Glad those days are gone

This morning found me holding a plastic cupful of bleach, up to my face.  I sniffed.  Was it still good?  I couldn't really tell. 

As I held it right next to my mouth, I mused how easy it would be to drink it.  I happily concluded that I am not suicidal, so I wouldn't, and even if I were suicidal drinking bleach would be a hell of a way to go.  Assuming it even killed me. 

[shudder]  Glad those days are gone - the days of fighting massive, suicidal impulses morning, noon, and especially night.  That's what actually got me to seek help, back in 2006. 

You have to realize, for the prior 32 years any psychological and psychiatric "help" had been ineffective at best, downright criminal at worst.  I'm one reason you see the black box warnings - don't give antidepressants to teens.  Because it made me suicidal. 

Every depression after that went right to suicidal.  No one could help.  They just said the trauma of my early life and a complicated blended family (never acknowledging or even naming the abuse) - useless, I concluded.  All of it useless. 

Ron and I went for marriage counseling in 2005.  The guy, upon hearing of Ron's drinking problems, spent half our sessions sharing HIS drinking problem and telling us all the things he'd done while drunk the previous weekend.  I felt like he should be paying us.  Useless. 

Worse, actually.  Before counseling Ron admitted he had a problem.  After the counseling, he concluded his problem wasn't so bad and I would just have to deal. 

Which ended, just 2 years later, with me black and blue, a broken bed, flight to my aunt's house.  Ron knows if he hits me again I will file charges. 

[sigh]  Anyways, I figured any "psych" help was a worthless scam. 

However, I spent much of 2006 suicidal.  When I wasn't engaged in massive wood-staining projects (I still have the finished products), up to my elbows in the garden, or spending my paycheck in two days - I was in bed, suicidal. 

Looking back it's such classic type one bipolar behavior.  It's sad. 

Anyway, I got suicidal in late August.  I also had a difficult and painful fire ant infestation.  They were biting me in bed. 

I was so depressed I just endured for a week.  I finally bought a bag of ant bait.  I treated all the areas around my home, every mound I could find, and brought the bag into the house, setting it on an end table.  I was thirsty.  I poured myself a glass of soda and set it next to the ant bait.  I'd read the label.  Ant bait is some truly nasty stuff. 

How easy, I thought, to put some ant bait in my soda.  I had a tremendous time resisting the impulse. 

OK, I thought.  I need help.  I sought it, I got it (after a lot of unneeded drama), I got medicated. 

Game over. 

I do have a hard time thinking how different my life would have been, had I gotten REAL help when I first started having trouble 'round about age 10.

God made me this way, and needs me this way.  But it still makes me sad.  It also enrages me when I hear a parent say, "Oh, they say my kid is bipolar, but I'm not giving them the drugs."