TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDAL THOUGHTS
Hello Everyone,
I hope you guys don’t mind if I rant here a bit. I’ve been spiraling into a deep depression for months now, and I’m extremely desperate. I’ve completely lost hope for a better life or a halfway decent future. Here it goes…
I graduated with my Bachelor’s degree in December of 2018. In April of 2019, I got a job in mental health. My degree is in psychology. I have been there almost three years, and I only make $18.65 an hour. I know someone who has worked at Walmart for only a year and yet she makes $17 an hour. She makes almost as much as me, and I have a college degree! I took on all of this student loan debt for THIS?!
When my mom was home, we were making ends meet. She receives disability due to declining health. She went into a nursing home a few months into the pandemic. She has been there ever since, and I don’t know if she’ll ever get to come home. The nursing home now takes her check every month so now I’m responsible for paying the mortgage, the utilities, her life insurance policies, and all of my bills. I have no money left over for groceries after all of the bills. My account is negative $200 every pay period just so I can eat (and I eat like shit due to my budget). On top of that, I‘ve been experiencing severe dental pain and can’t even afford to go to the dentist. “Don’t you have dental insurance?!” people will ask. ”Yes, I do! I still can’t afford the copays though!”
A few months back I was feeling completely hopeless. I was having severe suicidal thoughts and making plans. I went to my psychiatrist, and out of desperation, I told her about my suicidal thoughts, because I knew I couldn’t do that to my mom—she’d have no reason to live if I died. She’d slip into despair and completely give up, I just know it.
So I looked into getting hospitalized. When I called Blue Cross Blue Shield, I was told that I’d be hospitalized for a minimum of three days and that it costs $2000 to be hospitalized for three days. I don’t remember how much additional days cost, because I zoned all of that out once I heard the 2000 number.
This situation made me feel even more hopeless. Here I was having suicidal thoughts because of my financial stressors, and I couldn’t even get the mental health care I needed because it costs too much! It’s like the burdens of life were just telling me to do it.
People tell me to get a second job. I’m exhausted just from my one job. I work 10 hours a day on the days I work. Working in mental health is emotionally and mentally exhausting. I just want to close myself off from the world when I’m finished for the day. The extreme stress is affecting my physical health. I’m constantly fatigued (a big part of why I don’t have a second job—I spend my time off sleeping). I have chronic pain. My muscles are always tense (I’ve been having to take muscle relaxers every night just to sleep because of it). My house is a mess, and I don’t even have the will to tackle it, because I spend my time off recuperating from work. That in turn makes me even more depressed, because I can’t stand the environment I’m living in.
I used to go to physical therapy for my muscles, and it helped a lot. The physical therapist wanted me to come in twice a week, and my copay was $40. That would be $320 a month! Obviously, I could no longer afford to go. No wonder we have an opioid epidemic in this country. I can fill my prescription of 30 muscle relaxers for a couple of bucks and mask the symptoms but not fix the problem or I can pay $320 a month to go to physical therapy which would actually fix the problem.
Anyhow, I just needed to get this off my chest, because I’m just so overwhelmed, and I feel like giving up most days. I still experience suicidal thoughts from time to time. I feel so trapped when those feelings come on, because as much as I want to do it, I can’t bear to do that to my loved ones, especially my mom (she already lost one kid to suicide).
For those who read this entirely long rant, thank you.