No longer as truthful as should be deserved, some names, places and events deliberately vague to protect identities that aren't mine

Thursday 30 October 2014

All the love's still there I just don't know what to do with it now

If [we] believe that everything's alright,
[we] won't be alone tonight,
And I'd be blessed by the light of your company,
Slowly lifting me to somewhere new.

...oh can you tell I haven't slept very well since the last time that we spoke?

Please understand, if you see me again, don't even say "hello".

Drama

Crazy stories are my thing.

You all have a passion that drives you; if I have a passion it's taking life and turning it into a series of crazy stories.

If you can do that without me, then I don't know who I am anymore

Wednesday 29 October 2014

Habits

A month on, and I still can't stop myself from saying "I love you" out loud into the void every time I get into bed.

Old habits die hard.

Thursday 23 October 2014

Skittles

The other day I found out I do not have melanoma.  It was my second cancer scare within 6 months.

I'm a pretty sickly kid, I have one health problem after the other, I'm on an array of drugs, I get a new health issue on a regular basis.

Currently I find myself wondering, having dodged this one, how many months do I have before the next big major health problem rears its head.  All my issues are pretty big, not quite life threatening, but severely life affecting and would only take one bad turn to become threatening.  I'm constantly on borrowed time and just waiting for the one that finally brings the house of cards crashing down.

Most recently, I've been not wanting to take my ARVs.  I've only intentionally skipped my dosage once before; it was shortly after I started them, and I needed to do it so I would experience the regret and panic that ensures I take them every day.  But recently I don't want to.  At least that way I know what'd get me, and with my other health issues chances are it wouldn't be long at all  before my HlV made me very ill. 

The fact that I am considering saying "fuck it" to my HIV meds is a very, very clear sign of how not okay I am these days - I'm religious in my taking of them, I've missed maybe 5 doses tops in 2 years of taking them, like everything else, I am sick and tired.  Sick and tired of waiting to see what I come down with next, how long it'll be till that happens, how it'll interact with all my other issues, how many meds that will take to control; it's all just another exercise in trying to survive day in day out and that is very definitely I am something I am tired of, so why not call it quits on this?

Monday 20 October 2014

Write off

You wrote me off long before that week in September.  One bad reaction didn't decide things for you, it might have confirmed it, but it didn't decide them.  You wrote me off so you didn't need to tell me you were marrying someone else, I wasn't entitled to that anymore.  You wrote me off so you didn't tell me I was fucking things up.  I wasn't worth the courtesy of it, or telling me I don't give you what you want or that you were gonna break up with me  You can sit there in be in love with me and I do belive you are, but you wrote me off in your head long ago.  You love me, but it doesn't make me worth jack shit to you any more

God you would have just said whatever you thought I needed to hear over hat week and longer if necessary.  I forgot what a manipulative bastard you can be.  I guess I figured maybe I wasn't subject to it as much as the rest, but then I have the horrible realisation I'm no better than anyone else to you.  I almost believed it for a second.  My perfect guy, the one my jaw dropped to the floor for, the one miles out of my league, who I didn't think would give me a second glance.  You did, you fell in love with me, from an ocean away, so eventually I got to think maybe I had something going for me to get a guy like you.  I believed it for a shining moment.  And then I remember you couldn't even do me the fucking courtesy of breaking up with me when you actually realised you wanted to.  No one is ever special to anyone.  I forgot that.

I'm having to remind myself every day not to hate you.  I could hate you so much for things over the last few months.  Really truly completely utterly hate you.  To the point I couldn't see you again, where I'd have to abandon all our mutual friends, where I'd not be able to go near Boston again.  I could hate you to the point where the mention of your name would get me as angry as I do when Brandon is mentioned.  I don't want to hate you.  I really don't want to.  So I try to remember not to.  But God I could.  So much and so easily.

Thursday 9 October 2014

A Light in the Dark

This has been pretty much the hardest week of my entire life.
If you can name it, chances are it's thrown me a curveball in the last 7 days.
I've been dumped by my partner of 4.5 years, I've attempted suicide, I've been evicted, I've lost the two best and strongest support networks I've ever known, I'm currently facing my second cancer scare within 6 months... things are bad.

Yet somehow (and by the grace of a fair few others) I've always had a bed to sleep in and a hot shower; I've gone to work in spite of barely staving off panic attacks and manage to not fuck it up - someone has even actively stated they want to employ me as soon as I'm available; tonight I cooked myself a proper meal for the first time since last Tuesday.

