Am I About To Have Another?

‘At Eternity’s Gate’ by Vincent Van Gogh (Wikipedia)

Last night was bad again. The black dog well and truly had me in his jaws and was giving me a good shake. The noises in my mind are getting bad again and the anxiety levels are rising.

The worst thing with the anxiety is that it becomes a vicious circle, one cause of anxiety is the rising anxiety level. It’s true that my anxiety levels rose steeply before my last mental breakdown and my anxiety levels are rising steeply at the moment. Mostly I’m anxious about increasing symptoms of another breakdown and anxious about it becoming a self fulfilling prophecy.

The drug I take to counteract anxiety and insomnia is not fun. I have to make sure I take them early in the evening or my mornings are hell. I have to get out of bed once the alarm wakes me as it is far too easy to fall back to sleep. Once out of bed my limbs feel like lead, my head is full of fuzz and all I want to do is go back to bed and sleep.

Even taking the medication doesn’t stop the anxiety, doesn’t stop the noise. I still hear myself chattering away with the negatives, the worries.

It becomes far too easy to wish for an end.

At times like this I find myself looking at this painting by Van Gogh or reading Virginia Woolf’s suicide note. I don’t do it because I am contemplating suicide, I often think of (and fear) suicide but don’t think I could do it, but because it frees my tears. I can start sobbing and it is sobbing that often heals and lets the anxiety drain and voices quiet. A strange paradox of mental health. The sobbing seems to be because these pieces of art make me feel understood, they seem to be from artists that understand what it’s like.

The worst is when the sobbing doesn’t work. If I get over-tired by days of insomnia When I sit sobbing, tears running down my face, for half an hour or more (I’ve known myself to cry non-stop for several hours) without any relief from anxiety, no quiet from the noise.

When this happens I really am close to the edge. When I’m like this is when I feel at my loneliest, when I feel that there is no one to whom I can turn, when I feel I am totally without real friends. It’s when I hate the way my phone never rings, it’s when I loathe my total lack of social invitations.