So much talent wanting to die

I stumbled on here like most – ADHD-ing through web links.  I see these posts and I am blown away by the talent I see – those who express themselves so wonderfully in words.  ESPECIALLY the young ones!  Poetry like my husband, who has tried suicide more than once.  That is until a massive heart attack ‘killed’ him.  He came back with terrible damage, but his poetry is something ‘not of this world’.  I will give the web site below and everyone is invited to send in your wonderful sentiments – those of hope AND despair.

My husband now is the strong one – he is dying but is not afraid to die.  I should be so lucky.  To die, I have to do the ‘unforgiveable’, for my heart is relatively healthy.  What a sick twist of fate.  I have battled this demon far too long.  First manifested at age 18 in a 10-year battle with an eating disorder, but the roots go far earlier than that.  Sexual abuse from age 5, continuing into my adult years.  Different men, none relatives.  But no one heard my cry for help.  No one wanted to hear it – like my parents.  If I brought it up, I was told to ‘stop talking about it’ because it would upset the relatives of the perpatrator’.  That SOB died in prison.  In later years, I was called a liar, but most hurtful was being put in the place of the victimizer – not the victim.   To this day, that is the story on my husband’s family grapevine – it was my fault.  I have been locked in a closet, told by yet another it is no use to tell because HE had powerful connections.  I went to join the military years ago, but then was raped by my recruiter, left stranded in an orange grove in the middle of the night, lost and wandering not unlike a recent episode of ‘Lie to Me’.  That was not the last of occurances and those are buried so deep, I cannot even believe they are any trigger that brought me to where I am today.

Diagnosed with depression at 18 (then anorexia/bulemia) and I am now 50.  With all due respect to any Psychiatrist or Psychologist, NOT A SINGLE ONE HELPED ME.  NOT any psycotropic drug helped.  My battle with anorexia ended after 10 years as fast as it started.  No therapy.  Hospitals were a joke.  I simply woke one morning without the desire to starve, or binge and purge.  That can only be the hand of God.

That was the last time He touched me.  I spent the next 25 or more years outrunning the demons of depression, too scared to even take a nap because to do so during the day meant you were giving in, losing ground.  I ran and ran, and I stumbled many times, but managed to pull out, to put it in the mental closet not unlike the closet my stalker had locked me in so long ago.  A perfectionist, I went back to college while working full time.  School full time and working full time, and I graduated Summa Cum Laude.  A shooting star is all I see in retrospect.

The stessors of life became too much.  My husband fell ill, then the massive MI that left me as sole provider of this household.  My employer did not support my caregiving efforts and I felt guilt because insurance claims impacted the company’s bottom line.  Indeed, I would hear how our name was brought up at the annual insurance meetings and my heart sank and I saw the handwriting on the wall.  My good job’s time was limited and I was powerless.  I became manic for the first time in my life.  My husband, diagnosed years before with (then) manic-depression a/k/a bi-polar, usually had manic episodes in the first days of our marriage.  When depression would hit, it would be what I term as “deep six.”  How I used to envy the manic,  myself only knowing the depressed state and going through life in this damn fugue state.  So when the manic did hit me in 2006, it was wonderful — or so *I* thought.

Apparently one’s perception is a bit skewed during these phases.  My employer notated behavioral changes in my file, though never mentioned anything until the day I was terminated – over a year later.  Never any mention of “hey, you might want to call our EAP for help.”  I did not see I was in trouble until the day I lost control and hit the level of rage.  You people who experience this know this feeling:  it is as though you can stand beside yourself while your this Mr. Hyde and there is nothing you can do but watch.  That finally ramped so high that my husband made desperate call to our doctor on a Sunday.  He called in Geodon and when I googled what this drug was for, I went into another rage.  “I am NOT some schizophrenic having a psychotic break!” I shouted.  Still, I took a dose and plummeted to earth.  The doctor said the ‘higher’ you are, the greater the side effect and my reaction meant I was in desperate need of the medication.

My short-lived manic phase was over.  But more stressors came:  my husband’s near death and disability.  I was juggling all: caregiving, work (as programmer/analyst) a long commute, doctor appoinments, and guilt.  I let my own physical health (fibromyalgia) go for fear of losing my job.  I cancelled all the MRI’s, CT scans, etc my doctor wanted to run.  Joke on me - I lost my job in Sept. 2007 because “I was no longer competent to perform my job duties – mentally or physically.”  I knew in my heart this day would come, but the reason rocked my world.  HR’s last words as I was escorted out: “At least now you can take this time to get some help for yourself.”  My only thought was, “What the hell did she mean by THAT?”  I had no idea because I was beyond the point of recognizing for myself I was in trouble.  I knew I had been forgetful of late, getting lost in familiar places, but nothing to warrant ‘imcompetent’ and ‘to get yourself some help.’

But others had noticed what I no longer was able to observe in myself.  I would hear — too late — comments that backed up my employer.  Where were you people when it mattered?  When I maybe could have done something about it when I had the resources to get help?  Now unemployed, I could not afford COBRA and was denied insurance for medical reasons.  No more medication for the fibro or the mental.  By this time, the old Dx of depression was now bi-polar/personality disorder and the most recent: dementia.  The latter brought on by the many instances of head trauma perhaps.

