So. Looks like it's back to therapy for me.
I suppose a bit of background information would be in order here. In the last few months of 2004 I settled into a very ugly phase. I was irritable, I didn't want to talk with anyone, I habitually fell asleep in class, I made rude comments about a teacher's wife, I never wanted to eat, I suffered migraines that prevented me from sleeping, and I routinely engaged in physical violence with my brother over minor disagreements.
My parents asked that I open up and talk to them about what was going on lately. I told them. Some of you know that I irrationally and excessively preoccupy myself with concerns that I can't do anything about. (For example I tried the community-service route to try and find contentment and do some good at the same time, but quit when I realized that with every one person I helped there were several hundred million whose lives I could never impact. Also, I want to kill every single goddamned child molester on the planet but for some reason no one will grant me legal amnesty to do away with even one.)
So, of course, when I actually took a chance and TOLD them all the weird and grandiose shit that goes on in my head, they dismissed me as "being silly" and "not trusting in God enough" and "being too negative." Lot of good that did, I can tell you. I began to get angrier and angrier at nothing in particular. On December 8, 2004, I took my air rifle with me up to shoot at jackrabbits like I always did. After sitting against a tree near the top of my hill and watching the sun set, I snapped.
What happened after that is a blank hole in my memory but it's pretty obvious. Next thing I know I'm sitting there struggling to breathe with an incredibly painful ribcage and a hole in my chest from a point-blank air rifle impact. I'd read somewhere that a tremendous blow to the chest would stop the heart and cause death. Apparently I hadn't pumped the damn thing up enough. Anyway I pretty much lost it after that point, railing at myself for my own stupidity and wanting nothing more than to punish myself for, as I later put it, "failing at failing." I screamed and beat myself in the head with the butt of the rifle, and on the sixth blow the cheap plastic thing snapped in half. Then I pretty much set about punching trees and throwing rocks and yelling until the adrenaline wore off and I staggered bleeding back to my house. Hospitalization for blood loss followed, and then a few months of therapy. Lexapro and Wellbutrin for my "hormonal imbalance." It was determined that the root cause of my anxiety was that I was still grieving for my 2-years-dead grandfather, or whatever.
No, I'm not expecting sympathy. In fact I fully expect your opinion of me to be lowered after reading that last paragraph. I will be the first to tell you that suicide is fucking pathetic and those who attempt it deserve to be scorned for their selfishness and idiocy. The scars on my chest and forehead are permanent reminders of my incompetence and inability to deal with life like a man.
For the few of you who are still reading, I'll move on to the present.
Over the past few weeks I have been exhibiting some symptoms similar to my past bout with what I refuse to call "depression" because that condition has been so overdiagnosed as to be completely devoid of meaning. I've been growing more and more impatient with my family and girlfriend, wanting to spend time with them less and less. More of my time has been dedicated to working out alone, doing schoolwork, writing short horror stories, or lying in bed doing nothing. Since the end of the semester rolled around, it's been more of the second one.
I just got out of two solid weeks of no sleep except for the weekends, thanks to the bizarre ability of teachers to all assign massive projects at the same time. The sleep I did get has been shallow and restless because I've started to hallucinate sounds. I can't fall asleep at all without music playing.
So last week I'd just gotten off the phone with my girlfriend after a perfectly pleasant conversation, and I'm sitting here writing a report, and my cell phone gives off its "LOW BATTERY" sound. I stand up and turn around to go walk to the outlet the charger is plugged into.
The next split second is a complete blank, but a sharp crashing sound jolts me back to reality, and pieces of my cell phone clatter to the floor by the far wall, and I'm standing there with my fists clenched and my heart racing.
Scared the shit out of me. The implications hit me in a second. If I could be in a perfectly good mood and then suddenly get mad enough to throw and shatter a cell phone without even consciously doing it, how could my girlfriend move in with me and consider herself safe?
I call her from my room phone, tell her exactly what happened, and she gets all upset and worries that being alone so much is making me crazy. I understand her concern because I've said before that her father is a fucking wife-beating child-fondling maniac. The last thing I want to do is be like him.
