First they came for the immigrants and I said nothing, for I was not an immigrant.

Then they came for the transgenders and I said nothing, for I was not transgender.

Am I the modern Niemoller?

Content warning: this post discusses a suicide attempt. If you are feeling suicidal, please talk to someone about it. If you have no one else to talk to, there are telephone hotlines you can call to talk to a trained volunteer who can help you through this. In the USA and Canada you can call

• USA Trans Lifeline – For transgender people – 1-877-565-8860
• Canadian Trans Lifeline – For transgender people 1-877-330-6366
• The Trevor Project – For LGBTQ youth – 1-866-488-7386
• Suicide hotline in USA and Canada – For everyone – 988

My second suicide attempt really doesn’t even deserve the name. I had the means, and the opportunity. All it would have taken was for me to have literally taken a single step forward. But it wasn’t planned in advance, and I didn’t actually do anything. Still, I count it because situations like that can be dangerous anyway and result in harm for people.

This one occurred after I had changed my legal name and gender, come out at work, and fully transitioned. It was, if I recall correctly, about a year after that. I was not feeling nearly as much gender dysphoria at the time as I had in the past, though since I had not yet had surgery, that still was a part of my life. Still, I don’t think this attempt, or the others that followed, were related to gender. Instead, I think this was caused by my developing, but still undiagnosed bipolar disorder.

It was some time in 1997, in the late fall I think. I had gotten up for work, eaten breakfast, gotten dressed, and driven to work. I worked in an office building that was about 20 stories tall on the 8th floor, and there was an attached parking garage that went up to about the 6th or 7th floor. I normally parked on the second floor from the top because there was a door into the building there, but this day, for some reason I decided to drive all the way to the very top of the garage where it was open to the sky. I parked in the absolutely highest spot in the garage. There were no other cars up there. I got out and was going to trudge into the office to start my day.

I was feeling terrible that morning, as I almost always was. My specific bipolar disorder is bipolar 2, which is characterized by long stretches of deep depression punctuated by a few weeks of hypomania where you actually feel really good and energized and get things done and think that maybe you have finally turned a corner and have broken out of depression once and for all. I think that because I spent so much time being depressed that is why I was diagnosed with major depression instead of bipolar disorder. But on this day I was deep in a depressive phase.

As I stood on top of the garage beside my truck, I decided to look out over the city. The sky was dull and gray and overcast, the weather cool, and there was a bit of a breeze. I was all alone. Then I noticed that there was a concrete beam about 6 inches wide that went out over the next lower level of the garage towards the edge of the building. I got an urge to walk on that beam for some reason. I had been a caver and climber a few years back before my transition and I enjoyed climbing on things. So I walked over to the end of the beam, climbed up on to it and began walking the beam out to the side of the building.

I reached the end of the beam and stopped, my toes right on the edge, and I looked down. I think it was about 80 feet down (about 25 meters). There was an empty field below me with a couple of small trees and some scattered concrete blocks leftover from some construction. I stood and looked down at the rocks below me. Then the thought entered my head that if I did a dive off the building I could land on those rocks head first. The impact would doubtless crack my skull and break my neck, killing me instantly. It would be a quick and painless death. I would no longer be suffering. I would no longer be in pain. All the torment I was feeling every waking minute of my life would be over. It was a simple solution to an intractable problem. I seriously thought about it.

What stopped me was Reason. “Reason” is the name I gave to a, for lack of a better phrase, “voice in my head”. I do not have dissociative identity disorder, and I never literally heard voices, but back before my transition Reason was the personification of the rational part of my brain and I held conversations with it a lot. Reason would usually show up to try and explain my behavior to me and tell me why I was doing things that were more emotionally based. On this occasion Reason suddenly said to me “You know, you’re afraid of heights. Right now you are very calm even though you are standing right on the edge of a big fall. You should be terrified and shaking, but you aren’t. This means you aren’t in your right state of mind. You should get down before you do something rash.”

And Reason was absolutley right. I have always been afraid of heights. Specifically, I am afraid of ledges and being in danger of falling. When I was doing caving and climbing, even when secured by a rope, my heart would race and my I would feel shakey as I approached the edge of a cliff or pit. Once hanging on a rope, I felt a lot better since I wasn’t in danger of slipping and falling any distance, but that fear of missing my footing terrified me and ledges were always a heart pounding experience. And yet, there I was standing an inch away from an 80 foot fall, and not only was I perfectly calm, I was actually considering deliberately jumping off.

