I'm not giving up.

Cross posting this from my livejournal, just to give an update that I'm not dead yet.

Today I did an intake at a mental health clinic. I have an appointment with a psychiatrist in June, if I don't manage to show up on a day no one else does. I would have stayed longer today for Counseling Orientation, and I still might go as it's not until 2pm, but I needed to come back to eat something, and I don't know that I'll be up to biking another 10 miles.

I'm feeling a bit better, Monday I'm going to send out my resume and apply online to a few places (I never knew that craigslist is a viable place to find jobs). Maybe turn in all the ones I've picked up and visit the welfare office too. This weekend I'm going to clean/organize my things down to the bare necessities (I've accrued more belongings already and I already had too much with me before) and do some volunteer work. I roughly want to schedule going every other day or so, at least two or three days a week. If not today, I'll definitely go to the Counseling orientation next Friday.

I'm more certain of my plans now. I'm still going to try to get a job here, and I need to start some more preliminary conversations with the colleges I'm looking at, but I'm fairly confident that I'll have enough FAFSA money to live on for awhile, and really, I just need a little extra leg up on the world and I can make it. I do think my boyfriend should sign up for FAFSA and get his associate's degree too, although things with his parents are complicated and could cause trouble for him.

I think I know what to talk to my mom about when I call her, I'm not giving up and admitting defeat and slinking back home, I'm going to go back to school, but stay with my mom for the summer until my FAFSA disbursement lets me get a place of my own. Assuming I don't find a job, which looks like more of a possibility now that I have a slightly better idea of where to look and how to present myself.

And I'll be seeing my boyfriend again today and hopefully we'll talk more now that my thoughts are a little more organized.

I've got a few weeks to make a final decision on what I'm doing, I need to get a Nevada ID to get services at the place I'm at, but if I move back to CA, it'll be another year before I qualify for residency again. I would rather stay here, eventually getting a job with the Animal Foundation or Animal Control and taking advantage of the better outreach infrastructure that is lacking near my mom's and lower costs of living than Orange County.

Fear of Undeath

So I recently found a really cool website called "Mark Reads/Watches". It started with him giving chapter by chapter reviews of the pain that is the Twilight Series, and eventually expanded out into other media and series. In one of his reviews he mentioned that his greatest fear would be to die alone and forgotten. That's pretty bad, but I would be unbothered by such an end, in fact, it'd almost be welcome.

See, the problem is that I'm kind of actually on the brink of suicide. Currently, I don't think I'm going to make any attempts, but I came very close yesterday to hanging myself in the closet with a dog leash. There are lots of reasons why I'm feeling this way, but that's not really what this post is about. What this post is about is the number one reason why I have never actually attempted suicide.

I think I would fail. I even had a brief consideration that I should make an attempt at an attempt just so that I could be institutionalized, but ultimately did not because I fear that in that case I would succeed. Cutting would interfere in my ability to make art, and I would really like to continue working on that. One of my biggest fears about institutionalization is being separated from my art projects. One of the most frustrating things about my current illness/predicament is that I actually want very much to be able to sit up and do things so I can work on my current project. Another likely outcome of a suicide attempt would be brain damage, and considering a great deal of my depression already revolves around feeling like a burden on others. I especially hate myself for my current suicidiality because I finally realize what a horrid effect it would have upon my love.

But suicide represents above all else an end to the pain. This week I have been in constant pain. Laying down the whole time reduces the pain that comes of standing or sitting, but it never actually goes away. Every time I am reminded of how useless I am, emotional pain wells up in my chest and it feels like I'm being crushed. I'm also reasonably certain I've developed ulcers because my stomach and guts hurt. It hurts when I don't eat. It hurts when I do eat. While I'm eating I have to stop because my gag reflex acts up. When I have to get up to use the restroom, my vision melts, my head throbs and my limbs tremble like they've fallen asleep, including pins and needles feeling. This isn't fun, this isn't enjoyable and it's barely tolerable at best. I just want it to be over. And even when it feels like it's getting better, a single negative comment can make it all worse.

Being homeless wasn't so bad when I still had some energy. As things stand I'm being kicked out Monday because I've spent all week in pain and I didn't want to exacerbate the pain. I'm not going to get very far. I don't even have the energy to sit up and repack my things so that I can take some stuff with me. Even the very basic things, greatly reduced to fit and be the least weight necessary, I probably won't make it a block. I expect it will take me a day or two just to make it the three miles to the shelter, where they probably still won't have room for me. I don't know how I will make it to an area to panhandle for money, for food. I don't know how I'll make it to the library. My optimistic hopes of volunteering at the animal shelter, much less getting a job, are only a pipe dream now.

