Can depression or manic depression be a terminal illness?  I think so.  People don’t regard them as such, but if you think about, people take their own lives, or get assistance from physicians, to die, when they are terminally ill, and suffering horribly.  Is there such a profound difference between that, and someone lost in such emotional suffering, that they can’t see it ever playing out any other way, and they can’t keep up the cycle of suffering, anymore?  I just get annoyed when people get an attitude about those who struggle with these tendencies.  Like, it’s a petty annoyance, or something.

I had a friend who had suicidal ideation.  He had thoughts of killing himself, pretty much every day, for long stretches of time.  This friend and I used to be very close before circumstances got in the way.  There were months at a time where I worried he would hurt himself, but I never blamed him.  It wasn’t his fault.  I occasionally have these desperate moments myself.  I try to reason with myself.  This is just an extreme emotion – it’s just the bipolar thing, hitting me over the head, repeatedly, with painful or humiliating thoughts or fears.  The post acute withdrawal undoubtedly makes it worse.  My body trying to trick my mind into doing shit I don’t wanna do…

I asked Charlie this a.m. if he still has hard moments.  He was actually pretty haughty about it.  Annoying, in fact…  but  he may have been protecting me.  When we talk about our difficulties, we can feed off each other, and things can deteriorate quickly.  That wasn’t going to happen this morning on the bus, but I understand the sentiment that may have been behind it.

I am feeling so lost, right now.  I keep trying to ground myself in something, but my thoughts just keep racing, and I don’t know what to do with myself. 

Heroin is in my head like it hasn’t been in a while.  I started thinking about the process of it all, yesterday, for the first time in a while.  The ritual, and the gear, and the routine…  the habit of going through the motions, and hitting a vein…

I have to stop this.  I have to stop this, now.  These thoughts have already gone way too far.  My mind moves so fast.  I don’t catch myself doing things, until I’m already well on my way.  I have to stick a fork in this.  I have to pull myself together.  I have to get myself right before I lose myself completely in this spiral and wind up hating myself tomorrow (or hurting myself tonight). 

I don’t know why I am so confused and shaken up, right now.  I don’t know why, and I don’t know how to stop it. 

I will pull it together.

I can.

At the very least, I can stop myself from doing anything stupid.  I hope I can.  I don’t want to give up on myself.  My mind just goes so haywire, sometimes. 

It’ll all come back together.  It will.  

It has to.