Anatomy of a Breakdown

Yesterday I said that tomorrow (meaning today) was my brother's birthday. And the anniversary of my life changing experience with PROM. But all of that is actually today's tomorrow. Tomorrow tomorrow. Which is neither here nor there except another example of how easily I lose track of days. Weeks, even.

It's been six months since my last big breakdown and here I am watching myself spiral into relapse. It started last week with a gnawing, almost energetic restlessness. I couldn't really attribute it to anything in particular, so it grew to encompass everything in general. It brought with it an anxiousness that had me dreaming about having a heart attack all Monday night. I woke Ian up to tell him that I thought I was having a panic attack, and he held me until I was able to fall asleep. I dreamed of zombies and cross country flights to escape them, and not being able to because I was one of them after all.

Then came the exhaustion. At first I chalked it up to toddlerhood. Iliana has been busier than usual, recovered from a cold that knocked her out for a week and making up for lost time at the park, up the stairs, down the stairs, on the couch, everywhere that could possibly be climbed or jumped on or jumped off or otherwise explored.

You get the idea.

Keeping up with a toddler is a lot of work under the best of circumstances. But this is the kind of parenting that I was born to do. This is the stage of development that finally makes me want to get out that magical time stopping elixir; keep her as she is, so very much on the cusp of everything. We're beginning the part of babyhood that makes me want to have a hundred babies. (Though, admittedly, not ever all at once.)

Yet even as I was elated, this...heaviness began to settle. I started to feel my old companions: anxiety, exposure, and self doubt. It was harder and harder to push through an entire day without a vague sense of...I don't even know what. Whatever it was, though, it was painful.

And so? So I've been keeping up with the game plan that I've had in place to keep myself not just surviving, but actually alive. Connected. It's work that is as excruciating as the symptoms of my depression, and I don't want to do it. I'd much rather stay in bed forever and waste away. That's what I want to do right now. I want to be deleted.

But that's not me talking. That depression. That's the filthy liar that lurks in my brain, pretending it's me and it's logic and it's the right thing to do.

So there you have it. I'm in relapse. I am sinking. I am drowning and thinking about dying and wishing I'd never been born.

But I'm also fighting. I'm relying on plans that I put in place when I was healthier to get me through the place I am now.

Please, please, let it work.

Let it work.