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Home / Thoughts / BIID, depression, winetasting, and other ramblings on hopelessness

BIID, depression, winetasting, and other ramblings on hopelessness

Written by Sean on Monday, March 31, 2008

I’ve been silent a while. I have some stuff to say, but it’s bleak, very bleak. And I don’t want to give the impression I’m whining (and no, that’s not the reference to winetasting…). I’ve been dealing with an old nemesis, depression, and a renewed and somewhat intensified BIID related hopelessness. All that mixed together and the picture isn’t pretty.

If you’ve been reading my blog entries for a while, you’ll know that depression has been at me for a long, long, looooong time. I think it started in my teens, but it might have been before even that. I’m not sure. Over the years, I’ve come to learn the different textures, the different "tastes" of my depression. They can be quite subtle, like wine. And if you’re not familiar with depression, you’re not likely to be able to perceive the different nuances. But take it from me, there are different levels (that’s a given, isn’t it?) and different "feels" to depression.

I said a few times that depression and BIID cohabitated, that one wasn’t the cause of the other, nor vice versa. I’m still convinced that my chronic depression is not directly cause nor effect to my BIID. Although they can aggravate each other, of course. But I’m left wondering, does BIID have its own level of depression, or bleaklessness, or something?

Over the last few months, the chronic depression that I’ve been dealing with has abated significantly. I attribute this to both my therapist, although I haven’t seen her since last year, and to exercise. It has made a world of difference in my life. The chronic low level stuff, and even the peaks of accute depression have been reduced. not gone, but reduced enough that there was space for more. At first, I felt buoyed by this disappearance. And little by little, it got filled up by BIID related hopelessness.

I don’t know if it’s depression, per se. It could very well be. But it doesn’t feel like the other depression. It is bleaker, darner, more bitter. And in this space, there is no hope. In contrast to "the other" depression, it’s not being shaken by exercise, or anything else. I told a friend the other day that I’d had a productive day, but I still felt like sh*te. She observed that usualy, when she had a productive time, she didn’t feel quite so bad. And it used to be like that. Being able to somewhat shake it, even if for a few hours, by accomplishing something tangible.

But not this. Nothing shakes it.

Now, as I see it, I have three options ahead of me:

1. Continue living in this hell
2. Die
3. Become a paraplegic

Well, option #1 is not desirable. It’s ripping me apart, destroying me. I’ve never been committed because of my depression, but it’s not because I couldn’t have. I’ve had times where I stayed in bed for days on end, not getting up for *anything*. Not pretty. And frankly, I don’t care to get back there, and I fear I’m not far from this. It’s too much. It is too much. And the problem here is that it’s "all in my head". You can’t see it. You can’t touch it. And because it’s that way, it’s entirely too easy to dismiss it. Heck, even medical professionals are dismissing it, as per a recent post in a discussion group! How many people have thought it can’t possibly be that difficult, that painful? Why is it that emotional pain is dismissed and doesn’t rate compared to physical pain? I’m not talking about just a bad case of the blues here, I’m talking about a rip-you-apart kind of pain. One that makes you want to smash your skull against the wall to make it stop. To please, just make. It. Stop. But it doesn’t stop.

And so to escape that, you have option #2. But as I often joke, "suicide is not a viable option". I do not want to die. I don’t have any desire to kill myself. The only reason I even think about it is because of the overflow of pain. The amount of pain is exceeding my ability to deal with it. They say that people who talk suicide are only really crying for help. Well, this is me, HEAR ME OUT: I am crying for help. I am telling you that there are no tools left, but one, for me to avoid this. I can’t go on like this.

Or perhaps I can. I’m like a rubber balloon. you fill it with water, ever so slowly. It stretches and stretches. You think you can’t fill it up anymore. But another drip goes in, and the sides expand and stretch. The balloon becomes more translucent, but keeps stretching. Ohh, you couldn’t *possibly* fit any more in there. But you do, miraculously (wretched miracle), you can add water to the balloon. Eventually, it *will* explode, and it’ll make a bloody mess. I’d rather not get to that point though. I’d rather not.

So that leaves option #3. And we all know that’s not really an option either. The people who *can* won’t. The people who have the knowledge, the doctors, won’t assist with "injuring a perfectly healthy body", conveniently forgetting that *health* is a whole, it’s not just about the physicality of a body, but about the joint state of body & mind. I won’t discuss the barriers (real or imagined) the doctors have in providing surgery for BIID, I’ve done that before elsewhere and I’m likely to again. So, the medical folks, won’t help. Self-injury is, at best, very risky and rather unreliable. There are methods that people have used with some level of success (don’t ask, I won’t discuss self-injury techniques here). But the same methods that have been used with success have left other people with no paralysis, yet chronic nerve pain. Besides, to achieve the level of paralysis my BIID makes me require, I could not use these techniques by myself. So I have to resort to a third party. That is just as tricky, isn’t it? Self-injury is too risky. Assisted self-injury requires finding someone willing to take the risk of being done for assault (they don’t even have the protection of being a doctor and acting under a "cutting-edge" medical concept.

So, where does that leave me? Where does that leave you? Where does that leave us?

[tags]Depression, BIID, Paralysis, Suicide, Surgery[/tags]