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I feel so many things. I wish to die. I hear everyone’s arguments, but don’t feel them. I have worked my ass off to stay alive. I feel like no one sees the effort. I knew something was wrong at thirteen years old. I dreamed of suicide and death every single night. I didn’t know what was wrong with me and my mo was still rather emotionally abusive. Eventually I just decided to go on. Then at seventeen years old, I had a full blown manic episode with delusions of working at the N.S.A. and hallucinations. They told me I was only depressed. So for two years I fought for the right one, bipolar. Then I fought for the right meds which took another two years. Through it all I held down a job and went to college full time. I fought for my wellness- eat only organic/natural foods, exercise a couple times a week, have friends, family, apartment, animals- a life.

I fought hard.

And lost. Because no matter how much I put in the bank every night, I wake up broke in the morning. I’m tired and out of energy to fight. Why can’t the choice be mine? I was making sure I was making the right decision: I planned to die in two weeks on October 6^th. I told people about it to prepare them and I willingly put obstacles in my path. I figure if I tell people and let them do what they will to prevent guilt later and I still want to die, then it must be fact that I should die. I was writing all the letters, to explain everything, I was going to return to work and do it all. I was going to do suicide right. And then I ended any wondering. I choose death.

I’m sitting in the old ward and see my mind slipping away. I am practically emotionless. All the things that I love are not enough to keep me alive. I can’t even handle life. I can’t put all the parts together and hold it together. It’s been a constant battle for me. I thought I was winning for a while and then it all came apart at the seams. Death is the only logical choice. I presented a fairly good attempt at life and even had a kickass medication combination. What did it get me? A suffocating brain disorder that eats at me every second of every day. I reject bipolar. I don’t want it anymore. The only way to accomplish that is to die. I won’t be a well person, without meds. So what’s the fucking point?

I imagine stopping my meds and then I know the paranoia, the delusions and the hallucinations will come back. They are the dark forces within me that constantly beg to be released. I have just two people inside me- one is the high energy go-getter and the other is the black bile of depression. If I balance the two with the meds they give me I become a hybrid. In hybrid mode I sometimes get a taste of the mania’s- this gets me to do things and then I get a taste of depression which takes those things I do and gives them a negative twist. I am never without the two beasts. That’s what I live with every day. I miss what mania gives me while battling the dark pit of depression. Meds are no cure. They just try to push death further away.

I feel a rumbling in me. I see my want and need for a manic episode- to feel the high again. Then to violently crash down. I know how unpleasant the crash is so I am just ending the process now. Choosing death is so I am just ending the process now. Choosing death ends the struggle- makes sure I never feel the full effect of my moods again. No one is living my life but me. So why can’t everyone let go and let me die and be at peace? It’s my life. My death will allow everyone to let go and move on. By staying alive people continue to fear and worry. This won’t ever let up because I’ll always be bipolar. Dying solves that problem. Yes I am loved and I have a gift working with kids, but at the end of the day that is not enough.

I’m going crazy trying to manage my disorder. I feel it getting worse. I feel the dark voice awakening. I know soon it will wake up and then I am gone. It will take over telling me what to think and do. It will taint everything with the darkness it exudes. I can’t deal with this. Dying is a hell of a lot better than having this voice in my head trying to take over. It tells me to let go and let it take over. To go get my belt and hang myself. To get the metal and cut myself. It’s not strong enough yet, so I can still say no. I verbally promised a nurse, Laura, that I would wake up alive. I can still keep a promise.

SOMEONE STOP THE VOICE!!!

I can’t take it in my head. I can’t take the violent images in my head. This is why I choose death. Death gives me peace of mind. I don’t have to hear the voice as it awakens- it’s screaming to be let out. I feel my emotions that are left seeping out and I eel my eyes dim wit the heavy darkness coming to life. Isn’t this also an end to life? Physically taking my body doesn’t mean much when your head and heart are already gone.

It’s done. I WILL DIE IN the Hospital OR OUT OF the Hospital. I WILL DIE!!!

I feel death. I smell death. I see death in the mirror and in my dreams. Death is all around me. I fought for my life and I lost. It was a great epic battle to be remembered.

I don’t even know if I am a rational being anymore. I feel so rational but they are telling me I’m not. How can that be?

