I feel like I've spent my life trying to distract myself from the ugly feelings in my heart, from the overwhelming pain in my soul. I start to feel depressed and I do some art or I do some journaling or I call someone and talk. But the ugliness and pain always comes back. Always. It's this never-ending cycle of depression.
Two weekends in a row I called the crisis line. The last time I called, last Sunday, I told myself that was it. If I just started feeling bad again later, then this game called life was over. Not that I would immediately kill myself when I started feeling bad again, just that I wasn't going to call for help anymore. And today, in my counseling session, I expressed this through my tears to my therapist. I'm just so tired of trying.
I also talked about how difficult school is becoming. How I sit in school every day and think about whether I'm going to kill myself later that day. How I can't concentrate because of the intensity of my emotions.
I'll take a quick moment to mention that I know this isn't a medication issue. I'm sure my medication is still working--I can only imagine how much worse I would be if it wasn't. No, this is a psychological problem. An internal conflict that all the medication in the world can't fix.
Back to my session...
I first mentioned that I wished I wasn't in school anymore. That I really and truly don't think I can do this. And she said I might need to quit...but that I had to remember that I'm well beyond my halfway mark and I only have to hang in there for another 14 weeks and 2 days. 72 more school/extern days until I complete this program. I threw out the idea of taking a break, a leave of absence for the next sequence. That, she said, was also a possibility, but we both agreed that it wouldn't necessarily solve the problem; it would merely lengthen the time I have to be in the program.
She had two other suggestions.
The first was that we stop the work we've been doing that has been triggering me so much and causing me so much distress until school is over. While this is an option, I feel that it would be difficult for me to "shut off" everything that has recently come to the surface. It's not easy to simply forget everything for 14 weeks and 2 days, even though it would probably be the most ideal plan for this time in my life.
Her second suggestion was that we increase my weekly sessions from one to two per week. It was ironic, in a way, that I was just talking to my case manager yesterday about how I wished I could see my therapist more often but that she had told me she only does private counseling on Wednesdays. You can imagine my surprise when she suggested that we switch to Tuesdays and Thursdays. But I really think that might help me. A lot. I'm sure it would just be temporary, of course, but it may be just what I need right now.
And you know what? That gave me some hope to hang onto for now.
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