I will be completely honest, I am all for working with a therapist.  I know alot of guys, well, and alot of women, are not comfortable working with a therapist.  It's often viewed as being weak and not very valuable.  Well, I think that is complete bullshit.   But here is the thing; I hate finding a new therapist.  The first thing is the finding one and making an appointment can take an act of congress.  COVID is kicking just about everyone's ass so getting on someone's schedule will take some patience.  You are not the only person that is coming apart at the ..read more

I am not sure that I have previously shared this but when I was in college, I worked in a psychiatric ward. I was a psychology major but having to go through statistics pretty much made that impossible.  But then working on the psych floor kinda put the nails in the coffin.  I had a hard time letting stuff go after my shift.  People find themselves in psych wards for a variety of reasons from med stabilization to self harm.  But people dealing with serious trauma can also find themselves in a psych ward.  And hearing of the trauma was often times too much for me.   ..read more

This is a really hard post to share but its an important one because its about the trauma that others suffer from when someone they love tries and/or kill themselves.   About a month or two after my unsuccessful attempt, we went to see our marriage counselor.  A side note about her, she is the greatest counselor I ever met.  She has helped me more than any other person on this earth.  You will be lucky to find a therapist half as good as this woman, but I digress..  We sat down in Jennifer's office and began to tell the story.  We had been seeing her for about ..read more

Today, I had a bad day at work. Nothing catastrophic, but a bad day. I got jumped by my boss, who I think is feeling heat from her boss. You know how this goes, shit always rolls downhill.  I have had quite a few bad days recently. Actually, quite a few bad months. Maybe it’s time for me to look elsewhere? For a brief moment, I considered checking out. And then I immediately thought of how that would impact my family.  One of the great gifts of my attempt a few years ago was Theresa asking me who would walk my girls down the aisle.  Go back to one of the other posts where I shar ..read more

I am struggling with this one as I do not want to provide anyone with a step by step process on how to kill ones self.  But this is mostly for my befit and remembering what the head I was thinking when I did this.  This isnt to tell you how to do this, this is to show you the idiocy of what I was doing and thinking.  If you have been reading my previous posts, you are probably picking up that I am not a fan of guns.  I had never own one prior to the one that I purchased to kill myself.  I had no idea what to look for in a gun.  I didn't really need it to have too ..read more

So let's talk about something other than me trying to blow my head off for a bit, shall we?   I am about to turn 51.  Typically, at this point in life, one begins to look in the mirror and assess what has transpired the past 50 years.  I have a beautiful wife and wonderful kids.  I have done well for myself and have many nice toys.  But its fair to say that no one will be erecting libraries in my honor after I am gone.   I often  think about my grandfather that I barely knew.  He fought in WWI and lost half of his face in Belgium. He laid on the battlefi ..read more

I still have alot of bad days.  Days when I wish that I would have been successful in the parking lot a few years ago.  Not really serious, just pondering how things would have turned out.  And sometimes, those days turn into weeks and I am find myself in a very dark, lonely, and familiar place.  And then the thinking  becomes distorted and you start making sense out of nothing.   Recently, I had several of those days strung together.  So it was about a week of sitting in my dark hole.  At some point, probably by day three, my thoughts drifted into wonde ..read more

After the morning meeting, we all shuffled down the hall towards a large room that doubled as the cafeteria and the family visitation room.  The walk down to the cafeteria was a journey of wonder and excitement.  Would we have crepes?  Belgium waffles?  Salmon and capers on New York bagels?  The anticipation was enough to break out the lorazepam.   But before making it to our destination, we would stop by a small room to get morning medications and have our vitals taken.  On the first day, I asked the tech taking my blood pressure for a razor so that I could ..read more

I get up around 5:00am each weekday and drive up to my job about 30 miles from my house.  Its a hellish drive, takes about an hour and a half and two hours in the evening.  DC traffic is the devil.  So each morning, I stop and get coffee, typically at a nearby 7/11 or Wawa. In the fall of 2018, one blurry-eyed, chilly morning, I pulled into Wawa and found a parking spot next to a police car.  Nothing unusual, just a couple of cops in their squad car, chatting.  I got out and went in to get my cup of rocket fuel to get through the drive.  While pouring, police of ..read more

Last night, amid all of the Twitter frenzy about Trumps tax avoidance, there was a story that, while not getting the same attention, was getting traction.  Brad Parscale, former Trump campaign manager was hospitalized for suicide attempt.   https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/27/politics/brad-parscale-hospitalized/index.html I have to admit, I struggled with whether or not to share the link.  I am in no way, shape or form, a Trump fan.  And my post about this is not about Trump or a commentary on his campaign.  I am not wanting to draw attempting to Trump or the man at the cen ..read more