It's not much - this is still a Bullet train wreck going at full speed - but the weight on my chest breathes a little easier for a few fleeting moments.


And if nothing else, the first New York Rangers game of the season is tonight, and their home opener is on Sunday night.  Hockey is something very firm to grab onto right now.  Hockey is something I have no end of passion for, to the point where I've infected my friends with it and they (one in particular) love to see me when I'm in hockey-mode and actively indulge me in it.  I look at the NYR keyring I have and I KNOW that amongst all the other crap, I am a hockey fan: I love, live, eat, breathe hockey.  And today I can watch my team play the sport I love.

Wednesday 8 October 2014

Survival

I'm still alive.  At this point it begins to count as surviving.  Surviving is what I do.

I don't know why.  Everyone who wakes up each day survives.  I endure far less than many others, but somehow people look at me as a survivor.  They know I will cope.  I always have.  Somehow I get by and find a way.  So you can trust that I'll survive.

Every day I continue to survive is another day I continue to fail.

I cannot express how much surviving represents failure to me.  The cast on my arm that practically screams it at me doesn't do much to help that association. It's impossible for me to consider one-day-at-a-time or moment-by-moment any kind of achievement because it so obviously represents everything I despise.  I survive because I do not have the resources to do otherwise.  I would very much like to succeed.

Monday 6 October 2014

Do thou but call my resolution wise, And with this knife I’ll help it presently.

Give me some present counsel, or, behold,
'Twixt my extremes and me this bloody knife
Shall play the umpire, arbitrating that
Which the commission of thy years and art
Could to no issue of true honor bring.
Be not so long to speak. I long to die
If what thou speak’st speak not of remedy.


I always fail to articulate myself well at the times when I really want to and need to.
I am angry.
I am so unbelievably angry.
I am alive and I shouldn't be.
I'm supposed to be dead and I'm not and all I can do is be angry about that.
I'm exhausted with life.  I tried to stop that and I failed.  I'm fed up with fighting every day to maintain some kind of normality.  After 27 years I'm done, and out, I don't care to try anymore, but I'm stuck here till I can come up with something more effective.
I have to find a way to put anything other than anger and boredom on my face so that I can go out and earn money.  New plans require time and money.  And in the meantime I have to see friends.  I have to be social so that they don't watch me too closely, so that they forget over time that all I am is angry

I am not supposed to be here.
I do not want to be here.
No-one can really stop you from taking your own life.
But you have to be patient, and wait, and plan, and find a space, and in the meantime you need money.
And waiting is the worst part.  It's the part that gets me angry.
Because all I wanted to do was just.. go.
And now I can't.

I do not want to be here.
It's not that things are so bad I can't imagine them being better.
It's not that I don't have good things even now.
I simply do not care any longer.
I can't express that properly.  I do not care.
Things could get better, worse, it doesn't matter, I don't want to experience them.  I have done enough.  I have tried.  I have fought for as long as I cared to.  And now I do not care.  I do not want to be here.

Sunday 5 October 2014

Methods

Drowning:
Easy accessibility near river & docks.  Best done late night to give hours before discovery.  Would need to trap self underwater - instinctive sense of survival prevents self drowning.  5 - 10 minutes.  Likely to panic during drowning.

Drugs/Pills:
Effective provided using right combinations.  Limited access.  Would need to plan and stockpile over time.  Illegal drugs easy to obtain but would be stressful whilst experiencing overdose.  Prescription drugs harder to obtain but can construct more relaxed methods

Cutting:
Tried and failed, although method was accurate.  Very relaxed and pleasant method if done effectively.  Experience teaches me there is no panic at all for me using this method.

Hanging:
Requires suitable hanging point which is strong enough.  Ideally requires long enough drop to break neck.  Required drop for 8st mass is ~14ft.  Plus 5ft height.  Plus 5ft for fixing point/excess drop = 25ft vertical space required.  Death by asphyxiation is also possible and effective, but takes longer and likely stressful during experience

High speed collision:
Easy access to car.  Car safety features may reduce to serious injuries.  Impact in excess of 100mph required for probable mortality.  Collision with other traffic would double relative speed of impact but endangers others unfairly.  Fairly instantaneous with sufficient impact.

Tube trains:
Approx 30% mortality rate.  Not effective enough.  More likely to cause serious injuries.  11am most popular time.  Mid day likely to cause less inconvenience to others.  Would need to study probably locations in advance.  Overground blind corners at high speed best.

