I Dropped My Basket

Though a recently posted about feeling better, and some fog lifting, the full truth is that the past year for me has been one of the darkest of my life.  "I dropped my basket" is an old southern saying that basically means you lost your mind. I dropped my basket. I have a long line of mental illness in my family, both diagnosed and others that could use a diagnosis. I tend to lean towards my mother's side of the family in most things and most of the women lose their minds at some point. Though we'll never fully know how much was from abuse and trauma, and how much is their chemistry. I've lived my entire life fearing the day it happens to me, and there have been many moments in my life where clinically it likely did. I'm processing if this latest episode has been the worst of them all. 

At 16 I had suicidal ideation. It started before then but this was the time where I was planning to die. It's a story I sometimes joke about as I was getting so high all the time I forgot my death date which I'd meticulously planned. I was furious and decided I couldn't kill myself until I found what I considered the perfect date. I may have slight perfectionism issues alongside the crazy.

In my 20's I found out I was sexually abused as a child. I'd always suspected it, and I mentally collapsed hard over the discovery. There was a secondary discovery, with more evidence, in my 30's and it nearly paralyzed me. This compounded with depression kept me in a constant state of sorrow. Medication, therapy, medication, therapy, nothing, everything, and I just gave up. 

These are some of the bigger instances but it's really a lifetime of them. The first entry in my diary was "I'm fat". I was 6 years old. I learned to stuff the feelings down and not bother crying as it felt like no one cared anyway. My mother once said, "If you keep refusing to cry, one day you'll start, and it won't stop." That is what has happened. 

In a matter of a few months my precious kitty died, and I had to be the one to decide to euthanize quickly, I was let go from the job I'd loved for 7 years, and I lost who I felt was the love of my life. I don't say this flippantly or to be funny...I had a mental health break. For whatever reason I'm able to be functional while hanging from the edge of the cliff. I'm grateful I can do this, yet it also leaves me in a state of never being real. I tried to tell people, alluded more than fully disclosing, and that's met with cliches and brush offs. And I understand this as it's painful to sit with someone who is falling apart and there isn't a good answer as to what to do. "Things can only get better!" They got worse. 

While smiling in pictures, and laughing in a crowd, I come home every single night and collapse to the floor sobbing. Sometimes I can barely make it to my car. I'm told "let it out", yet this is over a year, this is a lifetime, my issues aren't that I just need a good cry. I can't stop crying. While not planning as I'd done in the past, and I won't do anything because of my son and cats, it's a rare day that I don't have a fantasy of dying. 

I want to be delicate here, as I know people who have lost someone to suicide, but I also want to share how we feel and why there aren't easy answers for anyone. What it feels like for me is being on fire with a pain so intense you can't think and your only thought is I need this agony to end. Then well-meaning people, ones that truly love and care for you, are on the side saying "Hang on! It will get better!" and all these other feel-good lines which may or may not happen. All while the flames hurt so much, and intensify, so you do everything you can to numb it with anything no matter how destructive. Drugs, alcohol, sex, behaviors, rage. You know you'd hurt so many people to choose to die, all while you can't take another moment. 

A dear friend bought me a hypnotherapy session as I'm unemployed (no benefits) and she could see I was getting progressively worse. I feel better. Still crying but it has lessened, and I don't feel on the edge of it at all times. I'm not happy, I'm sad beyond words, but I feel like trying again. 

I don't have a way to tie this up with a cute ribbon, and smugly positive quote. I also don't want pity. This isn't writing about being a victim, but a disclosure about my silences and destructive behaviors. For those that care about me and have tolerated this, thank you.