My Episodes

I’ve been having spontaneous crying fits which is strange because I’ve rarely cried in the past 14 years.

I feel nauseated. I’ve been having waves of lightheadedness, dizziness, my heart skipping beats then racing, I can hear my heartbeat in my head sometimes during these waves. They started about 3-4 days ago when I ran out of Effexor and they are getting worse and more frequent. I almost passed out 6 times in the last 14 hours. During the waves I’m disoriented and have bad hot flashes and start sweating profusely. I’m not thinking clearly during these waves or attacks or whatever they are. It one is worse than the one before. I was driving home during one of the last ones and I would catch myself automatically trying to drive head on into another vehicle or speeding up and trying to slam into a telephone pole. I have less control over myself with each episode.

It’s scaring my roommate/cousin, Tori. During my moments of lucidity, such as now, (which are getting fewer and farther between) I know I need help. I’m losing control of myself and feel like I’m going crazy. I feel powerless to stop what is happening to me. I want this to all just go away. I don’t want to have the stigma of having some mental illness or being institutionalized (like my mother and father). It is so hard for me to ask for help. I’ve been self-reliant as long as I can remember. If anything I was the one other people always turned to when they needed help. To admit to myself that I can’t do it alone is one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but I’m scared to reach out and find that help. I’m ashamed.

I’ve been plagued with thoughts of suicide on and off since I was 6 years old. The thoughts have never lasted this long consecutively. I’ve been fighting these thoughts for the last 2 straight years. It was relatively easy to resist the urge until June of this year. Since then the thoughts/urges are getting harder and harder to resist. They wear me down a little bit more each day. The last few days I’ve been catching myself reaching for the shotgun, a knife, a rope… or when I’m driving a car I’ll find myself drifting into the lane of oncoming traffic trying to get them to hit me head on or trying to hit a telephone pole. Saturday night, my car broke down on the highway and I wanted to run out in front of one of the vehicles. A few times I went out into the road, but my cousin was with me and I didn’t want her to see it. That is the only thing that kept me from it. If I was alone that night I know I would have jumped out in front of one of those speeding cars. Admitting that to me scares the hell out of me.

During these lucid moments I think about calling copes and getting help, but then I have another wave and it’s the last thing I want to do. The fear of being institutionalized consumes me.

I’ve always thought self-reliance was my only good quality and now I’m losing that. I lost my job, about to lose my car and apartment, my utilities are about to be disconnected. I can’t afford to buy food or my medication. I haven’t had any income since august. The short term disability company is trying to screw me over, as is Cingular. With each bad thing that piles up on the others I feel like there is something pushing me to just give up and get it over with. I feel more and more helpless and worthless each day.

I constantly wish for death and the only thing thus far that has kept me from doing it myself is because I don’t want to leave my loved ones with my debt, or guilt that they couldn’t help me, or most of all I don’t want them to find me. I’ve been enough trouble on my family without making them clean my brains off the wall or scrub the blood stains off the carpet they deserve more than that. I wish I could be strong for them and a good person, but I’m not. I’m a worthless piece of shit. I don’t deserve to be loved. They deserve so much more than me. I bet they wish I had never been born just as I do. I wish mom had aborted me too. They’d all probably be better off. T-bone was the only that ever made it crystal clear he didn’t want me, except for mom’s past boyfriends and that evil son of a bitch, Larry.

I don’t want my nieces and nephews growing up wondering why auntie Jen killed herself and thinking I was some crazy lunatic. I wasn’t always like this… what the hell happened? And why can’t I make it stop?

At this point the love I feel for my grandparents, siblings, nieces, nephews, mother, and cousins is the only thing that keeps me holding on, but for how much longer? every day I figure out more and more that they would all be better of without me and if I shot myself outside they wouldn’t have to clean it up, or even see it or if I wrecked or drowned myself in the lake or jumped in front of a diesel or a train or stabbed my heart.

I don’t understand what I’m doing right now. I feel another wave starting. I’m crying my eyes out, pulling my hair. It feels like someone is clawing inside of me.