So I decided that Reason was right. Even in my suicidal state of mind, I still had the presence of mind to want to do things for the “right reasons”, so I turned around, walked back across the beam to the upper level of the garage, got down, walked down the ramp and into the building.

Later that day, I went outside to the smoking area for a break. I do not smoke, but a lot of people liked to hang out there and chat on breaks. The building maintenance engineer was there at the time, Gilbert, and he and I got to talking. He mentioned that he had gotten a call that morning about someone standing on top of the garage about to jump off, but that by the time he got up there the person was gone. I admitted that it was me, though I didn’t admit to wanting to jump, I just told him that I was a climber and was curious about the view. He admonished me, but let it drop after that.

So what’s the point of all this? I guess the point is that not all suicide attempts are planned. Some just happen spontaneously when the opportunity arises. And what stopped me this time, was not fear, or worrying about the consequences, it was just a cold recognition that I wasn’t in my normal state of mind. I didn’t really reject acting on my thoughts, I just rejected acting without being in control of myself. I don’t know if there’s any deep insight to be had here, but this is one of my close brushes with death, and maybe someone else out there will find it resonates with them in some way.

Previous: My First Brush With Suicide

Content warning: this post discusses a suicide attempt. If you are feeling suicidal, please talk to someone about it. If you have no one else to talk to, there are telephone hotlines you can call to talk to a trained volunteer who can help you through this. In the USA and Canada you can call

• USA Trans Lifeline – For transgender people – 1-877-565-8860
• Canadian Trans Lifeline – For transgender people 1-877-330-6366
• The Trevor Project – For LGBTQ youth – 1-866-488-7386
• Suicide hotline in USA and Canada – For everyone – 988

Suicide is a difficult topic for many people to talk about, especially those who are facing it themselves, and for those whose loved ones have gone through with it, but it is something that we really need to be willing to talk about. People comtemplating suicide usually feel completely alone in their feelings and think that no one else could understand what they are going through, and this leads them to try and bear their pain silently and without help. That can lead to thinking that no one even cares, that no one will miss you if you die, or even that no one will notice at all that you are gone. But that’s not true! There are people who care, and if nothing else I am one of those people, so today and the next few days I will be writing about my own suicide attempts to help show that there really are people who have been there, who have felt the pain you may be feeling yourself, and who have nonetheless survived to live another day and even to find happiness.

The background to this story, and given the rest of this blog it should be obvious, is my transgender identity. At 9 I was making fake long fingernails out of Elmer’s Glue, and dressing up in my sister’s old cheerleader uniform. At 10 I was wondering why I had to change clothes with the boys instead of the girls for physical education class, and at 11 I finally realized that I really should have been a girl. And at 12 or 13 I decided that since there was no possible way for me to actually be a girl, then being a boy just wasn’t something I wanted to live with. I decided that I should die.

This was in 1982. There was no such thing as gender affirming care for youth at the time. There were no trans TV stars or fashion models. There was no Internet to get on to talk to other trans people. I barely even knew the word “transsexual”. To me transsexuals were just the “freaks” that got trotted out on daytime talk shows for the audience to laugh at and make fun of. They were sad, pathetic, mentally ill people who were probably drug addicts and hookers. To say I had no role models to look up to was an understatement. And because of this I felt completely isolated. I felt ilke I was the only person in the world who was genuinely a girl born into a boy’s body, and that no one would ever understand me or love me or accept me for who I knew myself to be. And so I decided to end my life so that I wouldn’t suffer anymore.

One night, I waited until well after midnight when I knew my parents and sister would be asleep. I then got dressed in a nightgown and robe of my mother’s that I had stolen from a closet of unused things, and I picked up a rope that I had found in the garage and stashed in my bedroom. I quietly walked through the house, nervously glancing at my parents’ open bedroom door as I passed through the living room, and I went into the breakfast nook. I picked up a chair from the dining table as quietly as I could, and went the the front door. Then I opened the door gingerly, and carried my chair and rope out into the night.

