I found myself edging quickly toward a meltdown today. The fucking computer was not cooperating as usual. Having to run QuickBooks on a PC is a nightmare. I am already struggling to keep up and get the work done. It takes me so long to find my train of thought and follow the numbers. The task seems enormous most days. Combining that with a call that the polo horse that was supposed to be donated is not coming in and I was teetering on the edge. Amazing how quickly and easily I shift into and out of these states. Nothing seems solid beneath me anymore. I may get a day, or two but the dread and the darkness always come back. They linger just out of view until some seemingly small incident combines with all the other huge stuff and it gets bad fast. I looked around the quiet house. I could have sat there. I could have crawled back into bed. both clear options in my mind. Instead I pulled on the sneakers and out the door I went. As each mile clicked off on my GPS I felt just a little more okay. Probably went too far, too fast. It didn’t much matter since I needed to put distance between myself and the farm as possible. I seem to only find peace and solace alone these days. In the pounding and the hurt of the pavement.

I know it has been a quiet week or so here. Just need some time to organize my thoughts and recover from the very intense past few weeks. I believe this is a pretty steady pattern for me at this point, though I have not looked hard at the blog to confirm that. It feels like I have certain posts, or series of posts that need a recovery period. This is no different. I regroup and sessions continue and I have the urge to come back and write it all down. I don’t ever want this place to be forced. I blog for myself. I don’t want it to be a job or a chore. I do not want to feel like I have to come here and write even when I feel little desire to. That being said the blog has a steady readership now. Not sure who, but it is interesting to see. I am happy someone reads it.

No worries my mystery readers- I will be back. promise. Virgil and I regroup this week. That ought to be worth some more material to write about.

I think I need to follow up that last raging blog post with a more centered one. Though in my haste to return to center I don’t want to invalidate those feelings. I think I have a right to be angry and frustrated. Sad and hopeless. I can be all of that. I can hate that she put me in that hospital and that it was a nightmare experience. It is okay. I don’t have to relinquish possession of those thoughts and feelings. What I do need to find is a way to trust her again. Trust like I once did. I don’t know what it was about this last experience that made it so powerful and so able to influence me away from a 20 year long track record. How it created this fear. I know it was different on a lot of levels. But i think the main one was it just triggered off all those feelings of powerlessness and depersonalization that my Ithaca hospital experience showed me. My first step in the door so to speak. The startling reality that they could tie you down and inject you with drugs and there wasn’t anything you could do. The comprehension that the door was locked until someone decided you could leave. To be stripped so thoroughly of your humanity is excruciating. It is an experience few have ever had and impossibly hard to put words on. This past hospital visit stirred much of that.

In order to work with Virgil I had to trust her. I had to see her not as one of those doctors that held the keys but as someone what held a road map. She was not my captor, she was my guide out of that world. I believe she has been that. How then can this experience change my view? How can it cause me such doubt? I believe there is so much tied up in this. There is so much history. So much attachment. I think we are indeed in some powerful vortex of transference. I am seeing her as a parent, not as my longtime guide/ doctor. As a parent that abandoned me when I needed her most. Left me scared and alone in that hospital. As the weeks have passed and the vortex continues more issues arise and more problems occur. We are in a negative place. I am in an awful place. I am realizing now how dependent I have been upon her constant presence in my life. In a very specific way. Without that I am left very much adrift and lost. I start questioning everything. Doubt becomes the norm. I am not sure if our relationship is repairable. Not because of her, but because of the degree to which my trust has flagged. The very core where I hold my deepest of feelings and fears has shifted somehow. I want nothing more than to be back where we were 6 months ago but as each week passes we move farther and farther from it. I try to put myself back together and pretend none of it happened. but I look in the mirror and realize yes, this is happening.

The sad thing is, to compound matters, I hate myself for even thinking and feeling like this. Disgusted that I could doubt someone what has been by my side all these years. Someone who has consistently proven she wanted nothing but the best for me. and maybe there is the rub. Maybe it is because it was her, the last person in the world I expected it from. I cannot find the center. I move between guilt and rage. Back and forth. Confused and overwhelmed never finding anything in between to hold onto.

When she said to me all I had to do was chose not to be suicidal and I would control all of the actions that scared me most (hospitals/2Pcs) I think it just pushed me even farther away. Initially I was angry and felt frustration. I realize now it wasn’t so much that but I felt like I had let them down. I had spent 20 years trying so hard to be “good” so nobody would leave me. To behave. To be a good patient. To be told I was failing scared me. Convinced me it was my doing. Everything had been my fault, including this last nightmare. I know so much of this is buried from years long ago and this last quake and all the after shocks just keeps churning it. We are in this vortex for a reason. All of these fears and immense amounts of untapped anger have been unresolved. Untouchable really for all of my life. I know that. We all do.

