‘The End is Nigh’
‘The End is Nigh’ for this blog at least. More than likely by the end of the month i’ll have winded it down. I intend to walk away from all of this social media linked to my depressed in Baltimore persona when i reach my 5,000 tweet. I have 67 or so more left. I’ve got to the point where i really don’t feel like i have much to say or want to say anymore. Just the way it is. I have plenty of unfinished posts, but i have really no interest in working on them. I don’t go on twitter as often as i did, and when i do i find myself turning it off not long after i log in. So perhaps it’s just time to move on. Go on to some other project. I had hoped that things would be different in writing this whole blog. That i didn’t have my break down, did things could get patched up with the lady friend (i have last heard from her last friday, was a neutral message, i miss you but.. sort of thing, just responded with a smiley face), that i could tell you that things were great. Well, it is what it is, and i’ll just leave it that. I’ll have one more post at least, when i hit 5000, and then you’ll now this is over.
My First Attempt
I wrote this up a couple of months ago, and with the exception of one minor change i haven’t touched it. It’s adapted from something i posted on Facebook a couple of years ago.
Nine years ago this month, i made the decision that i had basically had enough of everything, and that well i decided to take a permanent vacation from life. Permanent vacation from life? Ok, i tried to kill myself, i attempted suicide. I am not going to go into the specifics of why i decided or reached this conclusion, to put it bluntly i had reached a point in my life that i perceived a lot of things were going wrong and failing really fast. I put my self at the end of a rope, the bottom of a pit, or whatever metaphor that works for you, and just could not see a way out of it. So after a particularly disastrous evening, I had enough. Now as stated before i am not going to get into specifics of the why, but at that time i had come to a point where i decided i just didn’t want to go on anymore, and i wanted it all to end.
So i went to the bathroom, fixed myself a big glass of water and took about a handful and a half of Tylenol, which i later found out was the equivalent of about 50 500mg capsules. Yes Tylenol in large doses will kill, you will end up with Paracetamol toxicity, which will lead to liver failure, which i knew. What i failed to factor in is that it could take upwards of several days to do oneself in, which was not exactly what i was looking for, but permanent damage could occur within 24 hours. After doing this i was pretty much set with the decision made, and then i went online. I don’t recall what i said but i eventually told a friend of mine of what i just did, and then this friend did what i would suspect any friend would do, got help for me. My friend called emergency services and medics and police arrived at my house. Oh did i mention that friend lived in Pennsylvania at the time and was in Maryland. Now if it wasn’t for this friend, and my blabbing, there is a strong chance i would not be here right now, or i would have a transplanted liver in me. So i have to say i have a significant amount of gratitude towards this friend, though we would later have a falling out and not talk for a significant amount of time (something that really grates on me still today even though we have patched things up). However i feel like i have somewhat let this friend down, you might figure that out more so later on.
Relegated to the fate that i am just not going to beat the system, i didn’t put up a fight, and put myself in the ambo to be transported to the local hospital. Being wheeled into the ER, trauma bay of all areas, the treatment is pretty simple, blood test (to determine the amount in my system, which was a lethal dose), Gastric decontamination (activated charcoal, which wasn’t to bad and i have my pick of flavors, mint), and then antitoxin (Acetylcysteine, which smells like rotten eggs and tastes just as bad no matter how much fruit punch you mix it with). I spent a decent amount of time in the ER this night, and the next day, due to the fact i had to get a psych consult. But i had to be medically cleared to get the consult from psych (the Paracetamol/acetaminophen levels i my system had to drop below toxic levels). On top of all of this there was a back up for psych consults.
I ended up with two consults, if you have to get one don’t when you exhausted, it makes things plenty more difficult. The first one happened some time in the middle of the night, i hadn’t had much to eat or slept well (just a mat in the middle of the casting room with 2 others). The consultant had wanted me to put myself in on a voluntary, i declined and requested a second opinion. A couple of hours later in the afternoon i received my second consult. Somehow i was able to get myself out of a recommendation for a voluntary committal, which in the end might have been a bad idea.