It was dark, of course, but I risked turning on the porch light so I could see. And there were the trees waiting for me on the short path to the driveway. I set up the chair beneath a horizontal limb and paused, looking at it. I was going to tie the rope to the limb, tie a noose in the other end (I did not actually know how to tie a noose, but I figured just a loop at the end of the rope would be good enough), climb up on the chair, put the loop around my neck, and then kick the chair away. I had also prepared a note that was pinned to my clothes explaining that I was really supposed to be a girl, that I didn’t know why I wasn’t born one, that I was sorry for hurting everyone, but that I just couldn’t live with the pain any more and needed to go away.

But instead of getting started I just stood there looking up at the tree. I wondered if the rope would stretch too much, or the limb, which wasn’t all that high, would bend and I would end up with my feet on the ground and stand there like a complete failure, unable even to kill myself. I wondered if I would make too much noise and my parents would wake up and come out to find me and take me down. I wondered if it just wouldn’t be enough to kill me and I would just wake up in a hospital the next day and have to confront my family and explain everything to them face to face. And I wondered if I would actually succeed and then my parents would be devastated and blame themselves. And I felt scared. And then I started crying.

After a few minutes of crying I decided I couldn’t do it. I carried the chair back inside to the table, went back into my bedroom, put away the rope, took off the robe, crumpled up the note and threw it away, climbed into bed, and cried myself to sleep. The next day was just another day; another day of misery and hating myself for being a boy and for being a coward who wasn’t able to face death.

Life after that was dull and grey, but it didn’t last. Not too long after that incident my mother found my hidden stash of women’s clothing and sent me off to a psychiatrist, but I never told anyone the details about wanting to kill myself, not until many years later. The only people I ever discussed it with were other trans people, because I felt like they, at least, would understand why I did what I did, both the wanting to die, and the not being able to go through with it. This is the first time I’ve put the story into writing in detail, though I have mentioned it before on this blog in How I Knew I Was Trans, Part 2.

I hope that anyone reading this comes away with an appreciation for how difficult it can be for a trans child who has no support or information to help them deal with being different, but I also hope that people can see that the act of suicide is something that does not come easily to people. It is not “the easy way out” as so many people like to claim. It’s an incredibly difficult decision and someone has to overcome a lot of fear and self doubt to be able to go through with it. I am not saying this to praise the “courage” of people who kill themselves, but rather to point out that calling suicidal people “cowards” is a really insulting and belittling thing to do to someone who is dealing with problems you most likely will never understand. Please don’t respond like that when you hear about someone wanting to commit or actually going through with suicide. Instead, just listen to them. Let them tell you what they are feeling and don’t question it! Don’t offer platitudes, don’t offer advice, don’t say you “understand” unless you’ve actually experienced similar things yourself. Just listen and be there for them. Offer your sympathy, your empathy, your support, and most of all your unconditional love. Let them know that whatever they may be feeling they are not alone!

And if you, yourself, are feeling like you want to die, then take from this the knowledge that you really aren’t alone! There are people out there who have been in the same or similar situations to you, who know what it is like to feel worthless and hopeless, and who have overcome those feelings and are ready to give you as much support and comfort as they can. Reach out to us!

If anyone out there is feeling suicidal and needs someone to talk to, you can reach out to me. You can find me on Mastodon at https://chaosfem.tw/@moriel or you can leave a comment below and I will get back to you as soon as I see it! And don’t forget the resources I listed above if you need to speak to someone right this very moment.

You do not have to be alone!

Next: My Second Brush With Suicide

Last night I went to see a show. There were only about 40 people there, but it is a small venue so it felt crowded and the conversation of the people there was quite loud in that space. I had meant to take an Ativan beforehand, because of my social anxiety, but I forgot, and only realized it once I arrived and started feeling overwhelmed by the situation, especially by the noise. But I was not defenseless! I reached into my purse, got out my noise canceling earbuds, put them in, adjusted the sound level to something I was comfortable with, and then was able to enjoy the show.

A couple of months ago, this would not have happened, because I had not yet started using noise cancelation as part of my daily life. In May, I was traveling and had a 2 hour layover at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport. For those who don’t know, it’s the busiest airport in the world, and so naturally it’s incredibly crowded and noisy. Now, I have flown less than ten times over the past 25 years, so I am not accustomed to it and arrived in Atlanta totally unprepared for how loud it was. I have sound sensitivities, which in the past I’ve always just dealt with by withdrawing and shutting down when I would get overwhelmed, and that’s what happened in Atlanta. But this time, the press of the crowds of people, and the incredible volume and chaos of all their conversations hit me way harder than usual. I actually went to a bar, two of them, even, because I was hoping that a drink would help me to calm down. In the end I had three drinks, two of which were doubles. Normally I might have one drink every two or three months, so this was an enormous amount of alcohol for me to consume, and it was over the course of less than an hour.

