I have secrets.  Like most people my true self is covered in layers of conformity.  In order to fit in, fill in and fall in I have my many personas.  It is only in those rare moments that I share the elements that make up myself to myself.  When I do share them I become raw.  I tear away deep layers of personality epidermis and leave myself exposed to all elements.  It is this danger that has made me so reticent to really be myself, much less share myself.

However, I’ve just found out that three of my inner-secrets are shared.

1)  Auditory Hallucinations – I hear things.  I always have.  Conversations when I am alone.  Voices in empty hallways.  The silent whispers of people and things that never were.  I hear them often.  They speak to me, repeat my thoughts, create my psychic landscape and give me my ideas.  I spend so much time ignoring them that I depend on any other auditory distraction available.  T.V., music, radio, my own voice.  

2)  A list of “don’t die yet” books.  I keep a list of books I -must- read before I die.  It is less than 200 now, but I’m adding to it daily and when this list has been crossed off completely a new one will take its place.  This is the list I refer to in at my most suicidal.  It is the list that tells me that yes, I can kill myself, but I might as well wait till I’ve finished this next book.

3)  Pill stashing.  I know this is not new to anyone, but I am glad I am not the only one that hordes pills of questionable use in case I ever finish the book list.  They’re a comfort, not a temptation.  They let me know I have control.  

I just found out that other people do these specific things too.  In fact someone has the exact stash of seroquel I have.  

 And that means three of the things that make me “me” also make me “you”.  Things that are me are us.  I am part of the whole, even when I’m only part of me.  It’s a weird feeling to belong without trying.  But I like being like myself once in awhile.

Well, it happened, it struck again.  That demon that lurks under my third rib bone poked out his ugly head and took over.  His painful bites and stabs did what they were meant to do.  I spent days crying.  I sobbed till I ran out of breath.  My mouth grew into a permanent frown.  And my brain relented to the gaping maw that is my soul devouring my body and surrounding me with hopeless depression. 

Suicide is too good for this demon.

Then the cloud lifted a little.  My demon started getting tired.  He just didn’t have the energy to hold onto his complete domination of my spirit.  That gave enough space for the bunny rabbit of mania to hop into his place and fill me with the need to walk for miles, eat lots of popcorn, and clean everything from top to bottom.  Slowly, the cobwebs were swept from the bedroom corner and my brain.  The windows were thrown open.  Light filled me from the fourth rib bone on up and my demon was evicted into the cold wintery abyss.  

This is nothing new.  It’s all happened before.  It’s my cycle.  It’s the cycle.

Except, when that demon was munching on my sanity I couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t there.  I couldn’t remember when I didn’t feel this oppressive sadness behind everything I did.  Waiting.  Lurking.  I was incredulous to find out, in between my protests of “It never goes away!  It never stops!” that most of the summer was spent manic.  I’d never been manic.  I’d never laughed.  How could I possibly felt anything but the desire to die a painful and quick death.  How could anyone find enjoyment in anything but pure oblivion?

I guess you do.

So the demon is gone.  He’s been kicked out.

And I hope he stays out.

The world is falling. My brain is spinning faster than the earth. My life is slipping further out of reach. My lungs have refused to fill with air. Even my stomach rejects the food I fill it with.

And I am out of fight.

So instead:

I spend a whole morning cumming over and over. My head slung over the edge of the mattress, the room upside down, as I scream and scream and scream.

I sleep in till three in the afternoon.

I read trashy novels about men in riding boots.

I wear the same sweat pants I wore yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that.

I forgo underwear. I shun bras.

I lie on my back for hours staring at the bug with the huge pincers crawl over the light fixture.

I say simple words in french over and over so it sounds like I speak it fluently.

I listen to Ricky Martin.

I brush my hair one hundred times.

And at midnight I take a piping hot shower and crawl under the covers clothes-less to enjoy tart, sweet, bursting strawberries covered in a soft down of mold. The same way everything else is covered in a soft veil of frost and depression.

I’m going into a manic phase.  I know it.  I know it in my very bones.  

I can feel myself buzzing.  There is electricity in me, I knew that of course, but now I feel it.  Up through my fingers.  I can soak up the glow from my computer screen.  Like a sponge all things electronic inject me with a new energy.  The colors are amazing.  The sounds are intense.  This is the first time I’ve <i>loved</i> Pink Floyd.  

And in my head, I feel my thoughts ready to go.  It’s like a horse race.  They’re ready to go.  They want it.  They’re chomping at the bit and straining against the gate.  Everything that’s been sleeping during my depression is ready to come out.  