I call my parents next and they ask if I feel anything like I did in December of 2004 and I say yeah, just a little bit. So they drive up here to get me because they don't trust me to drive home on my own. Because the last time I'd had a blank-out like this I'd raised a hand against my own self rather than an inanimate object, my brother spent the night on the floor in my room.
He tells everyone the next morning that I'd woken up several times during the night and spoken out loud for minutes at a time to no one. After being grilled, I name off all the other symptoms I've been having recently such as hearing sounds that aren't there and smaller irrational bursts of anger.
A bit of Internet searching tells me that a lot of these behaviors of mine link up dangerously close to schizophrenia. Of course, I'm not about to diagnose myself based on the first ten Google results, so we set up an appointment with a neurologist and a therapist. My parents are still freaked the fuck out at the prospect of having a psycho for a son. I just got done with a bitter argument with them over being able to drive back to school on my own.
My girlfriend's parents, having seen and been through a lot more hardship than my own parents, are a lot more understanding. My girlfriend's mom keeps telling me there's nothing wrong with getting treatment and I shouldn't be ashamed of myself. Her dad just gave me this talk where he sat me down and told me that if he could have had a second shot at life he would have wanted to be more like me. More sensitive, less quick to start fights, more focus on brains over brawn.
He also assuaged one of my outstanding concerns I'd voiced to him in the past--he told me he was fully confident that I could protect his daughter and our future family. His reasoning? "Beware the fury of a patient man." He said the nicest, friendliest guys he ever knew were also the ones capable of the most extreme acts of violence if pushed the wrong way, and he thinks I fall right into that category. I didn't know whether to be pleased or disturbed by this appraisal.
So, I'm looking forward to finding out what, if anything, is wrong with me on Thursday. There are two major theories floating around the Draygoon household and that of his significant other:
1. I'm fine, I just push myself too hard academically to the exclusion of everything else and I let the stress get to me.
2. I'm completely fucking batshit insane.
Thoughts? Thanks for reading, by the way.
I suppose a bit of background information would be in order here. In the last few months of 2004 I settled into a very ugly phase. I was irritable, I didn't want to talk with anyone, I habitually fell asleep in class, I made rude comments about a teacher's wife, I never wanted to eat, I suffered migraines that prevented me from sleeping, and I routinely engaged in physical violence with my brother over minor disagreements.
My parents asked that I open up and talk to them about what was going on lately. I told them. Some of you know that I irrationally and excessively preoccupy myself with concerns that I can't do anything about. (For example I tried the community-service route to try and find contentment and do some good at the same time, but quit when I realized that with every one person I helped there were several hundred million whose lives I could never impact. Also, I want to kill every single goddamned child molester on the planet but for some reason no one will grant me legal amnesty to do away with even one.)
So, of course, when I actually took a chance and TOLD them all the weird and grandiose shit that goes on in my head, they dismissed me as "being silly" and "not trusting in God enough" and "being too negative." Lot of good that did, I can tell you. I began to get angrier and angrier at nothing in particular. On December 8, 2004, I took my air rifle with me up to shoot at jackrabbits like I always did. After sitting against a tree near the top of my hill and watching the sun set, I snapped.
What happened after that is a blank hole in my memory but it's pretty obvious. Next thing I know I'm sitting there struggling to breathe with an incredibly painful ribcage and a hole in my chest from a point-blank air rifle impact. I'd read somewhere that a tremendous blow to the chest would stop the heart and cause death. Apparently I hadn't pumped the damn thing up enough. Anyway I pretty much lost it after that point, railing at myself for my own stupidity and wanting nothing more than to punish myself for, as I later put it, "failing at failing." I screamed and beat myself in the head with the butt of the rifle, and on the sixth blow the cheap plastic thing snapped in half. Then I pretty much set about punching trees and throwing rocks and yelling until the adrenaline wore off and I staggered bleeding back to my house. Hospitalization for blood loss followed, and then a few months of therapy. Lexapro and Wellbutrin for my "hormonal imbalance." It was determined that the root cause of my anxiety was that I was still grieving for my 2-years-dead grandfather, or whatever.