Those with an eating disorder know the reason we fall into that hell:  the need to feel we have SOME control.  I lost my job, our income was gone, I had no prospects since I could not use my employer as any reference.  My life was spiraling out of control and it was a death spiral.  Nine months later, after soul-searching, I went to my doctor and asked if he thought I should file for disability – a nightmare process I just did not want to endure.  His response:  “You HAVE BEEN disabled!”  Again – thanks for the late news flash, doc.  With that, I filed and now I am going through the denial/appeal/denial and wait the next level.  But I cannot give DDS what they want without insurance.  And without disability I can get no medical care, no medications.  A deadly catch-22 the likes of which SSA and DDS could care less.   

I have exhaused my IRA long ago.  Exhausted the last of my unemployment.  There is no income and the bills grow.  The house may well be lost.  The power will be shut off next week.  The phone – soon gone.  My only method to reach out – this computer – will be cut off.  Without meds, my body screams as loud as my mind in pain.  Twice I have been pushed over the edge.  The first, a betrayal of the worst when I discovered a Trojan virus my manager had planted on my PERSONAL computer back in the days HR notated my ‘behavior’, back when my manager asked me, “How much longer is all THIS going to go on?”  “All this” meant my caregiving duties.  I replied, “Until my husband drops dead, I guess.”  I was outraged by his question and so responded in kind.  That date – that same date – is the very date of the virus I found, with his initals on the file as author, creator, and owner.  I guess he forgot his gem.  A gem that allowed him full access to every single file in my computers.  All rendered to him as a hyperlink.  He turned my perosnal computers into his own web site.  I was so angry, I reported it to CERT.   But the good virus that it was self-destructed, taking BOTH computers with it.  FBI needed the file, and I had nothing to give.  My manager won.  But the betrayal was more than I could bear and with that, I reached for the exacto blade and hit the sweet spot.

A mess, to be sure, but surely not as messy as a gun.  And it takes a thousand-plus milligrams of valium to do yourself in.  No way I could build a stash like that.  That time, I pulled back and stopped the bleeding because I was afraid of Hell.  But the scars remain and they are painful.

By January of this year we were destitute.  I recieved my first denial – totally expected and even though I was living in the by-now familair darkness of major depression, I dialed for attorneys.  And then came the second of the many straw that broke this camel’s back.  I tried four and every one refused to take my case because I had no insurance.  I guess they assumed I was not under ANY medical care, but I was seeing my doctor – if on rare occasions now.  The last time was January where he discovered I had an enlarged heart.  He ordered MRI’s of the brain, suspecting lesions or even tumor, but I told him I still was denied even Medicaid.  He was outraged – he could not proceed with further Dx without knowing what may be going on in my brain.  The dementia, the depresson could have organic explanations and he had to rule it out.  He could not and here I sit.  He also wanted more cardiac tests, but had to settle for the Echo of which I owe for that and is in collections.

The attorneys denying to even consult with me was a brick wall I never saw coming.  This process is horrible enough, we are desperate, and every door was being slammed.  After the fourth rejection letter, I again reached for the exacto blade (same as a surgical one).  Hell was not on my mind – surely God would understand.  I lay there (bucket by the bed) watching the life flowing out.  I grew cold.  I began to turn blue and lose feeling in my extremities. All that was left was to close my eyes and go to sleep.

Damn the logical part of our brain that kicks in.  I had no life insurance – I was not worth anything dead or alive, and my husband had no money to deal with my remains.  If I had the $100,000 I had while working, I cannot say I would be typing this today.  Then my thoughts jumped to guilt:  my husband’s heart would surely stop if he found me like this – ICD implanted in him or not.  I could not do that to him.  With that, I stumbled out of bed, put cold water over the incisions to stem the flow and wrapped them.  I had lost several pints of blood, however.  It was the closest I came.  What will my mind argue NEXT time?  Because that was February and now it is May and the financial problems loom larger; insurmountable.  The stress is killing my husband, but his strong will and faith that made him survive SCD keeps him going.

I do not have his strength.  I do not have his will.  I cannot even say I have the faith.  We have had rough times for  10 years and our life makes the story of Job look like a vacation in the Cook Islands.  Job should walk in MY shoes.  I have an issue with God, I am angry and I think it is justified.  I have tried to help myself, I have lived life never harming, but being harmed.  I have NEVER judged, but have been and still am judged by the high minded.  I was told to leave my husband after his heart attack, that this catastophic illness would destroy us financially and myself as well.  I refused:  you do not walk out on 26 years of marriage because you finally hit the worst of the worst.  I gave it my all and I lost it all and I would do it again.  The only differnce is I would gracefully exit when the going was good.

I have been put in the free services of a psychiatrist for the first time since I was 18.  One visit and he already has felt my wrath, but not before he called me an ‘eccentric genius.’  “If you have money, you can be called eccentric, but when you have nothing, you are just plain nuts,” was my reply.  A genius?  I had to shoot down that theory by a couple notches.  My husband is a 175 – freakish territory and explains HIS dysfunction and creativity.  He is a right brain 175.  I was a left-brain above average, but that was before the mental/cognitive degradation started.  It accelerates.

I do not know what tomorrow brings any longer.  My life is no longer mine and to lose complete control of every aspect of yourself, to lose your being is a fate worse than death.  I cannot see the next hour, the next minute.  Peace of mind, contentment, confidence – all replaced with terror, panic, and loss of self-awareness.

I have had animals put down that were in less pain.  How can any higher power allow any of us to endure this?  Shrinks spew words – psycho-babble.  You are put under the threat that if you do harm to yourself, you will be taken away by the police – in handcuffs.  This he actually said to me.

Where before there remained a glimmer of hope to stop me, a cold wind blew out the last flame.  In the time since, I have been slapped in the face once too many times.  A sick cosmic joke, and one that I don’t get the punch line.

And yes, the blades are within reach.

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