I am just so scared that I can’t find my way back. That I won’t be able to stop seeing her as the unreliable impulsive abandoning borderline mother. That somehow the glasses got broken this time around and that core shift in me won’t be easily repaired. That I will keep seeing only the distorted view and not the one that if realistic.

Is this where the relationship ends? is it the point where I am supposed to move on? I wish I knew. I think we need therapy.

20 years. For twenty years I have worked and tried to get along. I took the meds. I went in the hospitals. For 20 years I struggled with coming to terms with how dark my mind could get. How impulsive and scary. Terrifying at times.I could have spared myself all that by making the right choice? Me? I chose this life of hell and pain and now if only I could get it together and do the right thing it might be okay? I would not lose control of my life? I would not be subjected to hospitals and nightmare drug combos. If only I could do the right thing?

I don’t understand. I wish I did. I feel like an idiot that is failing to do the most basic of tasks. Making a choice. Even the most brain damaged amongst us can do that. Sadly it seems I cannot.

I don’t want to live this way. I sure as fuck don’t want to harm everyone around me. Destroy my relationships and demolish intimacy. Why would I chose that?

I don’t see choice. I don’t see free will. I see imprisonment. I see suffering and I experience pain. I struggle beneath depressions deep and dark. Impossibly deep. Is that my choice too? Is this my choice? I’m not depressed or bipolar just masochistic. That these suicidal thoughts are of my creation and choosing. I have moved so far past confused at this point I am not even sure what is up and what is down.

I wrote how I felt in the last blog. I am not asking for your blessings. I am not asking for you to join me or agree with me. I am not asking for any of that. All I ask is you see me for who I am and for what this life has created in me. You are asking me to turn something off I don’t even know where it is located, never mind how to do that. You tell me that I have no control over hospitals and your actions until I turn it off. What if I can’t find it? What if I can’t get it off? The valve is stuck? the problem unfixable? What then? Then I am just at the mercy of this system and your actions? To be medicated, hospitalized, 2 PC’d, brain fried? What next? The stakes are so high. This die has no good sides: life, death, drugs/hospitals.

To accept what you are telling me is to believe that the suicidal thoughts have no connection to the depression or bipolar. That they do not come together. They are not a symptom of the greater illness. Though we both know what is published says otherwise. Am I not depressed? bipolar? How can I guarantee you anything when I cannot even tell you if I will remain stable? I cannot forsee the depressions. I cannot turn off that faucet. The drugs can’t either.

I am lost and feeling utterly stupid if my life and my sense of control is as simple as flipping a switch and turning off those thoughts. They have been here since I was 10 or 12. Not that I can remember because you allowed them to run electricity though my brain. You allowed it. You said it would make me better. Did it? No. You told me to hold tight and let the meds work. Did they? No. I have each time accepted it. I have trusted you. I have stuck by you even when I hated it and did not agree. I kept coming back because I thought you could make me better. I thought you could fix me. Now 20 years later I come to find out all it takes is a choice? How do I trust you now? How am I to believe that.

Am I to just blindly follow and say ok? I will never think like this. I will never, even in the darkest moments of despair after months crushed beneath it’s weight, when your drugs and electricty don’t work ever succumb to the distortions of an exhausted brittle crumbling mind. That I will have the fortitude to or ability to see those distortions. To not buy into the lie that depression sells so well. LIFE WILL NEVER GET BETTER. YOU ARE A PIECE OF SHIT NOBODY WANTS. THEY ARE BETTER OFF WITHOUT YOU BECAUSE YOU CAN’T EVEN GET OUT OF YOUR OWN WAY, LET ALONE HELP SOLVE ANY OF THESE PROBLEMS.

Is that voice a choice too? One I beckon when life isn’t tough enough and I’d like to be flogged and beaten further into submission. just a choice. go right or go left. go up or go down. vanilla or chocolate. guess I chose this life and this suffering just as I chose my parents and my upbringing. I chose to be raped and sodomized. guess so since I could have checked out long ago. I didn’t. I’m still here. guess I chose suffering. I chose to stand by you for 20 years waiting for it to magically get better. There is no magic. There is no better. I know now.

I have no more words. I have only the ache left from feeling so lost and confused. The steady panic at realizing I don’t know where I am going. The reality that 20 years of therapy has left me just as I was and that somehow all I have to do is make a choice. It was just that fucking simple all along.

