The Fantasies Are Back

[Kintsugi]

I've struggled with suicide for many years, and since last semester it's been getting harder, with times when I thought I was really going to just end it. A couple of months ago, my fiance got me a puppy. She is my doll, a one-year-old rescue. I feel like I share a bond with her, like she's been through things and I've been through things and now we can be in a safe place with each other, and I thought after I got her, "I'm never going to want to kill myself now that I have this to live for," but I've been having these visions recently that immediately occur as beautiful to me--me in a bathtub with all of my blood diffused in the water, wrists open an exposed, my face filled with the peace of death, opening a car door on the highway and just rolling out into the road, the clamor as cars try to avoid my inevitable and welcomed death. I'm scared to tell my fiance that I have these thoughts because it insults him, and I feel guilty toward him and my puppy for having these thoughts. Every night I have nightmares that now include my puppy's doom as well as mine (it's been this way since the first night we had her). I wake up feeling like I'm going to fail myself and this little creature who depends on my care and love. How the hell do I get out of this hole, and why am I having these awful images in my head? Since I was a child I would have flash images of stabbing myself to death, or drowning, and more recently images of me chewing glass or laying on a bed of glass, but those images always scared me at least a little bit. Now I just imagine suicide as something beautiful and peaceful, something admirable to the character I would no longer have.

Any thoughts would be helpful. I just feel very alone right now, not being able to share with others.

 

[The Albatross]

Is there something you are avoiding that makes you uncomfotable in your life? I know that when I think these thoughts, there is something I am frustrated or anxious about that needs to change. If I avoid it, the thoughts become more focused. If I do a self check most of the time I can find out what is bothering me and try to set a goal or have a plan of action to change it or to adjust my perception about the event. Sometimes, my perception about events aren't quite right, I've found.

I tend to view these thoughts now as avoidance and procrastination.

 

[Kintsugi]

Thanks, Albatross. It's likely you're correct. My nightmares generally increase/become more persistent and vivid when I am avoiding things, too, so it would make sense why these visions are coming to me. Hm, things I'm avoiding... only about a hundred and one things pop into my mind. >.<

 

[The Albatross]

Yeah I can think of quite a few myself. Pick one, the one that rings the loudest and see if you can initiate a change.

 

[Kintsugi]

My mom! Agh! The worst kind of avoidance in my opinion. Mothers both don't like to be avoided nor confronted. What a dilemma.
(By the way, as soon as you said, 'rings the loudest,' I envisioned my mother in a bell tower going nuts on some bells with a sledgehammer.)

 

[The Albatross]

Nooooooo... that would be my mom. Heh. :geek:

 

[The Albatross]

Okay so, what I'm working on with my own mother is listening without defending, patience, and biting my tongue nearly off but staying tolerant when she doesn't ask me how I am or anything about my life. I've been practicing these three in with some progress for 4 years. It gets easier, but there is still a frustration factor.

 

[The Albatross]

Oh yeah, and one more. When my moms voice gets louder and more upsetting, I drop the volume and talk softer. In person it can be just above a whisper. I don't know why, but it's helping to quiet her back down without confrontation. Maybe because she has to attend to what I'm saying and actually work to listen rather than just spin on talking over me like I am not even there.

 

[Kintsugi]

That is definitely a technique I have employed with many volume-raisers. I can't stand loudness. I also find that talking in a heated and emotional situation in a very calm and cool voice is a good scare tactic! : )