That, of course, was a terrible idea. All it did was get me a little drunk, and it didn’t help me cope with the noise at all. But then when I was walking towards the terminal where my plane would be, I noticed a little shop selling electronic goods. I had forgotten to bring my headphones for listening to music, and it occurred to me that music might help me fight the shutdown, so I went there to see what they had, and there I saw them: Bose Quiet Comfort 2 noise canceling headphones. Although a bit of an audiophile, I had never bought anything from Bose before, because they have a reputation for being overpriced, but when I saw “noise canceling” my brain latched on to that and screamed at me to get them. They were literally the most expensive thing in the shop and I was a bit embarassed at how much I paid for them, but I was desperate.

I bought them and immediately put them on and the world got quieter. I used the cable to plug them into my old cell phone that I had brought along as a music player (intending to use it with the headphones I accidentally left at home) and suddenly I was in my safe space of soothing music. After that I started to calm down finally and was able to make the rest of my trip in peace.

This was a great experience, but I did not start using the headphones on a regular basis quite yet. For one thing, the instructions that came with the headphones made no mention of the fact that you have to use a cell phone app to control them, so for the next couple of months I didn’t make much use of them. Then at a Pride Parade at the end of June, where I was once again feeling overwhelmed by the sound of the crowd, a new friend lent me her own noise canceling headphones and I found myself in mostly silence and it was bliss! After that I got online to figure out how to use my own headphones, found out about the app, and then fully entered the world of noise cancelation! Since then I’ve also bought the earbuds I mentioned at the beginning of this piece.

To say that noise cancelation has changed my life is an understatement. It has completely transformed my relationship to public events! Whereas for most of my life, public events have been pretty much off limits to me except under limited circumstances (musical performances have been OK, because the sonic environment is less chaotic), now I am able to go anywhere at all, put in my earbuds, adjust the noise cancelation level to suit the situation, and then I can enjoy it. I can hear the people near me who I am speaking to, but the chaotic noise from all the other people around me is muffled and toned down to a tolerable level.

Now, a lot of autistic people have sound sensitivities, and I have, these past few months, gotten involved in a couple of online communities where they hang out, and I have learned that a lot of us use noise cancelation to great effect. I wish I’d gotten into these communities years ago so that someone could have told me about this, but I’m glad to finally know anyway. My life is so much better now!

I’m reading an article (Slivers) from @Impossible_PhD on the Stained Glass Woman site, and I just came across this:

“If you’re lucky, the result of this is burnout, which is a combined flop/flood collapse. If you’re unlucky, it becomes cPTSD.

Often, though? It becomes both.”

And suddenly a light went on in my head. Two years and a month ago I quit a job I’d held for 13 years as a computer programmer, and I had worked as a programmer or system adminstrator going back as far as 1994 before that. I quit because I was burned out. How burned out? I would not wake up until almost right at 10am when I’d have to get online for a daily stand-up meeting. Sometimes I’d even do the meeting from bed. Then after the meeting I’d make breakfast, and maybe 3 days of the week I’d then go back to bed and not get up again until after noon. The other days I’d sit online for a couple of hours just reading Discord or news websites, and then I’d go back to bed. In the late afternoon, I might finally get the energy and will to actually do some real work. So yeah, really seriously, incredibly, astoundingly burned out.

So I quit. At first I played games. Then I started learning how to write games, thinking I could turn my programming skills in a new direction. But then, even that stopped holding my interest and I gave that up too. Since then I’ve struggled to find the willpower to look for a new job, because I know that thanks to my 30 year career in the computer industry (mostly) working with computers is the only thing I know how to do, so if I go back to work I’m likely to end up in another job that I hate and just burn out all over again. Looking for a new job is kind of terrifying to me and makes me emotionally shut down, hard.

