Posts tagged with "suicide"

On Isotretinoin

I recent­ly start­ed a course of Isotretinoin, a strong med­ica­tion used to cure severe acne by alter­ing DNA tran­scrip­tion. For some rea­son, my acne has real­ly flared up in my late twen­ties. I would get huge cysts on my face that would last for weeks, not to men­tion the hyper-pig­men­ta­tion that would last even longer after the cyst went away. Needless to say, it was mak­ing me very anti-social when I was talk­ing to peo­ple and felt like there was a huge dis­trac­tion on my face.

I was referred to a der­ma­tol­o­gist, who gave me a pre­scrip­tion for “full strength” (accord­ing to my body weight) to see if I could han­dle the side effects. The phar­ma­cist asked me if she made a mis­take because they don’t offer a dosage that strong, so now I take a com­bi­na­tion of two dosages.

Due to the poten­cy of the med­ica­tion, there’s a huge list of side effects. The scari­est is the mood changes. I’m sup­posed to stop the dose if I start expe­ri­enc­ing:

  • changes in my mood such as becom­ing depressed, feel­ing sad, or hav­ing cry­ing spells
  • los­ing inter­est in my usu­al activ­i­ties
  • changes in my nor­mal sleep pat­terns
  • becom­ing more irri­ta­ble or aggres­sive than usu­al
  • los­ing my appetite
  • becom­ing unusu­al­ly tired
  • hav­ing trou­ble con­cen­trat­ing
  • with­draw­ing from fam­i­ly and friends
  • hav­ing thoughts about tak­ing my own life

As a per­son who’s suf­fered from sui­ci­dal thoughts in the past, this was quite a fright­en­ing propo­si­tion. I asked my friends to be aware, just in case I don’t notice any changes in myself.

So far though, the only side effect has been extreme­ly dry skin, espe­cial­ly on the face. The lips have been the worst; I can’t eat or drink any­thing with­out apply­ing a thick lay­er of mois­tur­iz­er on them, oth­er­wise they peel like mad.

There’s also a dry­ing of mucous mem­branes. To relieve the chap­ping, I’ve start­ed smear­ing Vaseline in my nose.

Prior to this, the only time I used Vaseline was as a sex­u­al lubri­cant.

Now I get aroused every time I breathe in.

Defining Myself Through Others, Revisited

A deep­er look at an old top­ic

Some time when I was a child, I asked my moth­er if she loved her nails more than she loved me. She had this kit full of nail tools — clip­pers, files made of met­al and emery, toe sep­a­ra­tors, fake nails sep­a­rat­ed in lit­tle box­es, even a small hand-held, bat­tery-oper­at­ed dremel with dif­fer­ent attach­ments used to grind, sand, and pol­ish — that she would car­ry with her around the house. When I asked her this ques­tion, she picked me up in her arms, and vehe­ment­ly denied it. I did­n’t believe her though, not in my heart. She had always paid more atten­tion to her nails than to me.

My dad was no bet­ter. One time I googled his name to find his work num­ber, and came across an audio/visual site where he had writ­ten a small para­graph as a review on a pro­jec­tor he had. I was crushed. It was more effort than he had ever put into my life, sit­ting in a cou­ple of short sen­tences in front of me. It would have been okay if he had been so unin­ter­est­ed in every­thing, but he was­n’t. He loved his car, he loved his home the­atre, he loved his karaoke, but me he had no inter­est in.

So, before I had become a teenag­er, I start­ed to look for some kind of approval from oth­er peo­ple. At that point, it was Andrew and Alex. They were my best friends in grade 3 and 4, but I changed schools in grade 5. Even after this, I tried to hang out with them but they seemed to be more inter­est­ed in school, and we lost touch.

Pretty soon, I real­ized that I was­n’t any­one’s “best friend”. I cried and I cried and I cried. I felt like I need­ed this to define myself. I need­ed be a pri­or­i­ty to some­one because I cer­tain­ly was­n’t a pri­or­i­ty to my par­ents. Without being some­one’s best friend, I was worth­less.

As an adult, you may feel inse­cure about cer­tain aspects of your life. You lack self-con­fi­dence in areas where you feel vul­ner­a­ble — inti­mate rela­tion­ships, social sit­u­a­tions, or work. Within your vul­ner­a­ble areas, you feel infe­ri­or to oth­er peo­ple. You are hyper­sen­si­tive to crit­i­cism or rejec­tion.

I still feel this way now. The prob­lem is that the need isn’t being met. Everyone puts oth­er peo­ple first, and the one foun­da­tion I believed I had in my life has crum­bled. I’m nev­er impor­tant enough.

Two things keep me from killing myself.

The thought that one day, I may mean some­thing to some­one. Or the thought that one day, I’ll be able to stop defin­ing myself through oth­ers, and sim­ply be con­tent with who I am.

Either way, some­thing’s got­ta give.

This Is Not A Cry For Help

I have sui­ci­dal thoughts every now and then.

They don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly come out dur­ing bad times. It’s rather ran­dom. And it’s not like these thoughts involve plan­ing how I’m going to do it, I just think of how much sim­pler things would be if I weren’t liv­ing. A line from Being John Malkovich comes to mind:

[Consciousness] is a ter­ri­ble curse. I think. I feel. I suf­fer.

I think the root of my “suf­fer­ing” is the anx­i­ety I har­bour. Anxiety about social sit­u­a­tions, the state of the world, and oth­er triv­ial details that make life seem com­pli­cat­ed. I don’t want to have these thoughts, but I do. Then life gets even more com­pli­cat­ed, and I get more anx­i­ety. It’s a vicious cir­cle, until it becomes not about the anx­i­ety itself, but anx­i­ety about hav­ing anx­i­ety. I did­n’t real­ly iden­ti­fy it until I was in the car with Julie, feel­ing sick and sick­er until I almost asked her to pull over on the high­way.

All I want to do is stop think­ing. Suicide would be such an easy solu­tion, and as much as I dis­agree with the rea­sons for sui­cide in the first place, I hon­est­ly believe this is true.

It makes me scared that one day I’m going to make a stu­pid mis­take with a per­ma­nent con­se­quence.

I know I have a good life, I know how illog­i­cal these thoughts are, but that does­n’t stop them from reoc­cur­ring on a month­ly basis. I remem­ber hav­ing these thoughts as ear­ly as high school, although they were much more com­mon back then.

More fre­quent­ly, I have thoughts of muti­la­tion, about once a week. Not self-muti­la­tion, because there’s nev­er any­one specif­i­cal­ly doing it to me. It’s just me in black­ness, then a float­ing knife fly­ing into my wind­pipe, or an axe split­ting my head down the mid­dle, or an ice-pick in the back of the neck, or…well, you get the idea.

I’ve nev­er told any­one about this. Not because I’m ashamed of it, but because I did­n’t want any­one to wor­ry. Not even my clos­est friends know.

But har­bour­ing this fear and anx­i­ety, I’m slow­ly real­iz­ing, is dif­fi­cult. It’s pre­vent­ing me from enjoy­ing life. I’ve decid­ed to get some help; my first appoint­ment is in three days.

I’m tired of liv­ing with this.