Harriet M. Welch

Today is the day I was supposed to meet my mother, my sister, and my sister’s friend for lunch and shopping. My mother already backed out, and yesterday my sister said she can’t go either. So it’s just me and her friend, L. L is the one who gets messages from dead people. Other than that, I like her, and she is easy to be with. I really need to get out more, so it should be good. I also went out to lunch with another friend yesterday, and that went well. I think know I spend too much time inside of my own head. I also haven’t been working enough hours, I need to work more. Especially now that I’ll be paying full price for therapy. Hopefully therapy will end soon. How do you know when it’s over anyway? My t once said that he works with people for an average of 6 months, and I’ve been going way longer than that.

Thank you for all of the kind wishes about my father. Yeah, I miss him.

I ran along a different part of the river yesterday. It’s the part with the rapids and waterfalls and it is really dangerous. There is a bridge built over the wildest section and I stood on that for a while. The water was so crazy it was making me dizzy. Here is a photo, I didn’t take this, but it shows the intensity pretty well:

I saw four people carrying rafts down to the water – I can’t believe anyone would raft in that ferocious water. And the water must be incredibly cold too. It was even too intense for me, I would not want to die that way. Not peaceful at all.

I’ve been thinking about how the act of suicide affects those left behind. I know someone whose mother committed suicide when she was teenager, and I’ve been doing some reading. Apparently, and judging by this person I know who is pretty screwed up, suicide of a parent or loved one has a lasting impact on the survivors. What isn’t fair, though, is that these people don’t generally show appreciation or gratitude for the suicidal person when she is alive. But after she is gone they get all fucked up. I guess one can’t really expect the people in one’s life to be constantly reassuring them that they are needed and valued though, especially when that person acts like nothing is ever wrong.

J asked what we are talking about. I said, well, whatever. He said he would like to talk about my email from three weeks ago, since last week I talked about wanting to talk about that. Unless something happened this week that I would prefer to talk about. I said nothing happened this week, but in his email to me last week he said he wanted to talk about my thoughts that he is sick of me and frustrated with me. He said he didn’t remember what was in his email to me last week. I said, well, you said you wanted to discuss this particular item, and the reason I wrote about it was because I thought I did a good job reframing my thoughts and I wanted to let you know that. But then you said you wanted to discuss it and it made me anxious all week and I was wondering why you chose that item as something to discuss. He really couldn’t remember any of this, so he went to his computer to see what he had written. He claims that this particular item stood out for him because it was larger than the other items since I wrote it in list form rather than paragraph form. Oh.

How could I get so anxious about something, and he doesn’t remember saying it at all?

We did discuss how when someone makes a comment or remark to me I tend to believe it and think that they are judging me and then I hold onto these thoughts and this leads to feeling bad about myself. We’ve had this conversation before, about 99 times before. What it comes down to is knowing something intellectually, but not being able to feel it. I asked him how I do this. He doesn’t know. He tried to come up with an answer. He said if I think logically about things eventually the logic will win out. That kind of sucks as an answer, but maybe that’s the way things work.

Then he asked me if he could tell me about a personal situation he encountered last week, that had to do with this type of logical thinking. I said sure, I’m always happy to talk about the other person rather than myself. He told me his story, and we talked about it for a while, and it was so much better than talking about myself. I wish we could talk about him every week. He was still talking about it when I got up to leave.

I didn’t tell him about the cutting, or the suicidal ideation, or the constant feeling of hating myself. Maybe I’ll tell him that next week.

I talked to my sister yesterday, and she told me that the reason my mother doesn’t want to come to lunch with us on Friday is because she doesn’t want to drive an hour to my house with my sister’s friend because she doesn’t feel comfortable with her. I didn’t quite believe that. I talked to my mother today and she said she isn’t meet us on Friday because we “young girls” don’t need an “old lady” like her hanging out with us. I told her that we would enjoy having an old lady like her with us. I said, “I thought you didn’t feel comfortable driving here with L.” She said, “No, I never said that, that’s not a problem.”

My aunt called me and told me that my mother called her and told her she isn’t going to my cousin’s wedding. My aunt says she doesn’t believe the reason my mother gave, she wishes she knew the true reason why my mother isn’t going. I know the true reason, but I’m not telling my aunt. I don’t want to get caught in the middle between the two of them.