Oh-oh-oh-oh let’s play!

Now that the sun is up and I can look back at my panicked rambling of yesterday I can see the mistakes I made.

Of course the love and affection I receive now is not a punishment.  It’s a blessing and compared with the neglect and hidden abuse that I lived with for so many years it’s paradise.

But that is the hell of this demon or disease that I have inside me.  It’s a parasite.  It eats logic and replaces it with its own brand of sense.  It uses my own brain to convince me that I deserve the pain of the last five years.  It uses my own intellect to make cases for why I don’t deserve to be loved.  Why love is so much worse than loneliness.  Why I won’t be able to survive a true life, rather than the shell that I’ve relied on for so long.

And once it has conquered my logic, my common sense and intelligence it fills me with voices that remind me how worthless I am.  How undeserving.  How I hurt everyone around me.  How I make life hell for people who get to close.  Sometimes this demon is tricky.  Sometimes it replays things my husband has said.  My Father, my Doctors.  Sometimes it uses my own voice and that is even harder to ignore.  But no matter whose voice, it’s always loud.  Much louder than my own screams.

For many years I’d go to bed lonely.  Day by day, night by night, I’d crawl under the covers and feel a giant hole open up inside me.  Empty of attention, of love.  A void within myself missing all the things that I tried so hard to give.  Whether lying next to the warm body of my husband or the cold dent of the mattress he left behind, it was the same pit of loneliness eating away at me. 

I cried quietly then.  I would let my eyes empty any desire for love until I could sleep.  It just leaked away from me.

Now my void is filled.  I’m surrounded by love, wrapped in it, fed with it.  Showered in attention, affection, care and concern.  It overwhelms me and the cold emptiness is gone.  In it’s place is so much warm, solid goodness that my body can’t take it.

I cry hard now.  That space in me that needed so much is rebelling.  I feel it heating my core, I feel it expanding from within.  It hurts now.  Physical pain.  I see my ribs turning into spears, expanding and pressing themselves out through my skin.  Every night I feel this crush of joy fight with my sadness and it hurts so bad I have to scream.  There isn’t any room for air, for blood or organs, everything is being pushed aside while my soul rages inside me.  And I’m wracked with horrendous sobs and burning tears.  Anything to get it out.

It almost makes me wish for the neglect and loneliness.  At least it was a punishment I could survive.

I had it all.  A husband who said he loved me.  A house to call my own.  A job that paid more than I should have been paid.  I had nice clothes and nice cars.  Sundays were spent lazily over brunches.  Nights were spent in a big bed with a warm cat curled beside me.  

And amongst all that I spent most of my time thinking about the best way to crash my car for maximum impact and instantaneous death.

Eventually, I got help.  In that middle ground of healing, where the meds work just not really, I saw the cracks a fissures in my little life.  The hidden discontent and lack of control of a too-young wife and too-distant spouse.  I pulled myself up and out.  I walked away from the state I hated.  I left the home that was eating away at my free-time.  The spouse that was chewing up my soul.  

And found other people who loved me.  Rediscovered relationships, realized that people may like me for myself.  I moved to a new country.  Found a new job.  Got involved with new friends.  

I got out.  I got better.

I got more depressed.  

I can’t understand it all.  Even in my most self-hating I know that I can’t possibly deserve this pain and sadness.  No one could deserve this feeling.  This knowledge that deep inside me, under my skin and past my bones, far too deep for any rescue attempt, I am breaking.  Cracking like icebergs.  It hurts inside, it hurts outside.  I can hear the tearing of my psyche.  The slow leaks of the parts of me that can feel joy and contentment.

All that will soon be gone.  And I’ll still be filled with this sorrow.  No matter where I go.  Who I’m with.  How many times I talk to myself.  How many interesting things I get involved with.  It’ll be here.  Waiting.  And eventually, once it has pushed all the sunshine out of my soul…it’ll break the rest of me.  It’ll split me in two.  It will tear me apart inside out.

And I really don’t want to be around for it.

I’m walking down the steps of the subway.  Someone has washed them and they are glistening with water.  Someone cuts in front of me and jumps the railing.  For a moment I’m disoriented.  The world is a little fuzzy, a little twisted.  I can’t focus on the steps, or the water, or the boy throwing himself over the handrail.  

What I can see, in sharp detail, is my foot descending towards the next step and missing.  I can see me falling, turning, flipping down the stairs and falling onto the hard wet concrete.  I feel the impact of the sharp stone against the back of my neck.  I hear the crack of my skull.  I  imagine that it breaks open evenly.  Nicely.  Along the seam that fused when I was a baby.  Even in death fantasies – I like to be a perfectionist.

