"How Are You"? "I'm Okay."

I haven't really written for a long while. and for days now I have been wanting to write about this...and then in my last post I saw the last commenter comment about a similar dynamic when people ask how you are. So I am going to let it out...

It makes me crazy'(er) that I can never be me with anyone. When my sisters or stepmom, or dad call they sometimes ask how am. Sometimes they avoid the topic altogether. My usual response is either, "I'm okay", or "I'm not feeling so great". If I say the latter the topic changes so fast to something else that it is obvious the question was just a polite conversation opener.

My sisters and family are good, loving people...It must be the chronicity of my illness, the awful person it makes me become, and the neediness of myself that has them pull away from me so much.

A couple times I have tried to express how I need help because x, y, z is happening; i.e. I have been honest about how depressed I feel. The topic changes, or the person tries to get off the phone as fast as possible...and the stops calling or e-mailing completely to protect themselves.

What I most often want to write when they ask how I am , and I am unwell, is: " I am feeling really scared and depressed. I cannot stop thinking about suicide. The noise in my head, telling me to kill myself, telling why it is the best thing, planning how to do it, etc., won't stop. I feel like nobody loves "me".

They love the "me" who laughs and is funny and upbeat...that is part of me, but often that part of me comes out when I am trying to help others feel okay around me, or if I am trying to not act as crazy as I feel. When I want to be cared for, or loved, I try really hard to suppress, or minimize all the things about me that others either cannot handle, or understand, or will take as proof that for their well-being, they should get me out of their lives...NOW.

I understand why this happens. It would be hard to have a sister/daughter like me. I understand, but it hurts me so much that my family doesn't try to help me, or somehow let me know I can call them if I need help. I feel so intensely alone.

Even with my pdoc I am afraid if I tell him what I really feel he will think I am overstating, or that I am crazier than I am. I often leave his office thinking God I must drive him crazy. I try to be/say/express less suicidal thoughts/ideas/plans than I really have, or am, or really feel. I tell him I have the thoughts, but I don't think I have been able to express their relentlessness inside my brain; the way, over, and over and over, and over, the thoughts speed through my head, telling me to:

"...wrap a rope around my neck, wrap a rope around my neck, do it, do it, do it, do it do it...shoot yourself, kill yourself, hire someone to kill you, no one loves you, you are alone, completely alone, lonely, this depression just keeps getting worse, and the worse it gets the more people move away from you..."

"...your family doesn't want you anymore, they only want you when you are okay, they don't want to hear about how you need help, they want you to just go away. So my brain says to me, over and over, "...do it, do it, do it, hang yourself, wrap a rope around your neck, etc., etc." All the while, that Violent Femmes Song, "Why Can't I Get Just One Kiss?" is playing rapidly. obssessively, over and over inside my brain...like I can't get away from the song, or the thoughts.

I can't tell anyone these things. I even don't want to write them here, because all I want is to get them out of my head. I am venting; trying to help myself find some relief.

So I answer, "fine, been feeling a bit down, but that's okay"...WTF!!! "...that's okay"?."...a bit down"???? This will never end...end it.