Then I had to call my insurance company. We switched to a new provider on January 1st, and I checked my claims online and saw that they didn’t pay for my last three therapy sessions. So I called them and they said I needed to get these pre-authorized. They said they could do that on the phone, but they needed to ask me a couple of questions, that I didn’t have to answer if I didn’t want to. The first was if in the last two months I have drank too much or taken drugs. The second was if in the last week I felt like hurting myself. Huh? Who the hell would answer yes to these questions? And if you choose not to answer isn’t that just like answering yes? I lied. Well, the first question I told the truth, I haven’t drank too much or taken drugs. Not illegal drugs anyway. And prescribed drugs are ok, I’m assuming. But I did lie about the second question.

Everybody lies, and you never know who is lying, and who is telling the truth, and what the truth really is. That’s life.

I told my husband that I hate this new insurance company and they would only approve 10 visits of therapy, and then the therapist has to apply for more visits for me. Huh? I’m not going to ask him to do that. I told my husband that they were asking me intrusive questions that were none of their business and we are just going to pay out of pocket once the 10 visits are up. With the amount of money we spend on insurance every year (we pay for our own insurance) I don’t feel like I have to justify my therapy to them. So there.

Tomorrow morning is my meeting with Mr. IRS Seal. I don’t know what to wear. All of my business-y type clothes are too big. I’m anxious about the meeting, and I’m anxious about what to wear.

I’m still cutting. It’s like a compulsion now, I have to do this almost every day. I wrote that post yesterday about thinking rationally and logically about what is going on, but once again, although I know these things intellectually, I can’t feel them. I can’t feel better about myself. It’s just really hard.

I was trying to take a break from the blog over the weekend, but too many things are going on inside my brain. Want to hear about what a loser I am? Here are some search terms that people are using to find my blog:

I was a pathetic child
Painless and effective suicide methods
Is suicide painless
Can’t think of anything good about myself

By the way, although there are effective suicide methods, I would venture a guess that there are no painless suicide methods. However, living may be more painful than dying, so I would suggest weighing your pain level prior to attempting anything.

Want to hear how else I’m a loser? I talked to my mother last week and asked her if she would like to spend a day together. She suggested next Friday. We decided to go out with along with my sister, and my sister’s friend (the empathic one). Today my sister emailed me that she now has to see some clients on Friday, but she can squeeze in a quick lunch. My mother, however, would prefer to stay home and play cards with her friends.

What does it mean when my own mother doesn’t even want to spend with me?

So boys and girls we have a winner!  Ding ding ding ding ding…..

The winner is Ron.  I’m sorry that I do not have a prize for you, Ron.  Although you did choose the correct number, the context was a little off.  You said that you thought my therapist might want to discuss whether or not it is worth it to continue in therapy.  I had written to him that when he asked me that question I immediately thought that he didn’t think it was worth it, but I realized that these were my thoughts, not his, which for me is progress.  However in his email response to me he said that he wants to discuss my thoughts about his feelings towards me.  He thinks “we should try to keep those dynamics closer to the surface; to have more awareness of those dynamics as they occur.”

I’m curious as to why, of all of the nine items, this jumped out at him, especially considering that I did have awareness of those dynamics at the time that they occurred.  I thought I did pretty well with this, unlike the other eight things.  I guess I won’t know unless I ask him.

I’ve been feeling down, and I’m not sure why.  I’ve been cutting, not sure if I should write about that here, but it’s my blog, so I guess I can.  It makes me feel better. When I run along the river I stop and watch the water swirling around, there are parts that are somewhat rough and even a sign that says, “Danger.  An average of 7 people drown in this area every year.”  I wonder if any of them drown on purpose.  The water must be very cold, I would think it wouldn’t take long to drown.  I don’t like the idea of drowning, especially since watching my father die from congestive heart failure, which is basically drowning in your own body.

And I think about my meds stash a lot too.  It sounds so nice to just be able to take a bunch of pills, fall asleep, and die.  However, I know it doesn’t work that way.  I’m sure what would really happen is I would get really sick, and throw up a lot, and maybe even have to go to the hospital, and I would never want that to happen.  But I do think about the pills a lot.

Maybe I haven’t been keeping busy enough, I haven’t worked very many hours this week.  Although I’m not motivated to keep busy, so I’m not sure which came first.  Mr. IRS Seal emailed me yesterday, I thought he forgot about me, which would have been a good thing.  But he didn’t.  He wants to meet me next Wednesday.  Oh well, what’s the worst that can happen?  He’ll see I’m stupid and don’t know what I’m doing and that will be it.

I woke up today and couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t take any klonopin last night, and I had a bad night. I get this thing that feels like I need to jump out of my skin. I don’t know what it is, and it doesn’t happen all the time, but it happened last night. Maybe because I took two klonopin the night before, and I had a really great sleep, and I took two more yesterday morning. I can’t believe I would have withdrawal after just 2mg of klonopin though.

