Depression runs in my family, due to an inherited lack of our brains to assimulate or store certain chemicals that we need to function effectively. I found this out back in the mid 1980’s when my insurance company paid for my doctor to run a long series of tests after I tried to kill myself. They found and identified the chemical and put me on Prozac.
I called all my surviving sisters and my brother to let them know that they needed to be on the lookout for it, because it’s one of the things that is passed on to children at almost 100% rate, only to find out that, without exception, all of them were on Prozac also.
I was first diagnosed with Major Depression and Multi-Personality Disease when I was 42 years old, but my first suicide attempt was when I was 14 years old. It was hushed up, because no one wanted a “crazy” in their family. I tried three other times before the one when I was 42. I almost made it that time, and ended up in a mental institution for a month after I go out of the hospital (ten days). My doctors were already treating me for depression at that time – I was diagnosed with multiple personality problems while in the M.I. This is not schicophrenia, or split personality, by the way, as a lot of people seem to believe. That is two distinct personalities, a good guy and a bad guy basically. DID, or multi-Personalilty Disorder, can have a plentitude of personalities, or part personalities. I had six entire personalities which could take over the body and drive it non-stop for anywhere from an hour to 2-3 weeks at a time. There is also 29 partials. These, in my case at least, had one job and one job only that they did. One of mine did nothing but drive the vehicle. Not that they did it all the time, but when they were ‘up front’ that was the only thing they would do – the job that they were specifically created for. These personalities were not something that was done consciously, but were created by the brain without me actually knowing anything about it when things got too much for me to handle. Many of them were discovered when I was hypnotized at the hospital. The youngest was too young to talk, believed to have been created when my Aunt’s boyfriend gave me gonnerrhia at ten months of age. Of course, I wasn’t alone at that. Every young girl in my family, with one exception, was treated for it at the same time. The older ones told who did it, so they knew who it was. He was never even questioned, as doctors weren’t required to report such things then. However, a 10 month old baby is not prepared to accept the sexual attention of even very smally endowed man. I don’t remember it now, but apparently it was traumatic enough to create my first ”personality” who still exists, to this day.
Another one, also based from the sexual attention of one of my in-laws cousins, was created when I was four years old. I suppose that a 4 year olds perception of this type of event is different from a 10 month old baby’s. Which would explain why I have another personality from when my mom married my stepdad. He favored oral and anal sex, as did his friends (3 of them). The last sexual type personality was created when I was raped on my 16th birthday. I still wake up with nightmares from that. But 1,2 and 4 are only partial personalities. Number three is the only one that is a full fledged person in her own right.
Today was a bad day. But then, most of them HAVE been, here lately. I have been in considerable pain, couldn’t even get out of bed without help. I was back in bed by noon (up for 5 hours) and didn’t get up again until almost 6:00 PM. I guess that I’m a real wimp, but I’m taking 900 MG of Lyrica for nerve damage caused by diabetes daily, plus 30 MG of hydrocodone every day, 3 20MG tablets of soma and I’m still in so much pain that I can barely move. I also take a shitload of other meds. By the time that I take them all, I’m so full that I can’t even eat. Not that I really feel like eating, anyway. On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the worse pain that I’ve ever experienced (which at this time is at the end of a six day labor with my daughter) today started at a 9, went up to 9.5 then gradually went down after I was in bed for a couple of hours (took my noon pain meds just before laying down) to about 7.5 and are now back up to about 8.5. As soon as enough time has gone by so that it’s safe to take the next dose, I’m headed back to bed.
Friday, January 18, 2008, 8:14 AM
My depression level is rising. I finally managed to get a repairman out to fix my computer – that is, my access to the internet. One person came out last week, but didn’t manage to get it going. It was so simple – the connections were all corroded. No signal was getting through to my computer. The first guy didn’t even check the connections. Hopefully, this time it will still work, even though this last repairman warned me that the signal was too strong and may cause further problems.
One of the guys who stays here gave me $25.00 of what he owes me, all in $1.00 bills. Right now, that leaves $528.00 that he still has to pay to catch up. Another man owes me $622.00. Another one is behind $234.00. If they would ever pay me, I could actually buy ALL of the medicine that I’m supposed to be on, instead of just a few of them.
I’ve been in a lot of pain for the last week and a half. For the last two days it’s been bad enough that I have spent most of the time in bed. I’m a wimp. I have no problem with death. I’m not afraid of it at all, in fact, to me death would be a very welcome release. I find myself thinking about it a lot more often lately. It would be so easy. I’m an insulin dependent diabetic. All I have to do is take a sleeping pill, fill up about 10-12 syringes, inject them, lay down and go to sleep. By the time I go into insulin shock, I’m deeply asleep. Once my insulin levels reach the point of causing a heart attack, I won’t be knowing about it. Even if someone finds me (which won’t happen unless Gloria comes by, and if I decide to do it, I’ll do it shortly after she goes to work), they won’t want to make me angry by opening my door and waking me up. Gloria works at night, so no one will think it strange that I’ve slept a long time. Gloria usually wakes me up about 6:20, after she has come home from work and made me a pot of coffee. By that time, I should have been dead somewhere between 2-4 hours. Even if she found me right after it, with my sugar levels so low as to be about non-existant, they won’t be able to restart my heart.