So I burned out. And what am I doing now? I basically have flashbacks whenever I think about being a programmer again. I avoid places and people that remind me of it – I quit the programming related Discord servers I was in, for example. I no longer really see myself as a computer toucher of any kind and I feel dread when I think about it. The thought of going back to programming makes me feel like a worthless failure and makes my chest tighten up. I no longer talk to any of my old colleagues. And computers, once a central focus of my life for decades, no longer hold any meaning or inspire joy anymore. Folks, those sound an awful lot like CPTSD symptoms.

I think now I understand why I am having such a hard time getting myself to look for a new job and why I react so badly to the thought of going back into the computer industry. I didn’t just burn out. My job actually became a source of every day, low level trauma for me and now I’m dealing with the consequences of that.

This sucks.

Oh! And while I don’t neccessarily think I have CPTSD caused by my old career, I do think I have CPTSD from gender related trauma growing up, and maybe it and my career burnout decided to get together and do a little tango with each other.

I’ll also drop this little self assessment result here for grins.

For months now (four months, even) I have been going to public social events around town trying to meet new people in the communities I’m part of. I just want to get to know people and have them get to know me so that I can expand my circle of friends. However, I’ve been running into a huge problem: between my sound sensitivities and my social anxiety and my general austic social awkwardness, I have found myself shutting down at almost every event. I end up sitting alone, wearing earplugs, or even noise canceling headphones, trying to block out the noise of the crowd that is overwhelming my senses. Sometimes I will leave the room and go outside to take a break, but while I eventually calm down, I just get overwhelmed again as soon as I go back in. For most of these events, I have left early, usually without even saying goodbye to anyone. Needless to say, I have not been successfull at meeting new people.

But towards the end of last month, I had a regular appointment with my psychiatrist for a medication checkup, and while there I talked to her about all of things I’d been experiencing, and I asked if I could go on lorazepam (Ativan), which I had done about 11 years ago during my last extended attempt at being social. She agreed, and I picked up my new prescription the next day. Before anyone worries, I am not taking it every day, and having been on it before I knew I probably wouldn’t experience any negative side effects. (I haven’t.) I only need to take this when I actually have, or can expect to have, a severe anxiety attack.

Well, Saturday was my first chance to try it at one of these big, crowded, loud, public events, and guess what? It worked! I took the pill about 45 minutes before hand, right before leaving to go there, and when I arrived I preemptively put on my earplugs to give me some partial sound blockage. I went inside and … everything felt fine. It was loud, though not as crowded as usual, but my sound sensitivities did not get triggered. What’s more, I didn’t feel any anxiety (well, maybe a smidgen) about talking to people. I ended up talking to 18 different people that day, mostly people I’d never met before, and I had extended conversations with several of them. I even stayed until the very end and was one of the last people to leave.

It was actually fun! I don’t recall the last time I had fun a big public event like this. It would have been about 2003 probably. The idea of a big social gathering actually being fun is astonishing to me these days. I almost felt like an extrovert, for a change! (Though I’m not really one. I still expended energy for this, but it was not a massive burden like it normally is for me.)

I think the lorazepam is going to work out well for me. Hopefully it works well enough for me to finally really get to know people and make new friends. After that I will hopefully feel more at ease and be able to attend these things without the chemical aid. I’m looking forward to being more social, finally.

In fourth grade one day, I and another girl (remember, this was when people still thought I was a boy) were sitting next to each other while most of the other students were doing something else, and we had nothing interesting to do. Now the desks we used had wooden tops and at the top edge there was a little trough where you could lay a pencil without it rolling away. I watched in fascination as she got out a bottle of Elmer’s Glue and poured a bit into the trough. She let it air dry until it was just barely tacky still, then she carefully pried up the glue, now molded into a thin, elongated shape, and she pressed the still barely wet end of it onto one of her fingernails. Instant long fingernail! She then proceded to make “long fingernails” for all of her fingers.

Now that got me excited, so I eagerly got out my own bottle of Elmer’s Glue and started doing the same thing. It was the first time I ever “did my nails” and she helped me try to get it right, though sadly my efforts were not as practiced as hers and my “fingernails” didn’t stay on very long. Nonetheless it was a really happy moment for me and is one of the few memories I strongly remember from my childhood.

I was 9 years old at the time (almost 10) and my real gender was starting to burst forth even without me consciously understanding what was going on.

