Which Came First, The Chicken or the Egg?

   It was soon time to meet start meeting with my parents and my psychiatrist together. This also meant the psych ward nurse started caring about my appearance. I had gotten my clothes and ditched the hospital gown, so next on the "Important Things for Me To Do List" was asking me to shave. Now I still wasn't what you would call a particularly "happy" person and so this request annoyed me a lot more than it should have. Surely they knew I was at such a point in my life where the last thing I could possibly care about was shaving. Maybe to them shaving simply gave the appearance I cared which is what mattered. Perhaps if I shaved enough they thought I would start to care. Regardless of their thinking, I was observant enough to know doing tasks like these without complaint assisted in getting you discharged sooner and so I complied. When I was done I was even more angry than before because as I stared into the mirror I saw a gaunt, pale, and hollow cheeked version of myself starting back. I thought, "Maybe if they did something about me throwing up everything I ate from morphine withdrawal shaving would've made sense." Consequently I had the appearance that I cared enough to shave but didn't care enough to eat or go in the sun. Mission accomplished, nurse.

   It was time to have the big sit-down with my parents and my new psychiatrist. It was very tense, and tears on both sides flowed frequently. My sour mood led me to being very frank in explaining my feelings as the psychiatrist wanted to get to the bottom of my attempt on my own life. I explained that too often I felt more was expected of me than I could preform. My pain and fatigue would keep me from family events, sports, and now even school. This alone was very depressing, but it became unbearable when others got angry with me for being unable to do these things I desperately want to do but simply can't. More than once I had been told to get back to school since I couldn't stay at home my whole life. Furthermore I had been given passive aggressive advice that it's simply a case of mind over matter and all that is required is the will to find a way. My psychiatrist supported me on some points, but any of these moments were eclipsed by my rage when he suggested I have a Conversion Disorder. If you don't know what this is, it's basically a mentally ill person converting their mental stresses into physical symptoms. This made absolutely no sense to me; the main reason being that I had no mental health issues until six months after my pain had started. I got sick, I had pain, I realized the pain wasn't going away, and then I got depressed. I did not immediately develop depression after my pain started. Sure, you could argue my pain started out from a physical source and continued due to mental stress conversion but that would still mean there's no easy fix for the pain. Regardless, I was still angry about going cold turkey on medications. He began putting me back on antidepressants but I stayed off any pain medication. I felt at the time this was because of the belief from others that the primary problem is in my head, rather than in my legs.

  Hostility and blame continued for a while. I think something I wrote about the situation at the time can explain my thoughts and feelings better than current reflection can, so here's a little note I wrote down back then that I'm unsure anyone other than me has ever seen:
"I want you to imagine a scenario where someone is suffering for four years. Suffering to the point where they can't take it. To the point where they don't enjoy life anymore, so they tried to kill themselves twice. They want to die. But despite what they want, all through those four years they've been trying their best for those they love, but those they love aren't satisfied. They want more than their best. So they give up, because what's the point in trying if their best isn't good enough. Now imagine how they person would feel. That's how I feel." This tension and fundamental disagreement on my mood and pain problems dominated these meetings. Everyone had a different opinion on the cause and effect and which came first, the chicken or the egg/which came first, the depression or the pain. My viewpoint was such that I normally wouldn't care what others think, but I felt that the difference of opinion would hamper finding a working treatment for my chronic pain. I knew that my pain led me to attempt suicide twice and so if we just focused on my mood rather than the pain inevitably a third attempt would occur. Paradoxically this realization disheartened me and darkened my mood further.