Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Heart Sick


My depression and related anxiety & agoraphobia has escalated on me again. (No, not all agoraphobes are 100% housebound.) November 8th of '05 I tried to commit suicide --- the stresses of my job had finally gotten to me. I went back to work after 3 months on temporary disability. I was supposed to be in a more general tech support category and was succeeding, but in the intervening months, was transitioned back into the same position I was in when I tried to check out. I was told basically there wasn't a choice, that was the direction the company was going. The kick in the ass, was I was doing better in the lower rated position than I had in some time. But got transitioned back into failing. We have this thing called "handle time" and I've been under a huge amount of pressure to get it down to the company standard. Last month I beat it. This month I'm over again. I've left work the several days crying that I just can't seem to be perfect--to get that balance of handling all my calls perfectly the way the company wants.

Day before yesterday, I found out resubmitted disability paper work never got to the company's MRO because it was paperclipped to someone else's paperwork. Yesterday, after my shift was over I found my handle time was some 1500 seconds. I left in tears and punished myself, punching and slapping my face and wanting to be dead. I cried in my car for over an hour. Cut myself for the first time too. Four slices on my arm. It's not like I haven't done other things to hurt myself either -- I've burned myself with hot wires & cigarettes too. Usually self hitting is the limit, but not always. I feel/felt like a failure and like I wanted to be dead for the gazillionth time since I was 11. The only smart thing I did was call my pDoc who told me in no uncertain terms to NOT go to work.

I feel lost. I'm 53 and I'm just so tired of this. I have long periods when things go well with me and I'm relatively ok, but then my life gets stolen again by this depression and everything, including work, home, life management (like paying bills) goes into a decline. Even more, I'm sick to death of people thinking it's a character failing and that if I really WANTED it badly enough, I'd be happy and well all the time; so that I should think "happy thoughts" or look at those worse off than me and be grateful (which I am when I'm not sick.) I don't write much about this.... it's ugly to me. Ugly to be thinking of dying, to be or becoming suicidal, to admit I hurt and mutilate myself, to show my self as weak.

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