I have given up trying to figure out where my head is at. I have found it easiest to just be. I sit on the deck and watch the hummingbirds fly to and from the feeders. Often arguing and chattering at each other. I can sit there for hours. Lost. Immersed in this world that revolves only around food and territory. I don’t know why the fascination but I’ll take it. so there I sit with the fountain bubbling and the hummingbirds feeding- avoiding my life. It may be a distraction. I know. I have a million things to do but this is somehow very important right now. I think I need to respect that.

Beatrice has a tell. She’ll twist her hair around a finger when sessions get really tough. It was one of those days. I am tired of not being understood. of not being able to get across what is in my heart and in my mind. Even if I don’t really understand any of it.

I do not know that I will ever be able to see suicide as they each do- Virgil, Beatrice, my partner, and anyone else. It lives in me. whole and filthy- always festering. It doesn’t go away when the depression eases. It isn’t a cold or cough. It isn’t a bad habit like chewing one’s nails. It is etched. My thoughts, companions really, when life tumbles hard as it so often does and even with life just goes along.

Where is that line? where one that defines when too much is enough? When life, stress, loss, anxiety and childhood issues all collide. When the tipping point is found. When is it too much? Too much to recover from, or to bounce back. When is a soul too destroyed by the burdens it keeps? Who among us is not fixable? Save-able. There are many days I think long and hard at that. This isn’t like other fields of medicine where a doctor can proclaim a disease is too far gone. Spread too much. This isn’t all disease. This is life intertwined with biochemical combined with the past which colors the present. It is a veritable skein of issues often impossible to tease apart. any one could be enough. Together they are a horror in their enormity. Can they be pulled apart? can the soul find solace when each problem finds a solution? Can the wounds of old be healed in the present enough to readjust the warping of vision? If that indeed is what my problem ultimately is. I cannot see straight? I cannot see the error of my ways.

My ways. My maze. This loop I find myself within all too often. No, actually always. where no solutions exist, only problems. where fixing is impossible and change is unthinkable. This maze of fear and anxiety, of sadness and overwhelm. this is my home. I do not share my home often. Beatrice saw it today and with each lock of hair she coiled I knew she knew. She SAW it. How does one exist here? I do not even know how I survive most days.

Ultimately (as I told her), I never want my actions to be a reflection of the care they have given me. Never want the wrath and judgements of others to come upon them for my choice. One would not judge an oncologist for losing a patient, would they? In grief, surely YES. But ultimately the blame does not lie with them. the blame lies with the cells that invaded their host and turned it against itself. Is there a difference? Will suicide always be “giving up”, “acting out”, “harming others”. Is it an act of aggression in the end? or is it just the sputtering, clunking stop of a soul that has run out of fuel. When the demands on it exceeded what it had to give, even with the best support and care. When is the kindest action to accept? it is acceptable to some in the face of terminal illness. What is terminal? When a body’s resources have been used up. When the vital systems can no longer operate and keep the whole alive (running). But it is different, you will say. this is the voice of a mind hazed by disease, or stress, or life. Is it? Is this life? Is it finally exacting the last pound of flesh? yes. Maybe it is. The scales have slid and the ratio is too far off. We circle back again to that line. Where is that line? Who is not saveable? There is no cure. There is only acceptance. If I offered a life of suffering would you accept? Would you agree to never seek an exit? Would you lay on your back spread wide and not look to escape? would you lose what was most important to you in your world and not give up hope she would come back? not blame yourself for the loss? Could you? Could I? Could they?

There is no right answer. There is only those moments in time and this one here now. This acceptance that life has the odds stacked far against me. The understanding that I need a place to go, even if just for a while to escape this reality. To stay here 24-7 proves far too difficult some days. Okay, a lot of days. You understand that. Help me understand the line. To figure out what will pass in time with work and what I will forever shoulder. Do not judge me for my weakness nor for my inability to see life as you do. The broken and stained glasses I see through were not of my choosing. Often I see things too late, or not at all. They buffet me before I can even react. Other times I see what isn’t there at all. This is a hard way to lead a life worth living.

I know I have asked many questions today. I have provided little insight. I have touched upon a subject nobody wants to hear or talk about. It is painful and scary. I know. I can only thank you for hearing me out. For taking the time to think about what it feels like to live a life where suicide is your lifeboat.

Do we ultimately chose our end? When the pain and suffering eclipse everything in our field of vision and we no longer have an undistorted view. Is it choice then? Is it choice when the thoughts come out of the clear blue, no warning? When suffering is all that exists to a mind overwhelmed and pushed to the edge.