I have to say though that for the most part everyone i dealt with were extremely kind, supportive, and empathetic towards me, they treated me like a person, which helped a lot.
Now i know it sounds like i made a snap decision, i was at a very low point, as acting out of desperation, and you would be somewhat right. It’s not as if i was planning on this and had this on my calendar to do this on this day. To say i wasn’t thinking about it would be wrong, i was depressed, but this wouldn’t have been the first time that did seriously consider it. And i know that people in the past have been able to pick up on that something was wrong, and i have been usually pretty good a brushing it off. I also had enough self-control as to not act on the ideas, up till this point. But to be honest, and it still bother me to say it, i really did want to die. I had enough of the mental pain in my head, regardless of where it came from and how sill to others it might have been, and just wanted it to go away. The best way i though for it to go away was for myself to go away, permanently.
To say that would be the end of my troubles that year would also be wrong. I would end up putting myself back into the ER 2 more times in 2004, due to the fact i thought i would have done something to myself. One of those trips ended up resulting in a stay in the psych ward of a local hospital (not the same one as the first ER visit) over the 4th of July holiday. At the time i got the treatment that would have helped me get better in time. Unfortunately i never went through it fully. Which would lead me to where i am now.
The thing that irks me, is that i do think about “it” and have for a long time, say like since middle school (early teens). It’s kinda of scary to have the random thought of i wonder what it would be like to put a gun to my head or jump off this bridge, when things go slightly amiss. Just to make everyone aware, i am not thinking about it right now, so don’t freak out, and i don’t hear voices. If i could turn these ideas off i would yesterday. It’s not fun, so in the meantime i just hope i don’t spiral out of control again, and just pretty much ignore them. And that’s what i thought for a long time. Hoping that this was a one time slip up and that i’ll never have to deal with it again. I’ll get a degree, get a job, get insurance, see a mh specialists, and work out my problems. Unfortunately i never got the chance to do that before it happened again, in what were similar circumstances to 2004.
I know i might come off a bit cavalier or aloof or candid or idk some other word about this whole thing, but i refuse to let to define me or be defined by it. However i do realize that it is a part of my experience as a person and i can’t just ignore that fact. Maybe talking about it will help me heal or something. I continue to post about my struggles and experiences with depression. Who knows maybe someone will get something more out of this than i did, the writing about it not the incident itself.
Lights Out…
The Lights are Out and Nobody is Home. I’m going to take a stab at what your thinking. OMG he’s going to talk about suicide or about how he wants to kill himself. He’s finally let his depression beat him. Or he is not going to blog anymore, it’s is final post… again. On all parts yeah i get why think that. Let me reassure you that i am not thinking suicide which is a surprise. And i am not planning, yet, on closing the blog. However i do feel as if my depression or w/e is beating me. And it sucks.
Changes to the Blog
Hi all. So just wanted to update you to some changes on the blog. First off I’m renaming it, no longer will it be Depressed in Baltimore but My Kind of Crazy, i just figured it would be a little bit more happy moving forward, and since i just don’t always talk about depression all the time or will be. The web address will stay the same, as will the name of my gravatar, and twitter accounts. This sort of has to do with web-traffic and the number of people i am getting referred to the site when they search for depressed in baltimore.
Second, for those that have been following on Facebook (not that their was a lot), you’ve probably noticed that i am not on it anymore. The reason being is i disabled my personal account on Facebook, which the blog account was associated with. Once you disable the personal account, unless you pass of management to another, your “pages” accounts go down as well. Facebook was becoming a distraction and issue to me. And until things settle down some more, i’m going to keep myself off of it.
With that said i am hoping to push this to google+, assuming the trick to do so works. I also have a presence on tumblr. The links to can be found on the about me page. And as always i’ll be on twitter. I’ve also set up a sort of voice mail account, but i’ll hold off on putting that number out yet.
So i hope everyone is having a good time, i’ll be putting up a regular post sometime over the weekend.
UPDATE: I am also turning off likes, it’s a bit of a false thing, and i rather have readers read the article and engage with me then just pushing the like button from the reader.
