A couple months ago someone started shaking the foundation of my wellbeing. Someone not worth it, but damage was done. My over 8 years of mental stability and happiness has now crumbled to the ground. My illness is awake and dragging me through hell again. Uncontrollable anxiety, fits of rage, debilitating depression, obsessive thoughts, helplessness, and ideation that's put me on the edge of sanity.
When you are "well" you sometimes forget (or try to convince yourself you're cured) of your mental illness. I am Borderline and it took me 35 years of pure hell to find an existence where I was content with who I was. I knew I wasn't cured, everyday was still a struggle, but life was manageable, balanced. I was even happy, seemingly had it all. Nothing flashy. Part time job I enjoyed, small happy home we were slowly making "ours", a handful of good friends. People were actually envious of my life. If they only knew.
That tenuous grasp I had on life has slipped away. I blinked and it was gone. I'm at ground zero. Frantically trying to get my neurones to reconnect and remember exactly how I was able to escape my nightmare the first time and become a seemingly "normal" person again. It's like a child trying to catch bubbles. They look around and spy a big juicy one, they quickly run over and POP! It's gone. And no matter how hard you try, they always disappear.
I saw it coming. Slowly creeping up on me at first like a fog rolling in. I thought I was going to outrun it for a minute, but it was there, slowly enveloping me until I no longer knew which way to run. I breathed it in and it consumed my soul in an instant. The battle was over.
It's early, only couple months in. I'm gathering reinforcements (meds, doctors, therapists, etc), people and things I hoped I would never need again. Here I am. Slowly slipping away. Fighting like hell, but it's so exhausting. Sometimes a good day is just making it out of bed to the sofa. And other days I am able to get stuff done around the house, maybe make dinner, visit my bestie who is luckily my neighbour. I'm somewhat agoraphobic at this point. Leaving our house/garden is hard, and venturing too far away is paralysing. However every thought, feeling, and action is dependent on whatever the next moment brings. Everything is perpetually flying through my head, and if something bad takes hold for more than a few seconds, I'm suddenly fighting demons in my head and I lose all control of my actions. In a split second I can go from calm to sobbing on the floor, or flying around in a rage, or panicking so much I can't breathe. I'm tired. Just so tired.
The fight is real. I hate that so many people still don't understand mental illness, don't believe in it, or put stigma on it. I hate that part of me still feels the need to hide my illness from the world in shame. I know it's difficult to understand sometimes. My husband admits he completely underestimated what it could become if things got bad, and now things are bad and he is frantically trying to make sense of it all. You can't truly appreciate what it's like until someone close to you goes through hell and you're trying desperately to hold their hand while they are desperately trying to push you away. We don't want you to leave. We are just so scared.
I will just keep fighting and praying.
Happy Anniversary honey. I do love you no matter how much I may push you away. Just hold on and I promise to come back to you. Someday.
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