Voice: Die, die, die, feel the pain of all these years. Take what’s left of your life and kill it. Suffer no more with the coming of death. Die, die, die. It’s all over.

I know my limits and handicaps. More than anything I am realizing what I can’t do. It appears I cannot live the great independent life that I want. To me that is unacceptable. I can’t hold it together on the outside.

The day I leave here, I will go get everything to kill me. I will take it and die. I cannot live within the limits of my disorder. I couldn’t do it. Why do people still ask me to fight? To go one because people love me? What about what I want? I want out. I just want to die. Then everyone can move on with their life.

I see the open bathroom and all I can picture is me hanging myself with my belt from the shower curtain bar.

Need sleep to stop the thoughts.

I said, “I just want my life back,” and then I realized I don’t know what life is or what kind of life I want back.

I am so fearful, especially about the unknown. I’d rather die than face it or face the prospect of trying something and have it fail.

9-26-06
I always feared going crazy. I feared the moment that nothing would matter and I would choose death as the first and only option. I feared the loss of myself and the loss of what I know life to be. I feared until my reality became all that I feared. I wake up every day with a will only to die. My once exuberant and smart-ass existence has given way to brooding, one word responses and no goal directed activities except those made for dying. I have been on this ward with this staff many times before and I always brought a bright light of hope with me. I charmed the staff and gave wisdom to fellow patients. I was always a force to be reckoned with. Now I sit in rooms alone with some type of frown, I do not speak to other patients and I do not participate in groups. When they ask me how I feel, I tell them I just want to die. When they ask me what I want, I tell them I just want to be allowed to end my life. I sit down with a psychiatrist and she says she doesn’t know how to help me. I hear over the phone that I’m too unstable for my counselor to help me. Long ago I feared the complete mental loss of myself that would throw me into a dark pit with no way out except for a long painful wait for death or the quick and relatively easy option of immediately killing myself. I have come to this crossroad.

I have lost myself to crazy and come to the crossroads of either more suffering or an immediate death. Everyone keeps telling me to hold on, that life can be good again. Almost all admit that, yeah I could relapse again. But hey, at least there is some good. I reject that vehemently. Sure, I want the good again, but we all know at some point I’ll lose it. I want to end it before I have the chance to lose it. Why then isn’t my suicide with human nature? To want to prevent some hardship? I understand life has its ups and downs (I AM bipolar), but my disorder can make any up too high and any down too low. I want the option to quit. To give up. I have been so strong for so long and I am finally tired. People tell me to be strong, but they don’t see how long I have had to endure and be strong. From the rocky childhood and being friend, not child, to my parents, to my cousin abusing me in terrifying ways, to wanting to die at thirteen and then believing I could work for a secret government agency at seventeen and then going through therapy to heal from all of that and more meds than I care to remember seeking to make me stable.

I give up. I choose not to be strong, not to participate in life anymore and not hope for anything more than death. I have given in to crazy, I have allowed myself to become a living ghost- devoid of feeling, blind to loved one’s suffering and an ache for the grave and nothingness to encompass me. We all long for finality in life and nothing is more final than death. I understand there is nothing after death- meaning most people want to see what their funeral will be like or how their family moves on- I am okay with never knowing, never seeing the joy in my brothers face or the fate of my cats. I made my peace with what life has to offer and welcome the cold nothingness and finality of death.

