Mad World

Perhaps we all carry within ourselves the potential of our own destruction that we battle with in our own way. And this friction is what causes suffering in our lives. Maybe everything inherently carries within it, its own destruction. Perhaps in life, we constantly fight that pull to self-destruct in whatever way is ours.

All I know is I have chronic pain that I have lived with for over twenty years and over a decade ago it became quite tangled with a deep and desperate depression. As they often do. Chronic pain isn’t sunshine and rainbows and it causes suffering and by its very nature causes emotional reactions. When the pain is unmanaged for a long period of time and we exceed our limits consistently as we try to live the life society says we must depression soon follows. I cope with chronic pain through drawing, poetry and writing. Art in all its forms seems to help me actually be able to express myself in ways I usually cannot. However, I needed more than that to survive.

I thought at first it was normal. Who wouldn’t feel depressed? The pain. The stress. The immense, heavy fatigue. The frustration. The endlessness of it all. Of course, a person is going to feel depressed, from time to time, in high pain in the depths of the deep night. When silence creeps in and thoughts get… deeper and darker. But it goes away. Or dims in the sunlight to a certain grim determination to survive the day. Soon the sunlight is gone. Soon the pain rules day and night and thoughts haunt you constantly. Soon survival is crawling through life inch by gruelling inch.

You want to fight the depression, of course, but you also want to self-destruct. It is this friction of battle that constantly swings one way and then the other. But for every step forward, eventually, more steps you fall back, further and further. Until you are falling down a slippery slope down a rabbit hole you cannot escape.

The line

When the lightning lit

Snaking the pain through my skin

When the thunder hit

Thoughts and a line so thin

Snaking the pain through my skin,

When the storm rolled in

Thoughts and a line so thin

I’m the pain. Thoughts the sin.

When the storm rolled in

When the thunder hit

I’m the pain. Thoughts the sin

When the lightning lit.

Suicidal ideation becomes a normal thought process. It seemed madness this world of unmanaged pain while working full time with a smile plastered on my face and a facade of wellbeing to make everyone else feel comfortable. It seemed madness to exist like that willingly. To partake in that torture. And this is a rational thought. It is madness. It is a mad world, my friends, where pain is unmanaged and you are expected to function as though you are perfectly functional… a Smile, damn it all. Society wants it of you and, hey, opiates are evil. And no one wants you on disability, certainly not your work insurance company. Everyone wants you Functional. Even though you are not. Even though you are sinking in a mire and screaming inside. No one can hear you. No one is listening. Mad world.

WITHIN

I carry dark things within me

They lurk and hover out of sight

I carry dark things within me

And then within me ignite

Pulsating agony within me

Pain that slumbers, twists and turns;

Pulsating agony within me

Wakes and claws and burns.

I cannot shed this weight within me,

pulling me into the ground.

I cannot shed this weight you see,

crushing me without a sound.

I denied it all, of course. If no one cared then I would push through the pain and play the game. I would exist in survival mode in that slim hope that one day things would get a sliver better so that I could breathe a bit. But it never got better. And that hope vanished. I had this raw desperation so deep in me I felt like life was suffocating me. I do wonder if it is society’s fault for assuming chronic pain isn’t a disability and we should function like normal? Is it our doctor’s fault for lack of effective pain and mental illness management? Is it our own fault for pushing past our limits trying to hold onto a career because we are expected to from some self-imposed stigma or because we financially feel we fundamentally have to? All of the above? No ones? No one’s fault but a system that doesn’t seem to help people in pain? Or cares really. Man up. Suck it up. Push through it. Don’t be weak.

Surface

There you see,

the smiling me

A facade I created,

A game I concocted,

Just for you.

All of you.

Beneath the surface,

behind that face,

Is a silent scream,

And shattered dreams.

Just for me.

All for me

If you have chronic pain, I know what you are thinking, there is one escape. Oh, yeah, there is one. And I tried suicide. I survived to write this. I wouldn’t recommend it. You don’t come back if you succeed. You take away all your options. All your possibilities. All the future possibilities of treatment. And suicide is a bomb; you may explode but everyone around you from the closest to the distant gets wounded and bleeds in some way. And that doesn’t heal. I saw those wounds. So that is a pain and fear I will never forget in their eyes. I know so very many people in the pain community that lost that fight. I know their families who years and years later still bleed from their wounds. It is tragic but that tragedy is magnified by the very fact they never had their pain managed and never had a chance to live. I think that hurts all of us so much to know that. They were never given any hope at all. I was lucky I made it, really. Living on no hope as long as I did with such emptiness and pain was a hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Every loss in the pain community due to lack of effective pain management is blame I place on those that ignored that pain and suffering and denied that treatment as well. Survival mode is not meant to be endured forever. One cannot live like that.

However, nor do you want to live Simply to not cause suffering to others. You have to have reasons to live. I made up reasons to live. Little ones. Made up ones. Until I found real ones. That is what you do after you survive a suicide attempt. I will live today because I want a latte tomorrow. I will live today because that author I love came out with his next book and I want to read it. You make these wee small goals and desires.

But that isn’t how you conquer depression tangled with chronic pain. Well, for one, you don’t conquer chronic pain and that is the main problem with depressive thoughts. Our depressive brain damn well knows that. And it makes that thought way worse than it actually is. What I needed to do was a) get a doctor who actually cared for my wellbeing and chronic pain b) had that doctor send me to a pain clinic for pain management strategies and medications c) pain clinic sent me to their psychologist who was used to pain patients for cognitive behavioural therapy, and d) was assessed by their psychiatrist for a depression med when it was determined my Major Depressive Disorder needed more than therapy to find a medication suitable to my needs. And then I improved. Because since depression is tangled with pain they have to be detangled at the same time. That is no easy feat and it takes time. Quite a bit of time.

If they had treated the pain and not the depression, I wouldn’t be where I am. If they hard treated the depression and not the pain, it wouldn’t even have worked. Both at the same time were necessary for me. They literally were all entangled together and couldn’t be separated into distinct entities by then. It needed to be the way it was done… or it would have failed.

I do quite a few things for pain and mood. We all do in the end. Things from therapy. Things we pick up. Things from pain management. Other things we pick up. It all makes a system that works for us. From the good days to the bad days. From pacing to staying within our limits. I do what I have to do to maintain now. No more exceeding my limits every day with no pain management just because I think that is what I must do.

In the end, no solution is perfect. You will have pain but a better capacity to cope with the perception of it and suffering. And there will be mood slumps but there will not, hopefully, be deep plummets of despair and if there is you know you can get help. I didn’t say this was a fairytale, did I? Because it isn’t. But I am a goofy/nerdy/dorky person with chronic pain that is moderately managed. I have moods but they are all within the range of normal. Including, yes, happiness. And I will have chronic pain for the rest of my living days which I hope is a rather long time. So in the end, that is sort of a happy ending, is it not? I have better quality of life. I want this to Live this life. I am not in survival mode. However, I am on permanent disability. Perhaps that was necessary to even be able to heal mentally and emotionally to the level I am or to manage the pain. Perhaps it was simply the way it had to be. I want to exist and that is so much more than where I was at. I strive for a better quality of life and improved life satisfaction. Every bit of wellbeing goes a long way. I hope for better in the future. I do hope and that is something.