Help Save 1-800-SUICIDE

As taken from hopeline.com

1-800-SUICIDE marks its tenth anniversary this year. It was founded in 1998 by Reese Butler in memory of his wife, Kristin who had committed suicide. The Kristin Brooks Hope Center has helped almost three million callers connect to help and hope.

As they enter their second decade of service to the public, continued support is needed to ensure that the confidentiality of every caller is protected. Because they are totally privately funded, they need to prove to the government that they are capable of supporting 1-800-SUICIDE to keep control of the line from being taken over by the federal government.

The money you donate will not only be used to pay the phone bill that connects about 50,000 callers each month to the Hopeline Network, but will also be used to pay for training of online crisis counselors who will provide the same support via online counseling. This is where the young people of today reach out for help. The success of 1-800-SUICIDE is based on individuals in crisis knowing that any personal identifiable information is kept strictly confidential.

The Hope Center's volunteer staff and Board remain committed to preserving confidential suicide prevention programs. Your action today assures their sustainability!

The Kristin Brooks Hope Center and its national 1-800-SUICIDE hotline is a great asset to our society - one of those private-sector initiatives called a "point of light." For reasons of their own, certain officials within the government tried to snuff that light. With your help and support together we can prevent that tragedy from occurring and help the Hopeline achieve success in liberating 1-800-SUICIDE from government control permanently.


This is definitely something worth saving. If you've ever found yourself in the grips of a depression so deep that you've considered taking that final step, then you understand exactly how vital it is to have some place to reach out to for help. Sometimes friends and family simply aren't enough. Or, they simply aren't there when you need them. At any rate, this is such a good thing that to lose it would be a great detriment.

I'm sure that a lot of you who come across this have also seen this at PostSecret. I'm sure that you've also read the e-mail/letter from Casie at the end of the site. That's just one person's story of being helped. Think of the millions of others who've called and been helped. Then think of the millions of people who won't get to receive that help should t he government get it's hands on it. I know I wouldn't be very likely to call if I couldn't be promised that what ever I said wouldn't be kept private and confidential.

Meh.

I'm in a... Funk, I suppose. Not really sure what other word applies here.

I had a good weekend off. Lots of beer, lots of friends.

I held together rather well. No random drunken tears (which seem to be abundant lately) and no actual fights. I had my old tattoo on my forehead that called to all the dirty old men. (Especially this one dude who kept trying to talk to me about Vietnam. At one point, a friend of mine made me go to the bar while he went to the bathroom and had strategically placed himself in between us so he didn't bother me anymore.) All in all, it was a good weekend.

And all my stupid What If thoughts are bouncing around in my head. I play all sorts of scenarios of what might've happened if I had done this or that or the other thing. And I know it's pointless, but I can't stop.

So I've worked myself into this... Funk. Bleh. What's new, eh?

At least I giggle and imagine disco whenever I type out Funk. :-P

30 Minutes and Counting...

Until I get to leave and go pick up my boy for baseball. This will be the first time I'll have seen him since I dropped him off at his gramma's house last Wednesday night. He's probably like 5ft 7in now. o_O

So it looks like I'll be on this 7 days a week thing until, at least, the second week of July. The hospital hasn't approved the job openings for dispatch yet (which, really? They're already vacant. What the hell is there to approve?), which will take a couple weeks. Then it'll take, like, another 2 weeks for the jobs to be posted. But see, they have to be posted internally (which means strictly with in the hospital) first, so that's another 2 weeks. Then they can be posted to the public. Then there's the interview process, which could take however long they want it to. After that, there's at least a month's worth of training. All that crap will put a new hire in and ready to go in about 4 or 5 months. >_< In the mean time, it seems my boss and the girl who does QA have been reassigned to dispatch. I think I'll still be on 7 days a week, but I think that my hours won't be quite so long. (I have four 12 hour and three 9 hour shifts a week. Except this week. Two 12 hour shifts, one 16 hour shift, one 9 hour shift and then three 12 hour shifts. Then I get to have my precious paid time off I put in for oh so long ago.) I dunno, we'll see how it plays out. In the mean time, I'm paying off EVERYTHING that I can and just going from there.

my stimulus check should be in my mailbox any day now, according to a letter I got from the IRS last week. Once I get that bad boy, I'm buying a stationary bike and an Ab-Lounge. Cuzz I want them. And I will use them. Even Greg said he'd use the Ab-Lounge, so that'll be awesome. He thinks he's getting fat cuzz he's gained like 30 lbs since he moved in with me. Um... Yeah... I think he's a big fat liar cuzz he's still ultra skinny. He likes to grab his tummy and tell me it's a fat roll. And then. THEN. I chuckle at him and tell him that until his tummy can become two tummies while wearing pants, he has no room to talk. And then he rubs my tummy and tells me I'm not fat and then I yell at him to stop rubbing my belly cuzz I AM NOT A TREASURE TROLL DAMN IT YOU ASSHOLE! It's a vicious cycle we repeat once a day when we see each other.

I'm seriously considering getting a pedicure. This is HUGE for me since I am so weird about feet. I've been thinking about getting one for, like, 3 months, but whenever I go to get my nails done and try to write that I want a pedicure, too, I have a mini-panic attack cuzz HOLY SHIT THEY'LL TOUCH MY FEET!! And then I sit down with out writing pedicure cuzz I am a chicken shit.

And I'm out of ideas. Nothing else has been happening. Well, I did try to fight this douche bag with a mullet and a purple shirt at the Iron Maiden concert in Ohio Thursday and I may or may not have spent the 2 HOURS we sat in the parking lot waiting to fucking move screaming "I FUCKING HATE OHIO THIS PLACE SUCKS!!!" out the window in an alcohol induced haze.

But that's not exciting...

A blog entry got me thinking...

I couldn't have said it better if I tried

Obviously, there are differences between me and the author. I've been regularly taking Dilaudid for damned near 6 months now and he won't touch anything harder than Motrin. Trust me, if Motrin or Tylenol or anything similar touched my pain, I'd be all over it.

Over the last five years, I've found that I've lost my drive to do anything more than simply leave the house. I used to take my son to the park every day I was with him. Now he's lucky if I even go out in the yard with him. If we do anything together, I'm often sitting on the sidelines watching HIM do something, rather than actually running with him. I've found that he really loves playing video games with me. I think it's due to the fact that it's something we can do together rather than it being the video game itself.

I've also found that I tend to slip into a depressive state more often that I used to. And that the slips are getting worse every time. I've recently been put on Amitriptylin, which is an anti-depressant that is also used to treat chronic pain. On the leaflet from the pharmacy, I was told to watch for suicidal ideations and report them to my doctor ASAP. While I haven't noticed anything that drastic, I have noticed that I've been feeling more out of whack emotionally. I watched The Mist the other night and had to fight from sobbing when the little boy was crying cuzz he was scared. That doesn't seem normal to me. Neither does damned near losing it over a fucking commercial. Yet that's where I'm at.

I never know day to day if I'm gonna be able to go to work or get the boy up and around or whatever the hell I have to do that day. Mostly I force myself to go through the motions. And that gets me angry. And I find myself getting pissy with everyone around me. Then I get down on myself even more. Eventually that all leads to me slipping back into a depressive state. It's a vicious circle that I can't seem to stray from.

Five years... I wonder how many more years I can actually take before I effectively lose it?