Burnout and Breadcrumbs

     I grow more and more detached each day. The shade from my mental issues reaches further each day. As the days grow longer, the darkness becomes too bright, saturating the landscape of my mind like a sunrise of nettles. The days are sometimes too much to even face; I force myself into a mode of contentment. Staring at a faceless mass in the mirror, not knowing who I am anymore. This shell of mine walks through time like a snail in a salt factory, making some days totally unbearable and believable.      Is this really our reality? Multiple times a day, I feel a blanket of anxiety, seeing shadows and figures that I’ve been told are not there—sounds and words from the darkest corners of my mind blaring over a loudspeaker.      I have been noticing my days elongating, stretching the fabric of time until something tears. Usually, my mind shreds to fibers realizing this. My perception of time begins to be panic-inducing, breaking my psyche wh...

     Every day continues to become more confusing; hallucinations are more prominent and demanding, forcing my focus inward to the darkness just to stave off another panic attack. My heart starts to pound to the rhythm of war drums—so loud others can hear it—prepping my mind and body for the coming internal quarrel. A cold frost slowly slips over my body, and shivers run down my spine, making it impossible to focus on any task at hand. My emotions whiplash and tend to hurt people caught in the way of the sonic boom.      The overwhelming voice screams that I will never be good enough, that I will never amount to anything of worth. It is a terrifying Wilhelm scream that echoes in the chambers of my mind. The burden I feel I have become is nearly worse than the hallucinations and delusions themselves. Realizing that I have been burying these issues for so long and not getting the necessary help earlier—if I had only known the damage it would cause.  ...

     The taste of bitterness in the air, so thick it settles on your skin—a film of filth and ferment that irradiates the body. Special equipment and safety precautions must be taken in order to not be infected fully. This taste in the mouth is vile, only gets more repugnant. My days will flip constantly, hours to hours. The back and forth is exhausting and not sustainable. For the first time, I feel like I am unable to maintain the unscheduled frenzy of emotions and the physical stress that accompanies.      There have been times in the past where I have been disassociated for large quantities of the calendar. Pretending to maintain a daily face and façade just to be content in being. That feeling of contentment has slipped away in the recent future. Planning to be around longer than just “today” was never something at the forefront of my thoughts. Always barely coping with the current of madness running through my mind. Struggling to think about what the...

Look into a mirror, what do you see? A reflection of yourself, some days less like yourself than the previous. Now imagine looking into the mirror and realizing you are the reflection on the other side—not in control, only mimicking. The feeling of panic starts to set in; anxiety floods your system and takes over, trapping my thoughts and self in a psychomanteum of delusion and paranoia. Lately, this is a feeling that I can't let go of—a pit with no bottom and no mercy, a well of false hopes and insanity. Casting a coin into this well can be a curse, though. Blessed with the gift of abstract thinking, yet chipping away at all the work that had been done. Crumbling and dilapidated, hardly standing. These thoughts are intrusive and elusive, waiting for their 30 seconds of fame—a match burning to a stump. A therapist I once had described my situation in a way that has always stuck in my mind: mental illness is like a child. You wouldn’t give them the keys to drive the car, and you a...

Waking up every day to a false reality can be very damaging, especially when it comes in different forms. Sometimes the same person as yesterday, sometimes a faceless mass. The radio starts crackling in and out with frequencies shouting madness and despair. The stain of this can last the entire day. I can only take so much before the brick and mortar of my mind begin to crumble away. Looking back, there has always been a trail of breadcrumbs that I was unwilling to notice, leading me to my current mental issues. Coming to terms with my own being and perception of reality has only deepened those cracks in an already unstable environment. The shadows stretch longer, and the fingers of time scrape the top of my brain like a farmer’s rake. Managing my day to day has become a singular goal to accomplish—sometimes hitting the mark, sometimes failing miserably. The vision I have for my future is bleak, blurry, and riddled with puzzles that are missing pieces. Pieces of myself—the corners an...

 I've just spent the entire day in the ER dealing with some medical issues. Along side this, for the past three weeks, I’ve been experiencing what feels like a third-person perspective of myself—As if I'm watching my life from over my own shoulder. Today, I had CT scans and blood tests, all of which came back negative. But despite that, I continue to have intense, unexplainable episodes multiple times a day, both physical and psychological. After I got home, I experienced something that felt like I let go of the last thing tethering me to this plane of existence. A strange sensation washed over my whole body. I asked my wife to sit next to me and scratch my back, hoping to overload my nervous system and ground myself. But I lost control—of my body, my emotions—and collapsed into the couch, my eyes rolling back. In that moment, I was overcome with a single, clear question: Do I want to stay or go? I said out loud, “It’s happening.” A deep warm feeling started to bla...