I don’t know why I think like I do. I couldn’t tell you exactly where the suicidal thoughts took seed. I know they have remained. Come good weeks or bad. Bottomless depression or routine day of work they remain. Sometimes I can get away with a day without them. Those are rare. Is that my choice? my doing? If it is what does that say about me and my head? Who in their right mind would want to think like that if given the choice not to? They are dark and awful. and on the worst of days beautiful and calming. As the stress climbs and the problems stack like cards my thoughts are often my only means of getting through that hour, or minute. I cannot accept life without an escape route. Virgil and Beatrice want to remove that exit. But what remains? To commit to suffering? overwhelm? fear? To leave my security behind? I know it is fucked up. I know suicide isn’t the answer. It is the permanent solution to a temporary problem. I know. I have been fed all of that. I understand that from an intellectual standpoint. It doesn’t hold when the going gets tough and the emotions and pain become too frightening. when life becomes a horror again. It gives me sanctuary. solace and peace in a cruel world.

My goal is never to harm. I do not want to hurt anyone. Most of all those that have stood by me for so long. I would not want them to suffer either. To choose to stay is to accept the suffering. To chose death is to hurt everyone. There is no okay ending here. Either way someone gets hurt. I have hurt a lot of people over the years. The relationships around me do suffer because of the choices I have made. Some more evident than others. I know that and it hurts.

In the end free will and choice is what we have. Good or bad. Right or wrong. I cannot judge a person for their choice to end their life. I know too well what type of pain leads a person to that place. It is a hard cold place where life has left you raw and used. Spent completely and unable to muster even the mildest of defenses. I understand that place. I don’t think I chose it. Maybe I just cannot see it from Virgil’s standpoint as I am so blinded by the years spent looking out from here. I don;t understand. I do know I think my survival depends on it. Sounds odd right? I need the suicidal thoughts to manage to get though life, yet those thoughts may ultimately end my life. It is a true double-edged sword so to speak.

I doubt they will ever leave me be. My thoughts will come uncalled on. They will be there in the rasp between breaths while running and on the backs of my eyelids as I slide off to sleep just as they always have been. A part of me. Can I be free of them? I don’t know.

I think there comes a point when even with the clearest thought and most superior intellect you just cannot see a solution. The waters are muddied with multitudes of complex problems and issues. Combined they are crippling. No drug or therapy session can deflect the degree to which this type of situation destroys you. I can list problems by the dozens and stressors by the handful. I know I have to do something. standing still isn’t the answer. I am overwhelmed and pushed far out on the edge.

I lived my life without a road map. I was directed or ordered, depending on the situation. I didn’t know the plan, often wasn’t even in the loop. My father held the reins and life went along. I got what I wanted. I was spoiled and indulged. The price for that was to do as I was told. What was never gained was the insight into why he made the decisions he did. What made them sound or unsound? Risky or prudent? How did this brilliant man arrive at the direction he ultimately went? From the outside looking in I saw none. It seemed impulsive and driven. At times reckless. Somehow he always came out ahead. I thought reckless and impulsive was okay. I didn’t see hours of careful prep and thought. I didn’t see the chess board in front of him. I couldn’t because I was one of the pawns. I went where I was told. When crisis arose he fixed it. When I fucked up he fixed it. When I fell apart he found a way to put it back together. Until we came up here. Life became figure it out. I struggled. and struggled. I made mistakes. I failed to do my job well. I got lost in the immense responsibility of this place. It overtook me. Each time he would figure it out. HE, not me. Always HE. It is different now. There is no he. There is no safety net. I’m out here alone trying to figure it out and failing mightily. I know that. It is so clear to me.

I understand I must make a decision and that standing still is only digging us deeper into this hole. I just don’t trust myself to make the correct decision. I hold tight expecting him to magically reappear as his old self and take the reins. To make a decision, even if it is crushing to us. As we have struggled here and tried to find people to help each time we end up worse off. Make poor choices. Trust the wrong people. I know I need a lawyer. More than one. I don’t trust anyone and even if I did how am I going to pay them? The issues are so complex with the corporation and the financial issues. From the IRS to the civil trial. Each layer woven into the next. There is nothing simple or immediate. I am not making excuses for my lack of action. I am just adding up all the issues.

I’m neck deep here and need some help. Sadly that isn’t the only problem. When you add in the instability and questions about the relationship with my partner, fixing the mess with the sanctuary after poor book work by someone we trusted, my father moving to god knows where, the disaster with Virgil and the day to day struggle with the depakote it is just…I don’t even have words.

I am not even sure much of it is fixable. or if I want to fix it. I just don’t know.