My continued struggle with PTSD, depression, and suicide [View all]

I don't know how many people remember me, know who I am, or even noticed that I wasn't around much over the last several months. However, for anyone who cares, I figured I'd at least check in and give an update to anyone interested. I posted the following thread back in July after I was released from the psych ward the first time: [url]http://www.democraticunderground.com/11795677[/url]

However, a few days after updating the above thread, I checked myself back into the psych ward after I had a couple of really rough days. I finally was released on 2 October and returned to work on 7 October. Since then, I've been having a very hard time dealing with daily life. I'm starting to feel more and more distant from my wife and kids - like I did before my suicide attempt in June and I continue to feel increasingly depressed, anxious, and jumpy. Work is getting harder and harder for me to do and I believe that HR and my boss are trying to figure out how to get rid of me as I'm almost totally incapable of handling my job.

If I didn't have a wife and kids that needed me for their emotional well being and for their financial security, I'd be out of here in a heartbeat and spend the foreseeable future in the VA psych ward. I liked the psych ward and miss it tremendously. I hate being out of there and I hate having to trying to be "normal" all the time.

I shake, I constantly jump at everything, I have a hard time focusing on what I'm doing, I'll walk 3 steps from the refrigerator to the microwave and forget what I was doing. I'll take a shower and forget if I even just washed my hair. My wife yells at me for being incompetent and not being able to get simple things done. I forget to pay bills. My wife tells me to do or not do something and then 30 seconds later I'm doing exactly what she just told me not to do as I've completely forgotten what we just talked about. At work I forget steps in things I've been doing for years, I zone out and don't hear anyone, and I feel like a total freak and I constantly have memories of Iraq playing in my head. I really don't think I'm going to be holding on my job for much longer.

I know I'm on the verge of the last phase of my life. I'm 34 years old and I honestly expect that this time next year my wife and kids will have left me, I'll be unemployed, and I'll be sitting for the rest of my life in a VA psych ward. Honestly, I feel like that isn't that bad of a place to end up and is probably the best and most realistic way my life could play out. As long as I have a piano I could play and some jigsaw puzzles to do I could be comfortable for the rest of my life.

My dream would be to get out on disability, set up a small wood shop, and make furniture at my own pace for a living. I'd go play the piano for a couple of hours at a retirement home and maybe dabble with some volunteering at our local nature museum. If the disability thing pans out like HR is telling me it will, I'll be making just about the same I'm making right now without having to work. I'm hopeful, but I just don't think it'll be that easy. I'll have to see. My guess it'll be about january-ish by the time I get the paperwork figured out.

To anyone who was curious, I'm still here. I'm not posting much these days, but I do quite a bit of reading every day.