Amy Got Psychotic

Well hi all.  I wanted to apologize as to where the hell have I been?  I suddenly stopped writing, stopped answering and reading comments, stopped reading others’ blog posts.  Well.  I went nuts.  Yeah I had a severe psychotic episode two days ago and I am still shaking from it.  I forgot how God-awful those are.  I started when I was cleaning my daughter’s room while she was in school and I suddenly got really shaky and sick.  I laid down and it got worse, sweat drenching my clothes, squeezing the blankets to keep my hands still.  Hours went by.  Nothing changed.  Only my perception altered.  Things that I had been trying to focus on–books, my picture of a pink typewriter, the lamp, my memoir journal I had just made…all this stuff was losing their value and meaning.  They weren’t just things because suddenly there was no such thing as “things.” Nothing was real.  I tried breathing exercises to edge of the anxiety coming for an hour.  I tried saying aloud “it’s okay it’s okay i’m okay i’m okay” and another escalation and then I started praying to Jesus out loud, and that finally brought some tears, which I thought would mean relief from the anxiety.  It didn’t, I was further terrified that IT was coming.  IT being the psychotic state where I am no one and no one is real and I am in this godless hell and there’s no gravity and no one can save me and I’m going to die all alone because there is no such thing as souls and others and me.  I thought maybe if I wrote down the prayer? And this is what I scratched out:

“I talk to you

I’m sorry it’s been so long

I feel the Nothing invading

I’m shaking

and the panic creates fear that i’ll go mad again.

I said I love you.

I’ve come to you

I know you’re there

I lay here saying aloud

that I’m okay I’m okay

I squeeze the pillow

and weep to feel something

I feel sick, I can’t breathe

Get me out of my head

I am your child, I say aloud

which makes me feel whole

the exquisite comfort of ‘whole’ makes me secure for a moment

which makes me sob more because it cannot last. Help me.

Help me outa my head and into heart and body.

I have no one to talk to

I wouldn’t want anyone to see me this way, a crumb of my private hell.

I want to blame my illness on this emptiness and now these

endless tears, my scattered emotions

but I hear you assure me they’re real, that they’re mine

and they’re real.

you’ve found me, you found me

when I was truly lost that first time

I need you now

for an afternoon

I need help

because I’m sick and my heart is sick and broken

I’m writing because

I cried to you and you said writing was the answer.

I’m listening to Maya Angelou’s voice hoping to

ground myself, I can’t hear her grandmother voice

‘still…I rise…’

and I know, I know I will

I will this shaking body will

stay with me God

Stay with me.

Shortly after that my daughter came home from school, I lost all grounds, and went into full-psychosis mode.  Locked myself in the bathroom, called the doc, called my mother, my step-father, my sister.  When I talked I couldn’t recognize my voice just the gulping “I’m so scared I’m not gonna make it hurry” and they did eventually come and they knew what to do, the “protocol” for Amy’s “episodes” and the extra abilify and valium brought me down slowly.  Then, pure exhaustion and shaking and still the tears, because I’m still always so scared afterwards.  It’s like seizing to exist, only your eyes still work but your soul is gone.  I can’t explain it though I know lots of you out there get it.  I wanted to blog before it got too bad but once it escalates, well, it’s unstoppable (another scary realization).  Almost went back to the bin.  But I kept thinking “beat this, beat this, I am not my mind, I will not fear myself” and my best friend Mike (the one I’ve written about, with the arthritis and the sculpting) kept texting me (because I couldn’t call it was too scary) to fight! Fight! Fight! and I did, when I was on the reality part of the interweaving of madness and grounding.

So!  That’s where I’ve been.  A psychotic nut.  But hey I’m okay now.

amy