9-27-06
Shit is all I can say. I fought very hard against ever experiencing depression. I have said that I don’t get depressed if my mania is treated. I came to this hospital with the firm belief that I was neither manic nor depressed, but suicidal. I thought I was having an emotional breakdown, not a mood breakdown. I believed in my medication and their ability to keep my mood stable. I didn’t take suicide as some part of either mood, in the hopes that choosing death was not about my neurons mis-firing. So I looked past my immense daily anxiety over everything in my life, I looked past my ambivalence over living or dying and I looked past the stir-fry emotions hidden below the surface. Then the voices began my first night back on the ward. I felt the rumble in my brain, I heard it’s dark raspy voice beginning to wake. The next morning it began, first with berating me for every little mistake I’ve ever made, and then later a voice commenting on my daily activities. Once this happened, I could not deny that perhaps my neurons were somehow involved. Then, I became close to comatose after the loss of my counselor of four years. My bed became a haven, I withdrew from both staff and patients. Books were my company. Groups became torture and finally my appetite began to go. With my degree in psychology and training as a behavioral therapist, I could no longer pretend that I was not depressed. Withdrawal, over-sleeping, loss of appetite and deadly suicidal feelings- all classic signs of depression. I search myself and wonder how this happened. I was manic a few weeks ago, but the hospital released me after I convinced me and them that I was stable. What I never considered was the idea that I cycled to mania, normal and then a heavy dark depression. It was like I couldn’t accept that my moods could form a different cycle all these years. It had always been: mania, depression, mania, depression. I have always been a classic Bipolar I case- get super manic and then crash to a depression. There was no in-between, no normal mood to give a hint of wellness between extreme’s. I live my life in black and white and so it’s not surprising that with the same force I committed myself to living, I have committed myself to dying. But I digress. This time it was different. I didn’t go so manic that I lost touch with reality. I went a little high and was brought down to normal. Then I decided to die. Then, it appears, depression reared its ugly head after a two and a half year absence. It’s back with such force that I don’t’ know what is rational and what isn’t. It appears as a result of only having a little mania, my depression has come back with a ferocity I have never seen. For once I have no shield to protect myself, no sword to go on the offense, just a vulnerability that has left me completely defenseless and without the strength to even utter a moan of helplessness.

My depression. I don’t want ownership. It is “the” depression. That sounds colder and it puts more distance between myself and the mood. I want to die more than any one thing. But I don’t want to die if it is a result of neurons. No, I take that back. I want to die so I don’t have to face this again. I can actually deal with mania because even with agitation mania welds some inherent goodness. Depression never gives, it only takes. I promised myself all those years ago that I would never go through another depression like the one before. Then I did everything in my power to make sure it did not- from compliance of meds and the right meds to therapy and general wellness. I still failed. My disorder is unstable- my counselor was right. No one can promise me that I won’t be here again, that I won’t recognize the symptoms of depression again. I can take the pain and suffering life brings, but I cannot stand the difference between my euphoric highs and my crushing depressions. My moods are turbulent and emotions tortured. For that reason, I want nothingness. I want the finality of death. I will not resign my life to take peace in periodic hospital treatments and a lifetime of fear.

Maybe I need to breakdown instead of this stoic numbness. If I let the hurt in instead of keeping it at bay. I do not want to feel the loss of Linda or even accept it.

Maybe ECT. I hear there is short term memory loss- so maybe I get that, then I won’t remember how I feel now. My brain needs a re-start, to become manageable again. To keep me from this mood madness. I’m starting a new medication, but I don’t know what it will do. On the one hand, if it works and I live, then I’ll be afraid that now I have to change meds every few years and live what I don’t want to live. Or, it won’t work and it proves to me that death is the way. Either way, I figure I will end up dead. I don’t see an equation that will allow me to live.

We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again

like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home.

I can find my way back.
-From "Back" Jane Kenyon

Thus far I have always found my way back. I have lived through wanting so bad to be dead night after night after night. I have been so depressed to the point where I slept through every day, ate nothing for days on end and listened to the endless noise of the voices in my head. I felt the hurt of my past to the point that I relived those experiences in adulthood. Pain was unbearable and I wanted to escape that pain. And that is why I lived- I merely wanted escape or avoidance, which was not enough to be dead. I could escape the pain by living healthy and strive for happiness. Death was not the only way I could escape pain.

And that is what makes this time scary. I do not wish for escape- I know it is possible to get better. But I want an end. To know that “this” will never happen again. No one can give me that finality. There is a large difference between escape and an end. I don’t want to commit suicide and then wake up alive with things different. I want to commit suicide and have an end, for there to be nothingness. I choose not to be okay with this happening again. I have a terminal illness and I am at peace with the end of life.

I don’t want to find my way back. The way back keeps leading to this road. I get healthier and my disorder gets worse to nullify all of the progress I’ve made. It comes back again and again, each time getting worse. It’s not that I go a little high or a little low, but I can cycle to the extremes in just a day. Each cycle that comes and goes commits me to a worse cycle the next time. How high will I go? How low will I go? Where does it end?

How can anyone ask me to be strong and keep fighting when I am being jerked around and when I fight so hard only to keep losing? What about my pain? My life? My feelings? My moods? Why can’t I get what I want?

