the voices that aren’t mine

It comes on so fast.

Fucking bulldozer.

I’m fine.

And then I’m not.

I’m really not.

It’s like liquid mercury reaching out and sliding through me. Becoming me.

I can feel it. The pouring. Warm suffocation.

Kelly once told me she worried about me because my normal is so borderline. I think about that randomly. I even thought about it this week. I overcome it–somehow–so often that it’s easy to forget. It’s easy to imagine it’s no big deal. That it’s navigable.

But I left the house to get R and I was okay. And then I was not. I was consumed with the slippery tentacles. The squeezing in my chest. The liquid slipping past eyelashes. The all consuming vast nothingness.

I kept hearing Beth say I’m doing good work and that voice telling me it’s a good lie. That the work isn’t real. That I hide too much to make progress. That I won’t ever unearth it. That I’ll never be able to differentiate between compartmentalizing and progress.

That there isn’t more than the emptiness.

And me–my voice and my mind–I can only….experience the darkness.

And know it’ll pass. Know I’m not okay. Know I’m not me and I have to wait it out. Know that I am fucking drowning. Know that it feels like a fucking split personality. Know that I have to bide my time. Know that I have to fight if the darkness wants to take action along with the thoughts.

It is fucking exhausting.

It’s funny.

I just had this moment.

I finished eating. I helped L with something. Then, as I walked to the kitchen, I thought, “Well, I’ll just have, like, a bite of something else.”

No rhyme. No reason.

The thought arose. And the brain, by habit, entertained.

And then I chimed in–my voice.

Stop.

Enough.

~~~~~~~

It can come out of nowhere–that initial thought. It can sideswipe you or blindside you. It can be for a reason or not. It can be a great day or a terrible day or a neutral day. It can manifest from nothing or be the icing on the cake. It doesn’t discriminate.

It will come.

And whenever it does–every time it does–I have to remember my who. I have to remember my why. I have to remember my how. And if I forget, I have to get the hell back up the moment I’m reminded.

Today I didn’t forget. Today I didn’t have to be reminded. Today I knew.

That makes today an easy day.

Tag: the voices that aren’t mine

Into the dark.

If you jump, you best jump far.