Nightmares have been terrorizing my sleep for the past couple months. I think it's just another outlet for the constant barrage of negative thoughts about myself. Yesterday in particular was a bad day. Once again I was wishing for death, begging my friend to put me out of my misery. He's an amateur chemist and a genius so I'm pretty sure he could cook up something that wouldn't get him in trouble.
During those moments of intense suicidal thoughts, it is a constant flood of intense pain. It starts in my heart and radiates through my chest, down my abdomen and fades down my legs. The pain is an eight on an emotional scale from one to ten.
I'd tell you about how my day started, but I can't remember. I have no idea when I woke up, or if I made my usual coffee. What I do remember is driving to my therapy appointment and imagining driving my car into each telephone pole. I thought about what it would feel like to die, imagining in bloody detail my death. I wanted to open my car door and fall out into oncoming traffic going 55 mph. I wasn't sure they were going as fast as I wanted if they were going to hit me. I wanted it as awful as possible.
Next, I remember sitting in my therapist's office. I felt rotten and hating everything she said. All I could talk about was suicide and how bad I wanted it. I asked her to help me die. After about 10 minutes I left. She called after me, asking me to stay but I just told her to leave me alone.
I remember driving away from the appointment, seriously considering driving to Alabama or anywhere else a long way away.
Hours later, sitting in my dark fifth wheel with all the curtains drawn, I heard a car door down my driveway. Terrified that it was a bad guy, I called my friend to see if he had maybe decided to surprise me. He hadn't and the more we spoke the more hysterical I became.
Once again the intense suicidal thoughts flooded my brain. The pain radiated through mybody and it was all I could think about, the only thought that made me feel better. Thinking there is a way to stop the pain is the only relief in those moments. That's when I begged for his help in ending my misery. He listened and showed concern in his voice. Just as quickly as they came, the suicidal feelings subsided. My ill brain still knew that he was only speaking to me to be nice, though. I would not allow myself to feel like he, or anyone, cared about me.
My first two attempts at suicide happened during one of those intense, painful suicidal flood of thoughts and emotions. Both times, after I swallowed the pills, I felt so relieved to know that the pain would end soon, and I and everyone around me who I thought I tormented, would be free of my terribleness.
Today I'm great. Go figure that one out... please? Because I have no idea why I'm better. My meds are the same. I took the same fish oil, multivitamin and biotin I take every morning. I had the same coffee. I took a shower. Now that I think about it, I think it's been a week and a half since I last showered. When I'm in a depression, I am in a complete fog of thoughts and I lose all sense of time. I had no idea it had been that long. I knew I was gross but didn't feel I deserved to be clean. It's weird.
One more thing, I figured out another way to describe how depression feels to me: First a constant flood of bad thoughts about myself. Remember bad things I have done, bad things done to me, feeling bad about thinking about myself feeling bad, etc. Then I search for evidence that these horrible thoughts may be true. I take situations and twist everything so that I'm somehow bad and then feel a flood of pain that the bad thoughts are true, and that I'm horrible. All while feeling bad for thinking about myself so much. It sucks.