No, I'm not expecting sympathy. In fact I fully expect your opinion of me to be lowered after reading that last paragraph. I will be the first to tell you that suicide is fucking pathetic and those who attempt it deserve to be scorned for their selfishness and idiocy. The scars on my chest and forehead are permanent reminders of my incompetence and inability to deal with life like a man.
For the few of you who are still reading, I'll move on to the present.
Over the past few weeks I have been exhibiting some symptoms similar to my past bout with what I refuse to call "depression" because that condition has been so overdiagnosed as to be completely devoid of meaning. I've been growing more and more impatient with my family and girlfriend, wanting to spend time with them less and less. More of my time has been dedicated to working out alone, doing schoolwork, writing short horror stories, or lying in bed doing nothing. Since the end of the semester rolled around, it's been more of the second one.
I just got out of two solid weeks of no sleep except for the weekends, thanks to the bizarre ability of teachers to all assign massive projects at the same time. The sleep I did get has been shallow and restless because I've started to hallucinate sounds. I can't fall asleep at all without music playing.
So last week I'd just gotten off the phone with my girlfriend after a perfectly pleasant conversation, and I'm sitting here writing a report, and my cell phone gives off its "LOW BATTERY" sound. I stand up and turn around to go walk to the outlet the charger is plugged into.
The next split second is a complete blank, but a sharp crashing sound jolts me back to reality, and pieces of my cell phone clatter to the floor by the far wall, and I'm standing there with my fists clenched and my heart racing.
Scared the shit out of me. The implications hit me in a second. If I could be in a perfectly good mood and then suddenly get mad enough to throw and shatter a cell phone without even consciously doing it, how could my girlfriend move in with me and consider herself safe?
I call her from my room phone, tell her exactly what happened, and she gets all upset and worries that being alone so much is making me crazy. I understand her concern because I've said before that her father is a fucking wife-beating child-fondling maniac. The last thing I want to do is be like him.
I call my parents next and they ask if I feel anything like I did in December of 2004 and I say yeah, just a little bit. So they drive up here to get me because they don't trust me to drive home on my own. Because the last time I'd had a blank-out like this I'd raised a hand against my own self rather than an inanimate object, my brother spent the night on the floor in my room.
He tells everyone the next morning that I'd woken up several times during the night and spoken out loud for minutes at a time to no one. After being grilled, I name off all the other symptoms I've been having recently such as hearing sounds that aren't there and smaller irrational bursts of anger.
A bit of Internet searching tells me that a lot of these behaviors of mine link up dangerously close to schizophrenia. Of course, I'm not about to diagnose myself based on the first ten Google results, so we set up an appointment with a neurologist and a therapist. My parents are still freaked the fuck out at the prospect of having a psycho for a son. I just got done with a bitter argument with them over being able to drive back to school on my own.
My girlfriend's parents, having seen and been through a lot more hardship than my own parents, are a lot more understanding. My girlfriend's mom keeps telling me there's nothing wrong with getting treatment and I shouldn't be ashamed of myself. Her dad just gave me this talk where he sat me down and told me that if he could have had a second shot at life he would have wanted to be more like me. More sensitive, less quick to start fights, more focus on brains over brawn.
He also assuaged one of my outstanding concerns I'd voiced to him in the past--he told me he was fully confident that I could protect his daughter and our future family. His reasoning? "Beware the fury of a patient man." He said the nicest, friendliest guys he ever knew were also the ones capable of the most extreme acts of violence if pushed the wrong way, and he thinks I fall right into that category. I didn't know whether to be pleased or disturbed by this appraisal.
So, I'm looking forward to finding out what, if anything, is wrong with me on Thursday. There are two major theories floating around the Draygoon household and that of his significant other:
1. I'm fine, I just push myself too hard academically to the exclusion of everything else and I let the stress get to me.
2. I'm completely fucking batshit insane.
Thoughts? Thanks for reading, by the way.
