Mental Health

This is my life. There is no rationality, no planning, scant expectation of success. An ego the size of this planet argues with a weakly protesting child, and the outcome is so basic that it bears minimal mention. Joy in one, anger and loathing in the other.

Note: written in 2014 following essentially a normal day with a relapse before my marriage collapsed. Not surprising I suppose considering the state that I was in.

You can be aware of it with a sense of resignation knowing that the inevitable outcome will be yet another failure of your will and the joy of just another day wiled away in discontent. There is an internal battle, naturally – who really wants to fight themselves mentally trying to prove that it’s wrong to do the thing the other part of you demands, regardless of the consequences. 1:30pm is about when it kicked in, and the fight was short, I had already been snorting buproprion despite all the fears brought on from yesterday’s clear overdose and seeming serotonin syndrome. Hallucinations, confusion, twitching, staggering, blind terror….certainly seems like something that you would want to do over and over again. I had been safely knocking off items from my to-do list, planned to tackle so much more for the day, when the fluttery thought of a cold beer dusted across my determination to continue the 48hr. streak of happiness and health I had been maintaining. So what if it was an hour walk to the liquor store and I had a pocket half filled with change.

Cut forward 8-hrs to my wheedling, intimidating, and self-righteous anger with my wife because she won’t give me the grocery money so I can get a pack of cigarettes.

This is my life. There is no rationality, no planning, scant expectation of success. An ego the size of this planet argues with a weakly protesting child, and the outcome is so basic that it bears minimal mention. Joy in one, anger and loathing in the other.

I’ve always questioned whether or not the majority of most other individuals at AA or NA meetings have experienced that same flat out smothering weakness. Non-committal and breaking at the slightest touch. I’m not sure. The “Big Book” speaks on “incomprehensible demoralization,” but there is always a touch of glamorization around each escapade that denotes in the back of my head some control. To be truly out of it, with only the smallest hint of coherency or willingness to fight against the thing destroying you – probably just my arrogant inner self bleating for sympathy because I must be just that damn bad. If the world had more people like me, I’m sure they would have popped up on my radar some time. Then again, AA preaches terminal uniqueness and loss of control as some of the basic precepts to their program. Depending on the time of day I’ll feel one way or the other about it.

To put it in perspective on a physical level, imagine yourself preparing to make dinner, say a tasty salad or some such other vegetablish item. Now picture that about halfway through, a casual thought about how tasty some meat would be in addition to the salad, but sadly you lack the funds. Before you finish, you’ve discussed the variables, the outcome, the possibilities, the pain – and you’ve come to a conclusion – your finger would make the perfect accoutrement. Down with the knife, up to the lips, and in a heartbeat, you’ve maimed yourself over a passing thought. Now that the moment is over, you can embrace the pain and relish the understanding of how sick you must be, provide yourself that information for an ongoing reference to continue justifying your actions.

But this disease sustains, it offers glimmers of hope, of optimism among the shroud of misery that you wear over your daily interactions with the world. This last time, that was absolutely the last time. Tomorrow you’ll feel better, and you’ll be stronger for having survived another ordeal. Until the day comes that you bitterly and pathetically weep that there won’t be a tomorrow with longing and hope for your expiration. Choking on tears and gasping prayers to any god or devil that will listen to remove the pain once and for all. Prayers so rarely answered it seems.

I told my wife at counseling that I had given up, but was balancing the need to see her, my son and my unborn child set-up someplace where I would know them to be safe and housed comfortably with a cushion in front of them. Seconds earlier, our counselor, Paula, who had initially been working one on one with me, had announced that she would no longer be working with me as she felt that there was nothing she could do to help and had become discouraged.

“Well, then why haven’t you gone out full tilt?”

At my core, I’m still a coward. I know where that will take me. Not where I hope it will, but likely to an institution or a jail where that one prized aspect to my existence that I have ever embraced as the key to masking the inner turmoil; independence. I don’t want to lose my family, and I would to delude myself for a few moments longer that all is not lost. I want to feel like I did one good thing as I crashed to Earth. Even if that single action was a mere minor amelioration of the damage so unjustly caused by me on way down.

And I’m human.

I’m scared.