I’m feeling anger, because it took me so long to get off the damn klonopin. I have three bottles of it in my drawer and I never touch it. Until Tuesday night. And it makes me so damn angry that I sleep so well when I take it, but I can’t sleep when I don’t take it. Is it too much to ask for a good night’s sleep.

I also started the wellbutrin yesterday. I never had a chance to talk to J about it, there just isn’t time. 45 minutes once a week goes by quickly. But I guess I really need it and I’m going to give it 6 months and see how it goes. I see my pdoc next week. Yesterday at about 2PM I was so tired, I guess from the klonopin. I was at work, alone, and I fell asleep on the couch for about 45 minutes. The klonopin also seems to affect my cognitive skills. I had a really hard time remembering what I did for lunch and what I ate. I had to search my brain to remember. God knows what else I did that I forgot. I only took 1mg in the morning, not a huge dose or anything, and no liquor with it.

I also cut a little. But I don’t want to talk about that. Except to say it didn’t even hurt, so it was waste.

I woke up today feeling sad and also angry. I’m angry that I go to therapy every week, and I try, I really do. I think I do. Maybe not enough. But I feel like it’s all I can do to talk about my feelings, it takes everything out of me, and then I’m told that my feelings aren’t logical. So J explains the logic of whatever the situation is, and I get that. I really really GET the FUCKING logic!!!!! I would tell anyone else the same thing.

But I CAN’T FEEL it. It is so frustrating. How do I FEEL it? I’ve read books, I’ve asked people, I’ve told J I can’t feel it. But no one has been able to tell me how to feel the logic.

I had a time frame for therapy. If I didn’t get better by a certain day I would use my backup plan. But due to a change of circumstances I can’t use my backup plan. Now I feel like I have no therapy and no backup plan. All I want to do now is be numb and sleeping.

So as I mentioned I am reading Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse. This book is about a man who is 47 or 48 years old, and is hating himself, his society, and his life. His marriage fell apart, his relationship with a woman is in ruins, he can’t relate to people, he is intolerant of the “bourgeois” and yet at the same time wanting to be a part of it, he has a lot of internal conflict between the human side of himself and the animal side of himself. He is in mental and physical pain, and he spends all of his time reading or drinking. This character, Harry, decides he will kill himself when he turns 50 – it’s the emergency exit that gives him comfort while he attempts to live every day. He meets a woman at a bar and she says he is a baby. Her attitude is, “Hey buddy. This is life. It’s a bunch of mundane crap with a few moments of fun, pleasure and happiness thrown in just to keep you going. Get over it.” Well, Hesse writes a lot better than I do, but that is the gist of the story so far. I’m sure there is more to come.

There are some great passages in the book:

“He must with his own hand make an end of his detested existence – unless, molten in the fire of a renewed self-knowledge, he underwent a change and passed over to a self, new and undisguised.”

“How had I, with the wings of youth and poetry, come to this? Art and travel and the glow of ideals – and now this! How had this paralysis crept over me so slowly and furtively, this hatred against myself and everybody, this deep-seated anger and obstruction of all feelings, this filthy hell of emptiness and despair.”

“Our whole civilization was a cemetery where Jesus Christ and Socrates, Mozart and Haydn, Dante and Goethe were but the indecipherable names on moldering stones; and the mourners who stood round affecting a pretence of sorrow would give much to believe in these inscriptions which once were holy, or at least to utter one heart-felt word of grief and despair about this world that is not more. And nothing was left them but the embarrassed grimaces of a company round a grave.”

So is that really life? A bunch of mundane crap – laundry, exercise, making food, showering, work – interspersed with an occasional moment of fun, love, happiness or excitement? How many of those occasional moments does one need to make it worth it?

I have a real fixation lately with suicide. I hate using the word because people are finding my blog by googling suicide. But there isn’t another word that works. I’m reading Steppenwolf, I got intrigued when I read Pete’s post here. I never read this book when I was in high school or college, I must have missed the whole Hesse scene. And most of the movies in my Netflix queue are about death and suicide and mental illness. Today I watched “The Hours”, which was a fascinating movie that I really enjoyed, but it was tragic. I just can’t get death/suicide/dying out of my head. Is this what ideation means?

And tonight was back to school night for my daughter who is a senior in high school. In her English class they will be reading Camus, and Kafka – a whole existential unit, or as it is written on the course outline “Search for meaning”. I thought, “What a waste for her.” I definitely wasn’t into that in high school. My college friends were obsessed with Kafka, and I read some of his writings. It didn’t do much for me then. But now! I plan to read all of the books she’ll be reading, and I’m sure I’ll appreciate them much more than she will.

