I'm back.

Thank you for the posts.

The way my illnesses are, even my faith in God has been affected by them. Twice in twenty-four hours, I've thought of giving up. I have severe depression and now I am hit with a disease that cause surges of suicidal ideation and it comes out in my writing. The disease makes me see rejection everywhere and I have a thin emotional skin.

I shouldn't say "Now I have it." It's always been there, for years undiagnosed. I would try to recover from depression and then watch as I systematically took apart my social supports:Friends, family, people who were trying to help me. I was systematically isolating myself and i had no idea why.

And now the big s-word has crossed my mind: Again and again and again. I've always loved my life, even under the worst of circumstances and now that opinion is wavering. The spectre of suicidal ideation keeps cropping up. I have to fight it from day to day and some times from hour to hour. It's gotten worse recently and it still puzzles me why I am doing it. My big brother said not to fight my depression, but to accept it as something as the way God made me.

Sorry, brother. If I don't fight off these urges, then where does that leave me? Secondly, this little package of illness didn't come from God. He allowed them to happen, but he didn't make me with a self-destruction switch. Partially it came from the way I was raised and the rest of it....just happened.

I am being hit with borderline personality disorder in all its' splendour and all its' horror...because I am under the worst possible stress imaginable...severe pain for the vast majority of my waking hours and the possibility of more surgery.

I don't need to have nightmares about Montreal. I'm having a nightmare now. It's called "My Life". And for me to say that the nightmare is not affecting me, or doesn't exist, is an outright fantasy, even a lie.

I have lost a noticable amount of weight, so much so that people around me are commenting on it. I can't sleep that well. I may look calm and composed to the average person, but inside I am blowing up angrily and thinking of suicide like anyone in my position would. It's coming out in my writing...and that's only the beginning.

I read in the hospital of how one borderline personality ended up in emergency every night and was the participant in multiple attempts on her life. Thankfully, my fear and hatred of the hospital has spared me trips to emergency, but I am flirting with suicide.

It's the most embarassing and dangerous part of being a borderline personality....and I want to sweep it under the carpet so no one will see it. I want to deal with that part on my own, so no one knows or will be hurt by my struggle. My father hid things too and he was the most troubled one in all of my family.

I'm even thinking of hiding these surges from my psychiatrist.....my psychiatrist, even though he fears what the hospitals will do to me worse than I do! (Hospitalization=nursing home. Yes indeed, they brought it up when I was hospitalized last week for this fun little package of illness: Would you like to enter a nursing home? Why bring up the question if you figure the answer is going to be a resounding "NO!"?

I am arranging to get the help I need, but it's a slow frustrating process, partially because I am reluctant to ask for help and partially because there are so many waiting lists!

I see a mental health nurse and a case manager from Community Care Access Centres tomorrow. My family doctor wants to see me on Monday and she wants me to bring all my medication with me. (That makes me a little paranoid...Now what? She knows about my hospitalization and why? I shouldn't be afraid of her, she's a nice doctor, has visited me in the hospital and even sends me home with samples of medication not covered on my drug card. She's a credit to her profession (and I don't have many good things to say about her profession). She's trying to help me, but still...

The wagons are pulling up in a semi-circle for a long siege. When I told a friend I was leaving, I told her not to tell Doug. I found out just now that she went and told him....

Which explains his actions this morning. I had another bout of suicidal thoughts and told him about it in an e-mail at 2 in the morning. It took a delivery by a medical supply store at 7 in the morning to jolt me out of it. (Oh, no! The hospital's come to get me!)

I explained a little more about borderline personality disorder in an e-mail I sent to him. He congratulates me for having shaken off the latest bout. Then in another e-mail, he asks me to write a story for his eight year old daughter.

Doug asks me to do crazy things. Like get involved with the church, when I'm in pain and isolating from people. Or volunteer work when I'm in the same position.

This has to be the nuttiest request yet. Hasn't he seen my writing lately? Haven't you all? I can't write for eight year old kids when I'm like this!?

I'm working on something for him nonetheless...even though my heart is telling me I can't do this.

I'm fighting this beast hard, it may not look like it, but I AM trying. I fight so hard because I figure I'll be abandoned if I dont....I've been fighting alone in the hospital all my life...without my parents. I don't expect help from any quarter, even if I ask for it.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.