I’ve got to where I’m unable to stay awake past about 8:30 PM. If I take the shots just before I go to sleep, they should have plenty of time to do their work before anyone checks on me. I really hate that she should be the one who finds me. But it’s the only time to be sure that the effects are irreversible. I’ve learned several good lessons from other times that I’ve tried to kill myself. The pain is getting so bad that I’m really getting desperate.
I’m so alone that to all intents and purposes, I might as well be on a desert island. I have no one that I can talk to. The only one who might have been a confidant is Gloria, but she is very deaf, so there is no such thing as a private conversation with her. You have to speak so loudly that everyone in the vicinity is privy to what you say. Besides, she has so many problems of her own that I don’t want to add to her sadness. Everyone else, without exception, is looking to me to help solve their own problems. I like helping people, but it’s become more and more of a chore, as none of them seem to want to really DO anything for themselves. They tell me and seem to think, “Okay, she’ll take care of it for me”. That isn’t ‘helping’ as far as I’m concerned. They want me to furnish food and lodging for them, while they continue to drink, and most of them, use drugs. I’m really fed up with it. If they have money for booze and street drugs, they have enough to pay me some of what they owe.
I’m having a lot of confusion when I first wake up from my afternoon nap, as to whether its morning or night. Sometimes it takes 20-30 minutes to get myself straight, though usually its more like 8-10 minutes. I think that I find those periods of confusion more disturbing than anything else. If Jeff, my husband, ever finds out, he will probably put me into an assisted living home, and I would lose my dogs. I couldn’t handle that. They are the only ones who love me just because I’m me. Not because I feed them, because I don’t. Other people do that for me. I’m pretty useless nowadays. If I ever found out that I was going to lose them, I’d kill myself in a shot. Whats the use of living longer if it’s a pain every second of every day because you don’t have those little bright eyes watching you every day to make sure that you don’t leave them, those little hard bodies pressed up against you when you lay down, or sitting or laying down at your feet every second of every day. They rarely get more than a few feet from me at any time. They WANT to be close to me, and the humans I know most certainly don’t. With the major exception of Mike and Gloria Robinson, the only time other people want to be around me is when they want something out of me. I guess they think that I’m so stupid that I can’t see through them, but even a mental midget would get the picture when, time after time, they finish every conversation with a request for money, some of my pills (NEVER!), food, etc. I get so tired of it. They steal money and cigarettes from me on a regular basis.
Life, for me, is becoming such a burden. At times, its almost more than I can handle.
I’m out of my pain pills now. I don’t have the money to pick them up until Thursday. I hurt so badly that I cry sometimes. I don’t cry easily. When I do, I go to my bathroom, because I can’t stand for anyone to see me. My dogs go with me – they rarely get more than 2-5 feet from me. When I’m feeling better than I am now I joke about the fact that they don’t think I can go pee without supervision. However, when I cry, they try to jump up on me to give me ‘kisses’ and whine piteously until I stop. When you have 4 dogs, even small ones such as mine are, that’s a lot of sharp little claws digging into legs that are already hurting enough to cry about. The don’t mean to cause pain; they’re trying to comfort me. But the pain is there, nonetheless.
About a month ago, my diabetic neuropathy moved up another notch. Now, in addition to having severe pain that my meds no longer touch, I have lost almost all sense of touch in my fingertips. I feel like I’m back in high school typing class again. I have to watch my fingers as I type – no such thing as touch-typing anymore. Same with my crocheting and cross stitching. Of course, cross-stitching is almost a gone subject anyway. My vision is really messed up and I can’t even see where to place my needle any more. I can handle most of it. I am buying the LARGE TYPE books so that I can still read. I’ve gone from Irish Linen (28-32 stitches per inch) to size 14 stitches per square inch Aida cloth for my cross-stitching. But I can’t get used to the pain. I’m taking the highest dosage the law allows (I’m dying, but we can’t take any chanches on me getting addicted, now, can we?) and I’m in such pain that I getting to the point that I can’t stand it anymore. Maybe it’s more that I won’t stand it. For a while there, I could handle more because I knew that it push came to shove, I had a foolproof way to kill myself. I didn’t necessarily have to do it; I COULD if I really needed to. Now, it’s getting hairline close to needing to.