Who would want to come back to “this”? So far I’ve had five or so days of nothing but wanting to die. Who cares if I then go ninety days of being okay- I don’t want the week of this intense mood. No amount of happy days can make up for the days of intense suicide moods. That is the plain and inelegant truth of being bipolar. People say to bounce back, but I’m tired of bouncing period. The cure for bipolar is death. I want that cure. Every road I take leads to death. Kiandra was the one that ever led me anywhere different. Now that is gone and I’m lost without my trusty maglight. I don’t know where to go so I might as well be dead.

I can still remember being thirteen years old, staring up at the ceiling and thinking of ways to die: If I jump out of my window I might die, but I might live and be in physical pain; I could jump in front of a moving vehicle, but same thing as jumping; I could hang myself, but what if I get found out? Those were the main things. At thirteen, I wasn’t as well versed in mental health as I am now. Ten years later I know exactly what could kill me and I still want to die. I have a ten year history of this walk with death and only a few weeks here and there of wanting life. Why then do people ant me to stay alive and continue this cycle of years of torture and only weeks of reprieve? To keep them happy and guilt free? But what about me? What kind of life is that? I think it is selfish of people to keep me alive and selfish of myself to want to die. So where does that put everyone?

How will this all be resolved? At the heart, this will all be about living or dying. That’s all this has ever been about since I was thirteen. Only once was I able to choose life alone, but I wasn’t able to maintain that choice. Now I don’t see the point of making that choice again with the prospect of failure again. I cannot imagine a life of chosen happiness sustained throughout the years, with these hospital visits becoming only a hiccup along my life span. This is what those around me see. What they don’t care to see is the years of work and years of highs and lows to come that will get me there. The prospect of that future is not enough to overcome the pain of the present.

In the present I am laid bare. I have allowed myself to be enveloped by the darkness. I always swore this would kill me. By making that choice I give up hope, happiness and a future. I give up life and all that it contains. How do you recover from that? How do I move back into life after giving up on it for so long? I feel like I don’t deserve to live after turning my back on what it has to offer. And if the darkness turns its back on me, where do I go? This pseudo-living experience? Just like my designation as a “high functioning” individual with mental illness, but I can’t seem to make it. What does that make me?

What happens if meds are not the answer? How will anyone ever convince me to pick life again and be okay with the fact that I might face all of this again? For sure if this happens again, I will die- no discussions. So the way I figure it, I will die in the coming years so I might as well do it now- a pre-emptive strike. Why not? It’s my life, my wants and wishes.

I don’t want to just get by. I feel trapped. What if an episode does not leave? Everyone seems to accept ongoing suffering with sporadic happiness. That recovery includes more episodes of the disorder. I choose to say no.

9-29-06
Maybe I’m breaking myself down. I’m taking myself to my core beliefs, at least my beliefs for the last few years. I built my wellness on very shaky ground, so I guess it’s not a surprise it failed. I feared so much and I always knew it would come true. I had to face all of those fears before I could move on. Could I let go, have the darkness fully descend, be immersed in my bipolar and live? I knew I would want death more than anything and I didn’t know if I could survive that. I didn’t know if I want to survive it. I still don’t know.

Why suicide? Why do I not even want to try to get better? Because I don’t believe that I will get better. Or rather, I do not believe I will live the rest of my life without depression or mania. I have manic-depression and nothing I say or do will ever change that. I swore over two years ago that I would not keep living through these depressions. They take too much from me and I am never able to fully regain what I lost in those times. I’m sitting at near empty now and slipping away day by day.

I have been so numb since I’ve been here. I have refused thus far to talk or at least I’m not talking about anything besides wanting to die. I know the hazards of being a volcano, yet because I have not wanted to get well, I did not care about those hazards. Then I self-injured. In the ward.

9-30-06
I know the Geodon is working. I’m getting a very clear head now. But it hasn’t taken away my death wish. Though I’ll admit, it’s hard to stay as stubborn with a clearer head. It makes me truly face what I want so badly- to die. This will either save me or sink me. I would now say about 30% of this was a med issue and then the rest, 70%, was an inside thing. I am happy the voices inside my head are fading. That and then trying to act normal and the loudness of the ward- that was a lot to handle. I would hate to commit suicide with an unclear head. I’d do it, but that’s not my preference. They say there is no rational suicide- I wanted to at least try to make it so!