Jumping from building:
Generally effective over 10 stories.  Messy.  Traumatic upon others if done during day.  Access to buildings with jump points may be an issue, especially at night.  Only time of fall to panic during.  Likely to be less than 10 secs

Bridge jumping:
Would need to get to bridge.  Mortality rate generally very high.  Impact plus water means drowning often causes death if neck not broken upon impact.   London Bridges not high enough & current not strong enough.  Most personally desirable locations in USA - would require planning and money.  Only time of fall to panic during.  Likely to be less than 10 secs



There are many other methods, effective and available - it's fairly easy to gas yourself with household cleaning products or to make potassium cyanide gas using your home oven, both of which would be relatively easy ways to go (though the cleaning products method results in horrible respiratory pain whilst you asphyxiate), but the above ones are the major options.

Too hot

My fingers itch.

Today should not be happening.  It shouldn't exist.  I shouldn't exist today.  My right hand hurts from punching the wall.

My fingers itch.


Saved on my desktop is a note from 3 months back.  Things have not improved from this state.  Most of them have in fact got markedly worse.  Is it any wonder I'm falling apart?

1 housemate who's suicidal and recently told us all he's made a will, 1 who either can't leave the house from anxiety or disappears for 3 days at a time, 1 who is considering restarting steroids again whilst he's cycling back onto his SSRIs, 1 housemate with cancer, 1 friend who's so depressed his husband and I had to consider between us whether we needed to stage some kind of mental-health intervention, 1 friend who is almost certainly about to get arrested for drug dealing, 2 who I can't hang out with anymore because they're so wired 24/7, you're breaking down worse than ever, Johnny just had another surgery which automatically makes me worry like hell, 2 of my friends just broke up from a 6 year relationship and I'm quitting my job because my own mental health has divebombed so badly in the last 8 months.   

Quitting that job was seemingly one of those things that made things worse.  In trying to save myself, I destroyed one of the few good things I had going.

Saturday 4 October 2014

Surviving.

Warning: very blunt and graphic post about attempting suicide last Thursday.  Feel free not to read if this makes you uncomfortable.


So, I'm alive.  I'm not particularly happy about that fact, but I am alive.  I'm currently sitting at home in bed with a plaster cast over my arm, with a nice glass of wine by my side to write to all down.

A failed suicide attempt is unbelievably frustrating.  And worse it seems to reinforce the idea that no matter what, Eddie survives.  Even when I don't want to.  Even when I actively take significant steps to ensure I don't.  Fate somehow conspires to find a way that means I just somehow make my fucking way through it all.  It gives me some level of satisfaction and amusement that all of my flatmates, in the midst of rescuing me, thought: "oh man hes gonna be so pissed at us when he wakes up"

I slit my wrist.  I called in sick, ate a good meal cause there was no sense in being hungry, mailed some friends' belongings back to them, played some video games, and sat around with my housemates for a bit.  Then I went for a long bath.

I took 40 tramadol.  Tramadol is not the drug to try and overdose on.  You need bucketloads of them.  the pharmokinetics also aren't suited to overdosing.  If you do manage to take enough to kill you its a long drawn out painful process over several weeks from destroying your liver.  I didn't take tramadol to die.  I took tramadol to numb the pain and give me a nice light headed pass out type feeling.  I slashed my wrist to die.  I wanted to bleed out in a nice warm bath, just.... slip away.

It doesn't hurt as much as you expect.  I mean yes I had a lot of painkillers in my system, but threes an intense sharp pain as the blade suddenly pierces through all your skin, and then you re through all the nerve endings.  I knew I hit the artery because blood was spurting a good few inches out in a pulsing fashion. It was nice to watch.  I experienced no panic.  I was content.  All I had to do was watch the beauty of my blood swirling underwater and wait.  It's so easy.

When you do it with a sharp scalpel it's a really clean cut too.  The skin just parts.  No inflammed distressed layers, all one clean incision that naturally pulls apart.  The psychs were really concerned about where i got the scalpels from - you can buy them freely online; it's easy.  I have a supply from my edgeplay kink.  The plastic surgeon who fixed my hand is very disturbed at home accurate I was; I told him categorically, I did not cut any tendons.  It's really obvious what tendons feel like - they're stringy and elastic and push back and pull on nerves designed to sense pressure.  Arteries don't do that.  Anyone knows me knows that while I have no formal medical training, I have a very good working knowledge of anatomy.  I deliberately made the incision in the gap between the wrist tendon and the thumb tendon, towards the radial artery, knowing that artery is protected behind the wrist tendon.  I knew full well what I was doing.