Some of my brain functions are closer to normal now that I've been trying to eat enough to recover, and today is better than yesterday. But in all honesty, I think things are about to get a whole lot worse.

And this didn't even end up the post I wanted to make, I was going to talk about how the ever popular zombie apocalypse rubs in my face the cruel reality that I not only wouldn't survive it but that any hopes or solutions I actually have and want to pursue to live in a defensible self sufficient homestead are just as fantastic. The idea of becoming a zombie is abhorrent to me, because I'd really rather just die and return to nature, but the last couple of days, I feel like I've actually been that zombie, and I just want it to end.

Death doesn't scare me, it fills me with relief that eventually I can stop trying so hard for so little, that every attempt I make to do anything isn't just going to result in another cruel slap to my face. I pray for oblivion, just to let me absorb back into the universe to make something new and better than me. It doesn't matter that I don't even really believe that it's that easy.

What I'm most afraid of is that my life just continues to be the same series of unfortunate events where one little mishap, in this case, a pair of new shoes that caused blisters, leads to me becoming severely debilitated. It leads to traumatic events that leave me in constant fear of recurrence, of fearful thoughts that play on repeat no matter how minor the threat. I'm afraid that I won't die on the streets, but that I'll be attacked, raped and disfigured. And the misery will just continue, over and over again, in new and ever more inventive ways to destroy me.

Catching Up

It has been a long time since I've posted here, and a great deal has happened and changed in my life and my future may well be more uncertain than ever. It is interesting reading my last few entries and seeing what has and hasn't changed. The biggest reason I haven't posted here in so long is that quite simply I've felt spiritually dead. I still live my life mindfully, but I've had little to no sense of otherworldlieness. One of the saddest things I experienced moving back with my mom was that I could not reunite with one of my earliest spirit friends "The Lord of Storms" who was a massive thunderbird who would always greet me with a friendly gust.

My departure from Pittsburgh was quite possibly the greatest instance of emotional injury ever dealt to me. The last few years there I had come to rely on the simple truth of the fact that I had friends. In no small part due to the My Little Pony fad, I had come to realize for myself that Friendship really is Magic. Even when everything else in my life was falling apart, I found meaning and comfort and succor in the knowledge that I had friends, and that people liked me for me. I was even kind of popular which quite frankly floored me. I loved my friends, and although my ability to reciprocate began to crumble, I was always surprised by how overwhelming the support shown to me was.

Until over the course of one weekend, two bitter, delusional and likely dangerously malicious people destroyed the very foundation of everything that I understood about myself and others. The issues and grievances suddenly brought up against me in such clandestine scale were all things I'd been led to believe were resolved, or even were cases I had been completely unaware existed. My scope of understanding suddenly lurched from "Wow, people really like me" to "Oh god, they've only been tolerating me this whole time". I was devastated. I was hysterical. It still wounds me to this very day.

I know that I do still have some terrific friends, and I still don't understand at all why anyone continues to like or tolerate me, but I'm grateful to have them. The people who wronged me are starting to face the repercussions of their selfish vindictiveness, but the damage has already been done. They turned my own mother against me. They have made me paranoid and suspicious of everyone around me, my anxieties over my own inadequacy greater than ever.

Returning "home" to my mother's was not what I was expecting. She's suffered a relapse in her hoarding (see for yourself here) and my good old 'friends' convincing her to believe I had nothing but ulterior motives ultimately led to me needing to move on.

This year, I have reached the point where I considered myself an actual suicide risk. I did not make any attempts, but I had resigned myself to the concept, and in fact more than any grief, the concept gave me a sense of great relief. It's been almost a year since I've seen a therapist, and I desperately need to find a new one, even as my capacity to do literally anything is fading more with each day. Officially and by technicality I have been homeless since I left my husband. Just a few weeks ago, I spent a week on the actual streets.

I regained my will to live, but voluntarily going to a homeless shelter was preferable to where I was living. For the next month and a half, I have a temporary refuge with some of my boyfriend's relatives until they move out of state in June. I'm currently suffering a pretty terrible bout of anemia (I assume, based on my history and the symptoms) but I'm hoping to figure out a way of applying for welfare benefits, that is if I can decide upon an address to use.

And the blog post I actually wanted to write on fears and death will have to wait for another time when I am less tired.