The meds have also cleared the way for me to talk. I think that maybe I could actually talk to someone instead of writing. But would that mean I’m getting better? Do I want that? Questions to ponder.

10-1-06
I can’t take group situations where a lot of people are talking. My head takes in all the voices, but can’t make sense out of it. Then the one patient keeps talking- but it doesn’t make much sense- but she tries to talk a lot. Just feels draining trying to sort things out.

10-3-06
I think I know a side effect of Geodon. Lost ability to write. Not even an urge- that sucks. I will not get angry though because Geodon has changed my life. When I decided to kill myself, I never believed that this could have all been a result of my neurons misfiring. At some point some neuron decided to miss his jump across the synapse and once other neurons saw that, they all began to take a dive. I hadn’t been depressed in years and no longer worried about getting depressed. Mania was the thing to watch and treat. And if mania was treated, then there would be no depression. I never even entertained the possibility that my moods could cycle out of sequence (the sequence being mania then depression). I went hypomanic/mixed then back to normal and then depressed. Both my sequence and my meds failed.

Having bipolar is a learning experience and I made the mistake of believing I had learned almost everything about bipolar and AD/HD. I thought meds were one hundred percent perfect and I was developing a very well life. Meds are never perfect. My brain very clearly needed Geodon. My mod completely changed within just a few days. I have lingering feelings, but the heavy dark cloud lifted so quickly. I couldn’t believe that so much of the shit going on had to do with brain chemistry. Now I keep saying, “if only.” If only I had caught the symptoms, if only I had seen my doctor, if only…

10-4-06
I chose death and ended up alive
I very firmly made the decision to die. I looked at all my options and chose death. Yet here I am very much alive. Granted, I planned my death for two days from now, so I would be alive anyway. Hmmm. That takes the air out of my writing for today. Of course I am alive, I had not planned to die today. Now Oct 6^th scares me. Irrationally, part of me still thinks I am going to die. It’d be hard to do it myself, but what if God struck me down. That I am supposed to die on that date somehow. Rationally, I know I will be living on and past that date.

How will I end up alive? I have a feeling it has something to do with those options I apparently looked at. I don’t think I loved at all of the options- I refused to see the ones I found unacceptable. I guess I was still trying to be so strong. I didn’t consider living with my family, quitting my job and getting disability, leaving my home in Virginia and moving hundreds of miles away and reducing m animal load. I looked at anything less than the life I had as a failure. Linda was right, as always, that I was being too black and white and was very distorted about my life. And I was too afraid of the unknown. Then everything was lost so that only the bare bones of my life existed. I did have a breakdown that has rocked me to my core. I am at ground zero and will have a slow rebuilding process.

10-4-06
Predictability. Something many people yearn for- to know what will happen day in and day out. That’s what I have here at my mental retreat. I know the temperature every day, I know the people I will see, I know the clothes I’m going to wear, I know what is expected of me every day and I know what I will be doing every day. Now I stare out the window and feel a deep yearning to feel that sun on my body and to have something completely unpredictable such as when the wind will whip through my hair and if I will get goose bumps and how the temperature feels on my skin. I know there must be some birds chirping and the sound of a light gentle breeze through the trees, but I hear none of that. I only get the near constant chatter of patients, pages turning, sometimes TV, sometimes music and the schooch of chairs and rattle of keys.

Reminds me that I don’t have a life outside the hospital anymore.

10-3-06

Everything seems to have call happened for a reason. Like my day treatment a few weeks ago- I met five women who are the best friends I have ever had and have willed me to get better. Without them, I don’t know where I would be.

Depression came and claimed me without a fight. But then I think and I remember in day treatment, I kept telling them my job was not the only thing wrong- that there were bigger issues, which they never got to. I guess I heard a rumbling and then gave up. Geodon then took the neuron depression away, so I was left vulnerable with just my stubborn bull-headed decision to die, no longer based on my mood. After writing this and feeding my heart with music, my wish to die is down to thirty percent. That thirty percent only represents fear now. Just fear about the unknown. Of what could happen and of my unstable moods.

But today in this moment, I choose life.