I found a yahoo group for people over the age of 30 who self harm. I really need one for people over the age of 40, but I’ll take what I can get. I applied for membership – I wonder what the criteria are. I’ve found forums for SI, but they are generally populated with teens and young 20’s. I really wonder how many people in their 40’s and 50’s SI. I would think not many – people my age use other coping mechanisms. We’re old enough to drink legally, and we have enough money to buy drugs. And we can have affairs, or lots of casual sex.

I don’t drink much anymore, maybe one or two drinks a week. I bought a bottle of wine yesterday, poured myself a glass, and didn’t even finish it. You know why? Too many calories! The only time I drink in excess these days is as a precursor to SI. When I get out the vodka + klonopin I know the razor blade isn’t far behind. Luckily this only happens every 3 months or so.

As for drugs, I did love my cocaine back in my 20’s. I quit when Len Bias died. You young guys probably never heard of him. I never heard of him until he died. He was about my age, well maybe three years younger than me, and lived nearby and was a good basketball player who was drafted to play professionally, but died of a cocaine overdose before he could start doing that. It freaked me out and I never did drugs again. Now I avoid drugs because I wouldn’t know where to get them (I don’t even know if people still do cocaine – is it only crack nowadays?), and my husband might get suspicious if large chunks of money are missing from the checking account.

So not much drinking, and no drugs. Definitely no affairs, I would never cheat on my husband. What unacceptable, maladaptive coping mechanism is left? Self injury.

I don’t even feel like talking about therapy today. When I got there J asked if I wanted to talk about the hotline or cutting. I asked if those were the only two choices, and he said, “Or something else.” The whole thing from last week was like no big deal to him. I really blow things out of proportion and worry about them all week, and to him it’s a little blip on the radar screen and he moves on. I need to learn from him.

We talked about the hotline, and cutting, and how everything has been so intense for me lately, and about my fantasy of being dead, which I refuse to label “suicide ideation.” So all day today I’ve been thinking about SI, and ideating like crazy, and it’s making me feel crazy. When I drive around I have these fantasies – for example, today I was visualizing my mother getting the phone call saying I died, and she asks how I died, and whoever it is on the phone tells her I committed suicide. And I was crying in the car.

I’ve cried more than once today. I keep thinking about the broken dolls and the little girl with the bandaids on her knees in the slideshow I made. Oh, and J said he got the DVD with the slideshow, but he didn’t get it until yesterday since he was in his other office and his computer wouldn’t play it so he has to bring it home and watch it on his DVD player and his TV.

Everything has been too intense. I told J that, and he said it can’t be intense all the time because intense is relative. I don’t know, it feels intense all the time. I need a way to numb the intensity – something constructive. Not SI, not drinking, not klonopin. If anyone has any suggestions for how I can decrease this intensity I would love to hear them.

And I had my root canal yesterday, but the dentist couldn’t complete it because the tooth is still partially infected, so I have to go back in two weeks. Meanwhile it is hurting pretty badly, and I’m taking a ton of Advil. A friend gave me some tylenol with codeine to take tonight so I can sleep, last night the pain woke me up at 4am.

Remember how I said things have been intense lately? Well, last night I had to walk out of a movie. We went to see District 9, I heard good things about it. It was so disturbing to me though. I couldn’t handle the way the aliens were being treated, and when the main character was in the research hospital and they forced him to use the alien weapons it was too much for me. I had to leave. My son said it got better for the aliens after that, but I didn’t want to stick around and find out.

So, yeah, that’s bizarre. I know aliens aren’t real. But if you were to see this movie you’d understand. The filmmakers make them real, and they were real to me. Not like schizophrenic real, but real in my heart. Hard to explain.

Then today we went to a memorial service. A friend of ours had a brother who committed suicide earlier this month. I didn’t know him, I’ve never met him but it was very emotional, I was crying. Seeing the family at this service, watching the faces of his parents, who are approaching 90 years old, well, let’s just say I could definitely see the impact suicide makes on the survivors. Can I do that to people I love? I’m beginning to question myself.

Last night at our Hotline training session our trainer returned a quiz we had taken about suicide. It was 18 true/false questions. When she was handing back the quizzes she said that some of us didn’t do well, but not to worry, it’s her fault because she forgot to assign the reading before giving us the quiz!

When she handed me my quiz she said, “That’s the highest score ever!” I got 17/18. I know that I know a lot about suicide, I read about it all the time, watch movies, videos, etc. I’m wondering if she is wondering how I know so much. If she only knew….