There's A Difference

I've got this silly little 'daily mood/emotion monitor for therapy. So far I've only bothered with mood which my therapist wants charted using a number scale. 0 is euthymic, -1 is dysthymic, -2 is depressive, and -3 is suicidal. Conversely +1 hypomanic, +2 is manic, and +3 is basically psychotic, I guess (he tried to dumb it down but I finally had to look at him, remind him that I was a psych major, and ask that he try and be at least a little bit technical because his dumbing it down was only succeeding in confusing me, lol).

Not being bipolar I never make it in to the positive range. Being dysthymic/depressive/borderline I also never make it to 0, and in the past week that I've been bothering with this I have been at -1 only once and that probably should have been a -2 in all honesty.

Today I wrote a note in the margin , the inspiration for the title of this blog entry. So here we go (what follows is an expanded version of my note).

There's a difference between being suicidal and wanting to die/be dead. I suppose that difference is safety, probably the most important concern for the mental health folks. Personally I'd rather be suicidal... wanting to die, longing for death, praying for it but for one reason or another being unable to kill yourself... what unbearable torture. The truth is simply that I am too far down in the Pitt to be suicidal; I now cannot be bothered even to end my own life. But I am no less desirous of the end. I 'long for death that does not come' and feel that 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished'. The overwhelming desire for my own end plagues my waking hours and haunts my dreams until I find I am able to do little else than lay in bed in misery. It's not that the thought of taking my own life no longer enters my own mind; it is simply that I can no longer be bothered. But oh how I wish the end would come. I pray nightly that God would please erase me from this world so that I may be no more and others experience no pain from that which I desire most.

"Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure,who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave? Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? For sighing comes to me instead of food; my groans pour out like water.What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil."
Job 3:20-26, New International Version

"To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd."
~Hamlet, Act III, Scene I