This is a Really Real Mental Health Post.

TW: Suicidal thoughts, self harm, pretty intense stuff.

The other shoe dropped.

Last night I took too many anti-anxiety meds and benadryl and sleep meds. Not because I wanted to die, and not enough to kill me, but because I wanted to sleep through the part where I wanted to die.

I wanted to drift away into nothingness, for just a few hours, hoping the feelings would be gone when I woke up.

I tried to put my fist through a wall. Not because I was angry, but because the feelings inside me were too much to hold onto and I needed a way to let them out.  Fist into wall felt less harmful than knife into skin.

I had to fight that urge while hoping the meds would kick in quickly.

While wondering if I cared if they killed me.

While knowing they wouldn’t and being fine with that too.

The speed and intensity with which this overcame me was overwhelming. I didn’t want to fight it, but I knew I had to.

The easiest way to fight was to sleep.

I wanted to be held, I wanted to be comforted. I wanted to be told it would all be okay. I wanted to know I was safe. But this wasn’t a night for that. This was a night for self soothing, handling my own emotions, alone.

Alone.

Feeling forgotten.

Hopeless.

Alone.

This morning the sun seemed too bright and too harsh. I slept straight through for the first time in months. I didn’t want to open my eyes. I didn’t want to face the fact that the thoughts were still there.

And then it hit me.

I have to work.

I didn’t have the will to put one foot in front of the other and I have to sit at my desk and input numbers and make phone calls and churn out statements and create order from chaos.

I’m consumed by my own chaos.

My thoughts are swirling through mud. I can’t absorb half of what people are saying to me. I’m taking notes, not fast enough, my brain can’t keep up.

But I’m doing it. One foot in front of the other. Pushing key after key, turning invoices into statements. Crunching the numbers. Sending out emails.

My brain doesn’t want me to live for another second. My brain hears the familiar gunshots in the back of my head. My brain wants me to lay down and give up.

It wonders what’s the point in all of this.

But today my brain didn’t win. I did.

I may not have been at 100%, I may have done less than my normal.

But I showed up.

Today I won.

I can do this.