In the end, I avoided any tendon damage.  I did cut the radial artery but it was repairable.  The bleeding was eventually staunched by the trauma to the muscles in my wrist at the incision point causing swelling to close underneath the wound.  I nicked a small nerve causing very minor damage to the base of my palm.  A 1cm line feels numb.  This may heal over time or may be permanent.  As collateral damage goes it's pretty inconsequential.

I never fully lost consciousness.  I was very out of it, and perhaps with a bigger cut, or 20 more minutes before my flatmates found me, I'd have gone under enough for it to have been too late; I was certainly slipping into the depths of respiratory depression by the time they found me.  The last 2 days in hospital are a haze.  Let me be clear though - I'm not happy to be alive.  Surviving was never my intent, this was not a cry for help or attention, surviving is, for lack of a better way of putting it, is supremely inconvenient.  The feelings have not gone.  I still feel no desire to fight it all any longer, nor do I have the inclination to try and find a new reason.   I am done.  I am still suicidal.   Just because I have not picked up the first knife I've come to does not mean I'm no longer actively suicidal.  The only thing I've learnt is I simply need to be more effective next time.  If you're going to do it, don't settle for second best (this was not my preferred method of suicide you must understand), get it god damn right.

Obviously, I've hurt friends with my actions, in fact I've probably hurt them more by surviving.  This was never about friends.  I know I have friends.  I know they will listen to my woes.  I know they love me.  I know I inspire them as much as they inspire me.  But even with all that, I'm fed up, I'm tired, I'm bored.  I have given the very best I knew how to or thought I could and it has not been enough.  I am dead on the inside.  I have no investment in feeling alive again and I've realised that I honestly haven't for  10 years now.  Things have cropped up to hide those thoughts from me, but the sentiment has always been there, rearing its head every few years at the first opportunity.  I simply do not have a strong desire to live.

That said, I still very much appreciate and recognise what people have done the last few days.  my flatmates saved me.  I don't have to like it but I can appreciate the actions of them all.  My roommate has practically not left my side for 3 days.  People joke that we're a couple.  There's no romantic love between us, but platonic love does not cover it enough.  He best puts it as "I'm accustomed to you".  He has spent every moment he was allowed to by my side, holding my hand, even out of it, i remember him telling the rest of my house HE would be going in the ambulance with me, a friend wrote me to say just how much he admires me, a twitter friend who I've never met but we share a lot of common interests and so seem to get on well has been following my twitter feed for days and messaging me constantly.  He's seen me grow increasingly dark and immediately put two and two together.  I am not happy to be alive, but I fully recognise what these people and more have done for me the last few days and I am grateful to be surrounded by such people.

I am not an immediate danger to myself.  I will, unfortunately, survive for now, just as I always do.  I may have to wait, and plan more, but I will simply ensure there isn't a chance for failure next time.  It's so very easy after all.


Signing off

EDIT:  I'm alive.  Below is a scheduled post that should have appeared after my death.  I have more to say on the matter later but for now I'm leaving it unedited as below.



I'm done with fighting.  I'm known as a survivor.  I don't really know how that ended up happening.  I never wanted to be.  Finally I find myself completely alone, all avenues have been exhausted, there is no cavalry or white knight coming.  And I don't want them to.  I'm just plain tired of finding a reason to fight.  I have no interest in it.  I fought because others inspired me to.

Of course I didn't tell anyone.  They'd stop you.  But it's calm and easy and just hard for a bit and then you don't have to worry.  Things were getting harder.  Every day.  Each week there was a new major drain on me.  And all the reasons to fight just vanished.  The reasons that had kept me going this long, which was far longer than I expected, have been whittled away one by one until finally, I have lost my fight.

This is how I view the world.  It was always just a matter of finding the right balance of how quickly I could do it, how much it would hurt, and how certain the method was.

27 years was plenty enough for me.  I've done and achieved more than most people dream of.  I've inspired others.  I've known true passion.  I'm very grateful for the past 5 years which were never really ones I should have had.  Those have been the best and the worst years of my life and when I look back at them all I do now is smile.

Thank you for making my life what it was.