Posted by onceupon on September 25, 2008, at 10:37:38
Deal with thoughts and images of suicide, that is? Each day it feels like the world is becoming more unreal and each day I'm slipping away a little more.
On the outside, I still seem to be functioning, pretty much. Get to work (don't always do the best job, though), care for the kiddo, force myself to engage at least with him. But all the rest? The cooking, cleaning, school deadlines, socializing? Couldn't care less. I told my therapist the other day that sometimes it seems like I keep going on because it is the thing to do. It is what I do. One foot in front of the other. Step, step, step. She tried to convince me that the act of going on belies some small amount of hope. At the time it felt more like cowardice, though. More like feeling frozen and unable to exit this loop of doing, doing, doing.
And that's when the thoughts and images of suicide come, sometimes in waves almost. It's an old coping mechanism, thinking of suicide, but it's awfully hard to push aside sometimes. I try, I put it in a corner, I distract myself, but it always comes back, unbidden. How do you deal with this when it feels like it's going to drown you?
To be clear, I have no plan to act on these thoughts. They just get so big sometimes. You know, I got away from them last spring, when I wasn't working as much. I started an antidepressant and fish oil, and started running again. But it's all fading away now, and the despair has returned, heavy in my chest. Could be seasonal. But I can't help but thinking that it *always* comes back. It makes me so tired.
poster:onceupon
thread:853981
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20080920/msgs/853981.html