Seems like lately everything is conspiring against me to strip me of any and all masks, coping skills, and ability to avoid my problems. All the pain and confusion and anxiety at my core has been laid bare for me and everyone else to see. I don’t like people seeing the real me because it’s so chaotic. Under the emotionless exterior I’ve always presented, is a seething, roiling, mess of raw emotions and unfullfilled needs that looks like something that crawled out of a Lovecraft story, and when others are exposed to it I worry that they will run away from me, leaving me even more alone than I already am and feeling even more isolated and unable to cope.

But I also know, intellectually, at least, that right now, with everything exposed and open to the world, is my only chance to actually heal some of the pain and to get some of my needs met for a change, so I’m fighting the urge to shut everything down again. I just hope I don’t end up hurting others in the process.

A major period of my life has come to an end. I just moved. I’m living alone again for the first time in years. I’ve met a lot of new people online, some of whom are becoming good friends. I’ve also become interested in BDSM and am discovering that I’m not quite as asexual as I’d previously thought. So I start going out to social events. Meeting people in public and trying to have an irl social life for the first time in more than a decade. I start having anxiety attacks. I begin wearing headphones when I’m out in public to control the sonic sensory overload. I begin seeing a therapist because being around strangers is so stressful and difficult for me. I start taking anti-anxiety medication. I pull out of anticipated social events because I’m worried that they are going to go wrong. Eventually I start drinking a lot and get drunk for the first time who knows how long.

This was 12 1/2 years ago when I got divorced.

This is also my current reality after selling my house and moving across country.

If history keeps on repeating itself, then the next steps for me are entirely withdrawing from anything resembling a social life and going back to being online only. Giving up trying to make new friends and just sticking with the ones I now have. Giving up any idea of having any kind of romantic or sexual relationships ever again. And probably spending another decade of my life living in greyscale until one day my real needs break through again, under still worse conditions where it’s even harder to do anything about them. I really don’t want this to happen again, but I have absolutely no idea how to avoid it.

I’ve been quiet the past few months. At the beginning of April I moved across the continent to a new city and a new state and ever since then, my life has been in turmoil. It all started, though, back in February when, for whatever reason, I had a hypomanic episode for the first time in a decade or more. It lasted a couple of weeks, and it was great! I felt on top of the world. I was absolutely euphoric the whole time and got a ton of stuff done. Towards the end of it, when I started to come down, I had my first intimate encounter in 11 years. It was just a cuddle session, but it went on for 5 hours and it was so intense for me that I went into subspace from it. (BDSM term – look it up. It’s a wonderful state to be in!) That gave me a soft landing from the hypomania and I didn’t experience any depression afterwards.

That was when I decided it was time to stop being the recluse that I’d been for the past decade. I started going to social events in the trans community of the city I was in at the time. Just once a month, but it was still a major change for me. I started putting out feelers in the BDSM community again, something I wish I’d never gotten out of. (I had gotten out of it because of social anxiety.) But during this time I was in the process of selling my house and getting ready to move. Finally, on April 5, I drove away from my old home off towards my new life.

When I got to my new home, I decided it was time to fully break from my old life and try to build something better for myself. I registered for a college class to start studying psychology; I’m taking some basic undergrad classes in prep for applying to grad school. I got actively involved in the local trans community and started going to support group meetings, and social events. I started going by my first name again, after spending 27 years going by my middle name. I even have, for the first time in probably 23 years, an in real life friend who I actually see and hang out with on a regular basis.

And what’s happened to me as a result of all these changes? I’m spending money like crazy, still have no job, am in therapy again for the first time a years, am on a waiting list to be evaluated for autism, am taking anti-anxiety meds again, regularly experience anxiety attacks, have had my sound sensitivities go through the roof and now carry noise cancelling headphones everywhere I go, I got my first ever stim toy to help me calm down when things get bad, and I carry a small plushie of a lamb with me as an emotional support toy. My life is, in short, a disaster.

What the fuck has happened to me? Why did I have to fall apart? All I did was stop repressing my feelings. You’d think that would make things better for me, not worse.

And now I’m drunk. I’m on my fourth glass of wine since getting home about a hour ago. Before I moved I might have one glass a month. These days it’s becoming very common for me to drink at home. At first it was because it helped relax my back muscles, and I’ve been experiencing a lot of back pain lately. Tonight though, it’s about dulling the mental and emotional pain.

I just don’t know how I can make it through all of this.