Being completely out of control doesn’t feel as chaotic as I thought it would. I feel like I’m pretending. It should be much worse than this. I feel as though my heart will soon burst out of my chest, my skin dewy with a cold sweat. I can’t stop thinking about dying. Not so much how it’s going to happen but that it’s the only way to make my brain stop. It’s maddening that no one can understand the things I can understand.
I haven’t slept in three days. So what. I pace around my cluttered and filthy apartment while my cat lays on the floor unphased. She’s seen me having a bad trip on mushrooms, this is nothing. It’s some time past three in the morning: I’ve been sobbing on and off since about ten. My physical and mental body are in overdrive and just keep getting faster. I cry because I have to, it helps expel some of the energy. I also cry because I’m fucking terrified of myself and this separation I feel.
Wearing nothing but a pair of underwear and an oversized tshirt I decide the right thing to do at this point is call the suicide help line. What a fucking mistake. The man on the other line was so unhelpful it made me laugh. He advised me to take some sleeping pills, for christ’s sake. He told me about how he survived on little sleep for an entire career. While he was gabbing he made me wonder about how these people are trained, if at all. My spiral quickly peaked, thinking about what would happen if I swallowed every pill I could find in my apartment. That’s when I hung up on Mr. Unhelpful and called 911.
My cat was just waking up when I started crying on the phone to the operator. He also had cats and was doing a way better job than the man on the hotline. I almost wanted to say “Nevermind!! Please don’t send anyone!” I decided I should probably wear pants when someone showed up, as if that would save me a shred of embarrassment. I packed a tote bag with some things I might need. How do you pack for the hospital when you’re going insane? Phone charger, a book, and my purse. God forbid I’m not connected to social media while I’m thinking too fast to speak. If I wasn’t embarrassed enough I sure fucking was when the hottest paramedic in my town was the one to come get me.
I tell the ambulance full of women that I’m so grateful there’s no men here. That would just make me feel worse. They laugh and nod their heads. Such a universal experience. At the hospital I get to lay on a gurney in the hallway. I have to give a urine sample to make sure I’m not on drugs and they make me keep the door open. What the fuck, am I on suicide watch or — oh. This whole thing feels surreal. I didn’t slit my wrists and I’m not tweaking so why is everyone making such a big deal? I just couldn’t get my brain to stop and it was scaring me. Doesn’t that happen to everyone? It definitely does not.
My sister shows up and sleeps in a chair next to me in the hallway. I beg her to leave my side so that she can check on my cat. I’m worried to bits about Honey. I spent the first four hours of being in the E.R. freaking the fuck out about if my cat is ok. I imagined her dead for different reasons, all because I’m not there.
When I finally get a real bed I feel my body start to crash and shut down. I desperately want to sleep but this woman keeps coming in trying to tell me she thinks I’d be a ‘great fit’ for the mental ward. Oh, fuck. I sign the papers and am led to a new wing of the hospital. I surrender my tote bag of essentials to the nursing staff along with all the clothes on my body. In return I get a pair of crunchy disposable underwear and a set of stiff scrubs, a deep teal color to identify my body as a member of the behavioral health unit for the next week. I start my period minutes later and completely ruin about five pairs of these scrubs.
I wake up early every morning, discovering the coffee cart is always at least ten minutes late and even later in the afternoons. The drink itself is terrible: burnt decaf mixed with hot water, twice daily. The overwhelming acidity leaves a film on my tongue that I try to ignore. In between the allotted coffee times I do several group therapies ranging from making vision boards with copies of National Geographic and Better Homes and Gardens that are older than I am, to in-depth DBT worksheets. I shower in the bathroom with a plastic velcro door depicting a tropical sunset. The counselor takes us on walks where we can smell the blooming Lily of the Valley and look across the street to see several horses. I look forward to seeing both every day after that. I have to do all my journaling and DBT work with skinny crayola markers because pens and pencils aren’t allowed. I choose a color based on my mood. I ask for the newspaper every day so I can do the crossword, flinging the sports section in the direction of one of the men asking for it. My sister visits me every day, bringing me a year’s worth of pads, with and without wings, and full size bottles of my favorite skincare products. She’s staying in my apartment so Honey isn’t lonely.
I miss the hospital sometimes. I miss not having anything to worry about but learning to like being alive. My mom never came and visited me and that hurt my feelings. We talked on the phone every day but I wish I could have hugged her. I feel like I don’t fit in with some of my friends because I don’t think about dying anymore. I think I’ll be lonely forever because no one will want to be with a crazy person. I’m more normal than I have been for years, but bipolar never goes away. Being a person is such hard work. It feels not worth the effort if I’m going to feel lonely forever. How does someone not feel lonely? How fucking depressing.
Bipolar folks thrive with a routine, medication, and adequate amounts of sleep. Sometimes I miss being fucking crazy because I wasn’t worried about the work it takes to be a person. I was worried about how quickly I could spend the little money I had or how likely it was I wouldn’t wake up from my 4pm nap.
Crippling anxiety makes me feel wrong all over. I’m nauseous, shaking. It’s hard to breathe. I take twice as much melatonin as usual to knock myself out in hopes it gets my mind to shut the fuck up. I do the breathing exercises I learned in the hospital. They sort of help long enough to get my heart to calm down a little bit. A small gratitude practice: so thankful this is happening at 8:30pm on a Monday and not in the middle of class or during a time where you couldn’t sleep it away. This fit of anxiety comes after a week of feeling extremely energized and making things from scratch every single day. Spending money I don’t really have in order to make these things from scratch. Not eating hardly any of the things I had made.
Now I feel safe in my apartment. The creaky painted wood floor, bits of wood litter Honey tracks through the whole place sticking to my feet as I walk from room to room. I stub my toe on the metal piece separating the living room from the kitchen floor. When I make my coffee I feel the crumbs of past meals that fell to the ground instead of the plate. My cat’s claws softly scratching up my legs, begging for attention while I wait for the kettle to whistle.
I registered for classes. My sister texts me each day to make sure I’ve made it to class and I complain about the breeze coming into my apartment from the opening at the bottom of my front door that my landlords ignore. Honey lays on my bed and lazily stares at me while I take my medication. One of our daily rituals. She sits next to me on the couch while I do my homework and always wants to pop in on my video therapy sessions to say “Hello, yes I’ve been looking after her. Yes she’s doing her best. Yes she’s giving me lots of treats.” I wake up each day ready to conquer only the next minute, and then the minute after, and then the one after that.
An Unquiet Mind 