stuck in the in-between places

I’m not sure what to say these days. Things have been, I don’t know the right word, rough I suppose, and I’ve found myself in a very bad place. As in those really dark places. I know you know the ones. Where your words won’t come and you find yourself distant and alone and just stuck in absolute agony.

I’ve been working with my doctor and we’ve been trying since the fall to get my lupus medications sorted out. It hasn’t been going well at all and I’m pretty discouraged by the whole thing. On top of that, I started a new antidepressant and it has been quite awful. The first little while my hands would shake, I was extremely agitated, it felt like my internal being was being torn in two and if I’d had the energy I swear I would’ve jumped from a very tall place. Those side effects seem to have lessened somewhat but I don’t feel better at all.

It had gotten so bad that I wrote in my journal step by step, everything I needed to do to end my life. It obviously didn’t go any further for the moment because I’m writing this post but I did tell T about it. Not so much the exact details, but that I was feeling really bad. He was very calm and quiet and understanding. It helps to know that he won’t over-react (at least not externally) and that we can work on those feelings. T wanted to know if we needed to bring in extra reinforcements…aka hospital admission. I looked at him in horror and adamantly refused to even discuss the option.  Most of the time, I just want out of everything.

Last Friday I missed my session because I was to go out of town. I’m not sure the timing was the best and I wasn’t really feeling well at all, but like always it’s about not feeling like a huge disappointment to other people rather than taking care of myself.

But ever since last Wednesday, there has been a small whisper in the recesses of my mind, ‘what if seven days is too long?’ It waxes and wanes, makes itself heard and then disappears until some other unforeseen time. I could have asked for more from T, but there are only so many asks before they run out. Before asking becomes too much.

I tried really hard to put everything out of my mind and carry on normally. That’s what you’re supposed to do, isn’t it? Put on a brave face and pretend everything is fine. And from a bystander point of view it might have even looked like it was going well, but it wasn’t at all the reality of it. Not even close.

You just don’t want to be that person, you know.

The one who finds conversations difficult to follow and sits in a room feeling their skin crawling with anticipation of an attack. The one who needs to have a light in the nighttime because when they try to sleep the horrific apparitions surface and frighten them, even when they are far from home. The one who needs to send a text message in the middle of a get-together because they feel like they might die from the awfulness of it all.

What kind of life is that?

It’s the kind of life where you find yourself driving down the highway, and all of a sudden, you flash back to some moment from the past. It seizes you. You try to keep the hurt at bay, try to go on with the day, but hours later you’ll be walking down the street and it’s a new memory, flowing in and out of time, taking hold of you. So often you find yourself in that place where your internal world just feels absolutely chaotic and you can literally feel the fabric of your soul being crushed from the weight of it all.

You fight.

You try to have this fire.

Even after all of these years, you’re still going, still keeping yourself alive. But for what? For who? How much longer you can do it? Do you even want to?