So, this is all the trigger warnings. Suicide, self-harm, mental illness, hopelessness, maybe abuse... Please don't read this if you want to be okay.
I nearly hung myself last night. The urge was there again today. Really I was too scared. Really, I was hyperventilating so much that I thought I would faint anyway. There's just so much I need to be over.
Of course, I had to message several people to tell them that they had been great friends and that I loved them. They didn't catch on. I felt like an asshole when I woke up this morning and was still alive, but I figured that normal, nice people would send that kind of message without any real reason.
One of my most mentally ill friends said I should be in a psych ward. That's some real perspective. They have DID, and maybe schizophrenia. I seem to know a few people with that combination, somehow. I've tried to reason that the comorbidity rates are so high among trans people, that it was inevitable. That, and the growing awareness of the prevalence and validity of DID. It's 1-2% of the entire human population, so within a more traumatized group... Yeah. The alternative explanation, the one that that same friend told me, was that people with similar illness find each other. Like freaking stand users.
I had already been suicidal. My life feels so empty, and purposeless, and I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't feel like I can cope with work the way most people can. I see how hard the people at my company work, hours and hours and hours of overtime, fucking genius coders and engineers. I can't. There have been so many days where I focused for half an hour, then shut down. Ironically, often from the anxiety of losing my job. I just can't focus anymore. There's no more room in my head for the thought I would need to get work done. Then, sometimes, just because I have to do it, I do. I just do it. But I know I can't do that everyday. I've burned out that way before.
I was triggered to be extra-super-suicidal after learning some things. My partner's DMs were open, and I was curious, so I skimmed some of them. Usually, it's really mundane. I expected some cute lovey-dovey stuff with their other partners. Instead, there was something where they asked if I was a bad person, and their partner answered yes, and said her girlfriend agreed. They just see me as my partner's abuser. Not a relationship. A prison. And there were things I had done wrong that day, or the day before, or both. Things that are as natural to me as breathing. It felt like at the most fundamental, atomic levels of my being, I was evil, I was abusive, I was a monster. No amount of effort will ever change that. Nothing can.
My friend disagreed, and urged me to keep trying.
I have another friend who's in jail after she was suicidal one day. She evaded police for hours, then got in this hour-long standoff. She fired a gun into the air, but they claimed it was at a cop, and there's a bunch of other stupid trumped-up charges. Before that, she volunteered to be my suicide buddy (in the sense of preventing it; not in the sense of a pact). Every time I talk to her, I feel loved. She gets through to me in a unique way that's hard to believe. But then, when I'm not talking to her anymore, when it's been a day or two, she might as well not exist. All of the love in the world, every friend I have, all of my family -- they can disappear from my thoughts entirely, or they can feel so far away and unreal that it's like no one ever cared at all.
I've been thinking I might have BPD. When I suggested it to my therapist, she just said it was possible, but that she preferred to focus on trauma. That's where I left it. I don't even know if getting diagnosed with it would be good for me. It might be something I want to do to hate myself even more. Once, I hated myself so hard that I got an icepick headache. One day, I'll finally hate myself to death.
God, the headaches. That's the reason reality hurts so much. My head throbs from it. Sometimes it's pressure, like my head is congested, too full, and other times I just get the throbbing or sharp pains in one temple or the other, or the center of my head, or the base of the skull. It's weirdly inconsistent. Sometimes it's from thinking about the wrong thing. In my DID-riddled friends, that would be an alter doing something, or memories that were supposed to stay hidden getting jostled into view. In myself, I don't know what it is. I know that getting high makes it go away, but I can't do that at work. Once, I put some hand sanitizer on my wrist and lit it. I blew it out, lit it again, just for as long as I could take each time. It was perfect. It relieved the pressure, as the pain was perfectly balanced inside and out for a few sweet moments. Then the outside pain grew greater. I gave myself a second-degree burn that way. I hated the big ugly blisters, but I left them alone so they could heal. I still have a scar, but I guess it's light enough. At first I wanted to get rid of it somehow, but I've changed my mind. I probably need more scars. I do have another I gave myself, that time from a friction burn. I just rubbed my belt over my wrist over and over, until there was some blood and skin on there.
I used the same belt, when I wanted to hang. I don't think I was ever serious enough about it, because I'm still here. Then again, I've been terrified. It feels so close. The idea that, my whole life, I've had this first person experience. My whole life has been my mind, my consciousness. Every waking moment, all of my thoughts. And my death would be the same way. Existence is already weird. I know other people exist, and they have their own thoughts and inner worlds. But I'll never know them, and they'll never know mine. When I die, how will that feel? That's the riddle that I keep fixating on, and it's what scares me. I don't believe in an afterlife anymore. I don't believe in souls. I'm so certain that death is the end, and that makes it so terrifying. But one day, I might finally give up. I come so close to not caring. I feel like it's better to never feel anything again.
This isn't the way I always feel. When I woke up this morning, I was a little pissed off by how normal everything felt. After the intense emotion last night, after everything was crashing down, things were so painfully normal. I wasn't suicidal anymore, at least in the morning. Things were normal. I think that's what makes it hard to believe. I can't take myself seriously when my moods are this volatile.
I told my partner that I had read their DMs, and I tried to apologize. Their first alter tried to say it was their fault, and that I wasn't abusive anymore, and that they were lying and manipulative. All of their fawn responses. I tried again and again to reassure them, to point out the flaws in what they said, to try to show them how clearly I was the bad guy. The second alter denied that I had read the DMs, and refused to believe that I was saying it. They said that I was real, but the voice wasn't.
At least their girlfriend isn't in denial. She knows what I am. Rational, sane people do. Most people can so easily be nice and not abusive and never do the wrong things. I envy them. I really, really do. I did long before this happened. I wish I could be that person. I don't think I ever will. I don't think it's possible.
I saw that my therapist sent me a message. I should see what she said.