ill.

Sometimes, no matter how much we will things to happen (or not happen), fate takes over and steers us towards wherever it is that we're going. After being the socially unacceptable form of ill for over 6 months now, I believed that perhaps I couldn't dive any deeper. Oddly enough, my immune system followed suit and recruited every system in my body to go down with it.
While sitting in the Emergency Department in dire need of some attention - from anyone really - the bright eyed intern taking my now extensive history in the too-public-for-my-liking area of the department was surprised when I kept remembering new things to add. A previously fit and well (physically) 22 year old had somehow managed to combine every kind of illness (minus Goat Flu) in the past 2 weeks and create a network of symptoms so diverse that there is no clue as to why and where each one is occurring from.
After some IV Holy Water, a series of tests and hiding from work colleagues I was released into the care of an angel in the form of Mrs Boss, results pending. Straight to bed in 2 day old clothes, followed by a night of well overdue but broken sleep, stomach cramps and crazy dreams.
Today was spent quietly. Feeling much better after being able to pee for the first time in 3 days, I sat around agonising on what to do next should my results come back how the young intern had predicted. At 1600 I called work and asked the In-Charge to check my pathology, to which she said she would when she had time and call me back. Over 6 hours later I'm still agonising and waiting for a phone call.
I have spent so much of my life as an independent. Perhaps even a loner in my thoughts and opinions and view of the world through my sensitive eyes. I have refused help when theoretically I needed it and done things I wouldn't ever have to just to prove to myself that I could. I have refused to open myself up to people in fear of alienation or rejection, and for these same reasons, prevented myself from getting too close even when deep down I wanted, or needed to. It is these choices that only give me myself to blame for stumbling through my life with closed doors and missing out on hugs and inside jokes and wanting to feel like I belong to someone; wanting to feel loved.
I can now safely say that tonight's not my night for my results; she must have forgotten. In my head, I can't understand how that happened because clearly it's something that I can't get off my mind. The reality is that it's not important to anyone else but me. I'm the only one who has to deal with the outcome - good or bad - so I'm essentially the only one affected. I can't shrug it off and say that I don't care, because if I don't care, there's no-one else who will.

J'adore Coco

Is it enough that I must live to see these shoes in my wardrobe?

Election 2010

All the money in the world won't stop people from wanting to kill themselves. Not too many people get it.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/election2010/7935525/277m-for-suicide-prevention-gillard

Sick Sunday

Just when it all seems too much, it is followed by a weekend of bed-rest, stomach cramps and not having eaten since Friday. Tomorrow's not looking much better.

Provisional Diagnosis

When you're already deemed as one kind of crazy, what's to stop you adding to it?
Provisional Diagnosis. What does that even mean? Provisional... serving for the time being only. Subject to change.
What's to stop you telling me one theory before changing your mind entirely? That's such a cop-out. No-one else can get away with it so why should they?
Yes I'll have cracked pepper on my salad. Oh hang on, I don't like pepper. Take it back please.

Everything is one big contradiction: it's chemical, it's biological, it's a defence mechanism, it's a learnt response. They say it's not my fault, it's something that just happens. Then why do I have to change everything to make it go away? Not just my outfit or hobbies or favourite food, but things from deep within myself that I didn't even know where there. How can I change something that I'm still not convinced exists?

Someone always manages to say it will get better, and then something somehow manages to make it all worse.

General Anaesthetic

After months of toiling over the perfect ending, I seemingly stumbled upon it in a small operating theatre with a cast of only 3. The gas smelt like illegal chemicals and I could feel my brain cells being shut down one by one. A few breaths later my memory died.
It would have been perfect if it could have been left at just that, but of course something pulled me back. The return of my memory taunted me with what a beautiful ending it could have been, if those people with the drugs and the gas would have just let me be.

IPS

For some completely unknown reason my boss decided today that I was just the right person to special a scheduled patient after an attempted suicide who remains in an almost catatonic form of depression. Seriously?
When she started to cry I asked the stupidest question, and as soon as I said it I wished I hadn't.
"What's wrong?"
What's wrong? What the fuck? What do you think is wrong? She is so unhappy that there's no way out? She's fought for too long and finally wanted to be beaten? We're preventing her from finding peace. And I asked what was wrong? Anyone would think I was too naive to understand. Oh I understand, I just want to pretend that I don't because maybe if I tell myself that for long enough I might start believing it.
She broke my heart. She asked me, rather, pleaded, for me to help her. She wanted me to end it. "Give me a big needle that will make it all go away."
I told her I couldn't. That I wouldn't.
"I want to die, and I even failed at that."

That is my fear.
After all the hell you go through, in your head, your heart and your soul, when you finally pluck the courage from a place inside you that you never thought you'd find, and you do the thing that is to be your final action... and fail.
It's not something you can practice. It's not even something that you can study up on or gather others opinions over a mid-week lunch. It's something you work through in the silent darkened hours of the morning when you're trying to fall asleep as bakers and garbage trucks begin their day. You grind over each possibility until it's smooth and flawless and almost praise yourself for being so ingenious. There is just one thing missing. The courage to jump.

And so she tells me again, with tears in her eyes and quivers in her voice, that she just wants to go. I couldn't say what I was thinking. What else was I to do? Under the eyes of a student nurse, a physio and an unknown doctor, I lied through my teeth and told her that it could only get better. She called me wise for someone so young. I called myself a liar because I didn't believe it and don't feel that I ever could. When people say that to me I get angry. Fury bubbles up inside me because how can anyone know? I have heard it too many times only to prove them wrong. Now I've become one of them.
Deep down I know the system will heal her; heal her to a satisfactory level to get the stamp on that bit of paper. I can almost see her future though. She will slip through the cracks in that same system by setting herself free and becoming just another medical record to file under 'deceased'. I know she won't be at peace with herself until she finally wins.