Finally, I see blood streaming down the stairs the same way the water drips.  I see it mixing, diluted with the grime of the city.  I see it pouring from me in purples and blues, then streaming in red, finally puddling in pink.  This image in my mind fascinates me, calls to me.  Something about the idea of releasing what’s inside me is tempting.  I wonder if I could get rid of what’s inside me would I finally stop hurting?

I wobble.  My next step is shaky, twisted, my heel barely makes the next step.  A lucky break or a missed opportunity.

It was a nice night.  The sky was clear and the city was cooling off after the heat of the day.  Looking up from my book out the window I noticed a large spider floating right in front of me.  Her legs were working hard and after a brief pause she climbed back up another invisible thread to connect in the middle.

I watched her for awhile.  She wasn’t systematic, the way I expect spiders to be when creating their webs.  She was flighty, bouncing from working at the top to working at the bottom.  She’d lay a few lines here and there, then jump over to work on the more foundational lines that she had forgotten earlier.  She remind me, in fact, of myself.  Running from doing a few dishes, to writing a few lines, to folding half the clean clothes, and then off to another task.  The curse of a multi-tasker in an ever more distracting world.

I once read that workers in an office will only work on any one project for 11 minutes straight before being distracted by something else.  A pressing email, a phone call, the birthday celebration in the break room.  There is just no way to focus on one project for very long.  

Somehow, though this spider moved in unpredictable ways building her nest, she didn’t seem harried or confused.  Her movements were still graceful, purposeful, but erratic in an artistic way.  She was like a painter who spends a full day getting one tree perfect while the rest of the painting looks like stick figures.  Or a sculpture who obsesses over the shape of their subjects nose, and ignore the face.  Her web was her art, not just her source of food, or home for the night.  It was her creation.  Her little contribution to the beauty that is nature.

And the more I watch her work away at this part and that part the more I could swear I saw a bit of pride in her movements.  Maybe a swell of her chest, or a triumphant move of her legs.  She knew I was in awe of the thing she was creating.  And she was proud that someone noticed.

Finally, tearing my eyes away from the small web in front of me to the larger world beyond the window I started to worry.  Here this small spider was, working for hours on a one of a kind creation.  An expression of herself as a creature of the world.  And in a little while rain would come and wash the work away.  Or a strong wind would snap the threads holding her up.  A child could come back and, in an act of humanly selfish curiosity, smash this delicate net.  The idea filled me with a kind of despair.

I wondered, if this spider worked the same way I did, if she shared my same predilection for multi-tasking and creativity, did she also share my feelings on the destruction of creation?  Tomorrow morning would this spider feel the overwhelming depression of a destructive and inattentive world.  Would she have just as much trouble starting her day as I do?  Did she need to screw all her courage up with the rising of the sun just to convince herself to begin all over again?

And, more, did she look at me from the other side and feel the same need to reassure and protect me as I felt for her?

Is there hope for the webs we weave?

Lying unclothed.  Hot, humid night making me sticky and distracted.  The city warms and the stench of too many hot, humid, sticky people reeks from the asphalt.  I can hear, mopeds, talking, the clinking of glass.  Someone’s cellphone, miles away, ringing in my ear like a mosquito.  I can see, on the ceiling, the blinking light of the smoke detector.  It mocks me red.

Lying in the dark I am crawling out of my skin.  I need to be cool.  But the fan irritates me.  Every hair on my body bristles with the cool breeze.  I need to eat.  But the food sits next to the tempting blue pills.  Promising oblivious, medicated nights and groggy wasted mornings.

Rolling and rocking in the dark, trying to be still next to his sleeping form, but inside I feel nails.  Sharp clawing, pulling, raking against my insides.  Scratching through my stomach.  Yanking at my breasts.  My whole body is twisting itself, exorcist-like, around inside my skin.  

Lying in the dark, holding onto his grunt of recognition, the sound of him groaning as he pads, through the dark.  His arm heavy, thrown carelessly over my stomach. His hot palm pressed to my thigh.  His smell overwhelms, covers the city.  His breath is warm kisses over my ear.  Turn my head and it is dank and hot against my forehead.  The soft, absent-minded caress of his thumb, back and forth.

Lying in the dark.  Here is perfect.  Oh!  Here is comfort.  Here is where I long to dwell.

Please.  Please, let sleep come.