For over a month I have been in psychosis. My mental illness has taken over my body and soul and documenting the way I feel and how my brain is working will hopefully show me and others how mental disease destroys a person.
As much as I look around, nothing seems familiar. I can't figure my life out and I've been in the same place for over a year. I chose to live alone so that I wouldn't bother others but in the loneliness I end up a mess. I can't recognize the simple thing around me. I don't understand how to get from point A to point B. The problem with this is I am intelligent enough to know I my brain is missing and it is a sick feeling to feel the helplessness that wraps itself around you suffocating me.
At this point I have no sleep pattern. When my body says to lay down and sleep that is what I do. I am in constant fear that because of this I am going to miss some kind of meeting or appointment. I am scared to death, always nervous and anxious and can't stop being scared.
Functioning without any sleep pattern plays with your mind whether you have mental illness or not. When you wake up not knowing if it is night or day outside, your world automatically feels like it is upside down. Your body feels shaky inside, you have no idea what day it is because you don't know exactly how long you've slept. Remembering anything ceases to exist because something in your brain blocks short term memory. Last year I forgot my own birthday and it wasn't until a family member told me that I remembered. You also can't finish any task you start.
These symptoms sound like they could be drug induced but I assure you I do not take drugs other than my psych meds. I don't drink alcohol either. In my lifetime, the only thing I have ever tried was pot. I would say my pot smoking was social in that I rarely did it or was around anyone who did it. I also never felt pot was a drug. I think it was more of a calming agent for me and I knew I didn't like the way alcohol made you feel while being drunk or the depression it caused the next few days. I have drank before, but I didn't like it enough to be an alcoholic.
With anxieties, I don't want to be around others but those I really trust. I don't want to be talked into something so I choose to stay away from others. I have a hard time saying "no" and feel bombarded if someone asks me to do something because I know I will say yes because I don't want people to actually know how much I am freaking out. The weird thing about this is I am not scared to go to the nut house. Yeah, that's right. I will be the first one in line if I am told there is a bus heading that way because it is the only place I feel safe. Nothing can get me, nothing can hurt me and nothing can bother me while I am hospitalized. The bad part of that is that Oklahoma only has crisis centers so in order to be able to get help you have to either be sent by a judge on a drug or alcohol charge or you have to be suicidal. I've been suicidal and went but that isn't the only time mental health issues affect a person. Why does mental illness have to get to the point of suicidal thoughts before you can be helped?
I want to get help but I'm so scared to talk about what is going on. I finally talked with my therapist I see every week and admitted that I am not doing well. Had I not tried to fix it on my own I would have never gotten to the point I am at now. Here's the kicker on this: I never miss an appointment and I take medication. I know that mental illness has no cure and I know that I will always struggle to maintain my disease but I alway think that I can give it time and it will fix itself. This is even though I know it can't happen. I still have this faith, though, and it has not happened yet.
For those who think praying and God can heal mental illness then I am living proof that it doesn't work like that. Modern medicine can't cure it either. What I do know is no one would like to live on the streets with mental illness not being treated because of cutbacks like they are doing now. I try to tell everyone that they are cutting the wrong programs but I guess it is going to take a tragedy to shake some sense into people who think they can not acknowledge mental illness so they can have a better economy and take out loans they can't afford and snarl at anyone that is democrat because they think that mental health clinics are draining their pocketbooks.
