I found myself wondering if she was masturbating but although I am quite sure that is not uncommon thing to happen here, I am now leaning to her being a scared little girl trapped in a no longer naive young woman's body. She's in pain, likely both physical and mental, her dreams desperate to understand anything that is going on, whether that be out here or in her mind. I doubt her perception of reality can tell the difference anymore. After all, they are both prisons.

I haven't eaten in over 14 hours, getting down only water and extremely unconcentrated orange juice. I don't find myself overly hungry but the bottle of Ensure I was offered a couple of hours ago is beginning to sound appealing, despite my distaste for them. I know a headache from not eating will be coming on soon, along with the stress and mindlessness which will accompany it. I am the person in the Snickers candy bar commercial who is "not himself" when he's hangry.

Mindlessness. In a world that seems to be pushing the concept of mindfulness on everyone, the idea of existing in an exact opposite manner sounds appealing right now. It is the premise behind self-medication, which I have done many times. The tears live just below the surface, held back now only by the paper I am writing on. They are a pressure bomb in my chest and I'm terrified of looking weak in here. I'm terrified of the meds the nurse will give me. I'm terrified of the others here seeing me as a target. I'm terrified of having to acknowledge that right now, this is where I belong.

~

The Ensure is like a mouthful of Buckley's Mixture cough syrup mixed with a pound of chalk dust. Buckley's was my mother's go to cough treatment and I half suspected that it's terrible flavour was her way of determining if we were truly sick and deserving of a day off from school. Over the years I had learned to tolerate it, even looking forward to the soothing feel of it running down my throat. I find it exceedingly doubtful that I should ever expect to get to the point of respect with Ensure like I am with Buckley's.

"What am I going to do now?" has popped into my mind and the tears I have been holding back are moistening the pillow beneath my head. I am reminded of the scene from Terminator 2, when right before leaving the group to kill the engineer Dyson, Sarah Connors carved the words "No future" into the top of the picnic table where she had been sleeping. I am that lost as to what will become of me. Do I have a future? What niche will I fill in the world if I even find an opportunity for another chance and a new direction? People have told me to be like Dory, the fish Ellen DeGeneres voiced in Finding Nemo. "Just keep swimming" they would tell me but keep swimming in what? If you drop a fish into a vat of Sulfuric acid should it just keep swimming or is it logical for it to panic? Where can it go? Even if it ends up in plain water, what would swimming accomplish? Is a life of simply being enough? Existence for the sake of existence? Without a destination, there is no journey to learn from unless you account for a final destination.

It's hardly a new idea or question. Is life's journey towards death a sufficient reason for continuing life? Is life for its own sake reason enough to keep moving from one moment to the next? While I don't have an answer for that question it is something worthy of further exploration.

As a bit of a hobby, I dabble in religious counter-apologetics; the examination and refutation of religious reasoning and justifications of believers' views. There is a concept within this sphere of study which deals with the sufficient and necessary. Specifically, is the concept of a god sufficient to account, not only for the universe we experience, but the entire universe we could ever experience? Can god completely explain the 5% of matter and energy we have an understanding of as well as the other 95% which we know is there but have virtually no understanding of, AND any materialistic or non-materialistic reality of which we may have no concept, imagination or ability to experience.

Further, it must also be shown that god is a necessity, that there is and could never be any other proposition which would account for existence. If anyone can propose a logically and rational concept which would account for our local presentation of the universe, then the idea of necessity is immediately falsified.

While I have opinions on these questions, I have neither the intelligence nor the education to take them on when dealing with the massiveness of our universe, let alone the possibility of the multiverse which has popped out of current attempts at super-unification. I can, however, apply these ideas to the question, "Do I have an obligation to live? “As I am an experimental materialist, I have no belief in a god, an afterlife or an immortal soul so the question of necessity can only apply to the universe I can experience and account for. To whom or what would a necessity of life be related to? When it comes to the nonliving world, it couldn't care less if I was alive. Further, when my eventual end comes, microbes and insects will likely be very glad to fulfill their destiny and consume my non-animated flesh. When considering the living world, I have no pets, no children, and no dependents of any kind. I hold no financial obligation to anyone. No one will end up on the street starving if I cease to be.

The emotional stability of those in my life, as far as I can see, is the only consideration which may satisfy necessity. I have few close friends, most of whom struggle with these same thoughts. Those who do not understand from experience have done well to understand by talking to me and have come to accept how hard my struggle has been. So, if my life were to end, by any means, it is safe to say that my friends would be able to move on with an understanding, and while it would in no way completely relieve the resulting emotions, they would be minimized with the knowledge that I had likely struggled as much as I possibly could. Their lives would move on without me.

Obviously my family adds another level of thought which must be considered. My brother and sister have attempted to help me in the best way they can. Both of them being in the medical field give them an uncommon perspective on how my thoughts work and I have been very lucky to have them around. My Nephew has struggled with depression as well, including stints on anti-depressants over the years. My nieces are teens and have been brought up in the social media age where open discussion of topics once taboo are now commonplace. LGBTQ rights are a comfortable topic for them. So is personal sexual responsibility. Mental health is also a topic of which they are well versed and although I'm sure they want the best for me, they understand that the best for me may be ending my life someday.

My mother is, perhaps, the only trump card which I have to deal with. We have lived together since my first collapse in late 2012 and it has become obvious that she is uncomfortable with my illnesses in every way. She wants to listen, to be the one I can talk to but it is awkward and distressing for her, so I try to keep it to a minimum such as when things directly affect her or our relationship. I suspect that the anxiety issues hit far too close to home and that she's been dealing with many of the same relationship problems and thoughts as I do throughout her life. It just hasn't been acceptable acknowledge them personally, let alone discus them with others, until very recently. I'm guessing that watching so many people discuss so many personal issues without shame is off-putting, to say the least. While it is the one final thing that saved my life, is it necessary to remain alive because of the emotional turmoil that my suicide would cause to my mother.

I know she would do almost anything to want my suffering to end but does that list include accepting my death. I simply don't know.