I’ll put this trigger warning here; this entry is gritty, raw and dark.

I encourage you to sit in the uncomfortableness, but, if you’re sensitive to reading about intrusive thoughts and suicidal ideations, I’d stop reading.

There is some rough language to follow as well.

I will not hold back here.

This is a safe space for me, and this is how I feel.

This is what I deal with everyday.

I know it’s hard to read, but you’ve been warned.

And don’t worry, I’m not currently actively suicidal, the ideations are just with me everyday.

Here we go.

I’m obsessing and having intrusive thoughts this week.

I mean, I always have intrusive thoughts, everyday.

But for some reason this week they have been amped up, and I’m assuming that’s from the disability hearing last week.

In my head I’m a fuck up, a loser, a piece of shit.

A failure and someone who doesn’t deserve anything but misery and destruction and death.

I’m a total mistake, and I should just drive my car off of a bridge, or ram it into a tree.

Over the weekend I listened to some episodes about intrusive thoughts on the podcast “Inside Schizophrenia”.

It’s a really great podcast.

The two hosts of it have severe mental disorders and deal with either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

So they totally understand the struggles that come with mental illness and stigma and all of it.

And that podcast episode inspired me to talk about this topic a bit too.

It’s an important section of my life, meaning that these intrusive thoughts happen often and affect me, not that they’re welcomed.

I thought that they used to be who I was, until I was able to separate them from myself.

No one can control their thoughts.

And the intrusive thoughts have been happening to me ever since I can remember.

A lot of the loud overlapping chatter that was in my head has gone away with antipsychotics.

So some of the commands that used to be super thick are practically absent now, most of the time.

But I still have layers of these things that I don’t know where they come from.

Intrusive thoughts are the worst.

Probably the most common thing that goes through my mind is “kill yourself” and “dumb cunt”.

It’s been happening a lot this week because I’m amped up, antsy and worrying.

But the thought to just kill myself is almost always there daily since I was age 12 or 13.

This is why I don’t fear death, at all, because that thought is with me nearly every day and I really almost welcome it.

Not in a way of liking it, but more like whenever it shows up I beg it to just fucking take me then.

Get it over with.

Death is not something I fear.

I’ll be glad when I die.

But don’t worry, nothing I do ever works, and I always wake up the next morning.

I’m even a failure at suicide attempts when I try them.

There is a fear that opening up about this will lead to another hospitalization – one that’s mandatory.

But I’m willing to take that risk today.

I hope that doesn’t happen, because as I said, I am not actively suicidal, I’m just writing about it.

I’m just opening up about the negative thought processes I have.

Because more than just that races through my mind.

Tons of other horrible things fly through my mind all the time.

Some other thoughts I’ll have daily are “you’re worthless”, “hit yourself”, “you’re hopeless”, “throw your head against the doorframe”, “die”, “you’re stupid”, “stupid bitch”, and the list goes on and on like that.

And this is tame compared to what the voices add.

They add a level of terror that’s indescribable.

Anything that’s horrible to say, is said in my mind.

It’s a terrible place to be most of the time.

The antipsychotics have made this better and a touch easier to cope with.

Instead of the overlapping conversations, there’s more of a dull murmur of a crowd.

I don’t hear a lot of the command voices anymore, but at the same time, they’re still there, especially when I’m stressed.

And it’s impossible for me to tell what’s a hallucination and what’s an intrusive thought too.

They sound the same to me, they come from the same place.

Except the external voices.

They come from a different place.

But all of the rest are internal.

Some days are better than others, of course, but it’s a daily struggle for me.

Especially the worst ones, those repeat much too much.

It’s currently a Sunday afternoon and I just took a Haloperidol.

Because I’m trying to curb these obsessive thought patterns and looping today.

They’re fucking brutal.

And the antipsychotics do help curb the problematic thoughts and hallucinations.

It’s amazing how well they work.

As I grow with my mental illness, I really am learning how to accept my symptoms and use my tools to combat them, not just picking up some dope and getting high to escape it all time and time again.

That’s huge fucking progress.

Because I know it won’t help to use.

That’s just going to make everything that much worse and I already don’t have any money to spend.

Not like being broke has ever stopped me.

And as I stated in the beginning I feel like now is a good time to talk about this because I’m not actively suicidal.

Yet I was reminded of the fragility of my patience today, it’s now Wednesday. 

As the week went by the intrusive thoughts are getting better and lighter until today.

Today everything exploded in my face and my intrusive thoughts drove my car for a bit today.

I sorta blacked out for a bit too.

That bipolar rage is no joke.

But I calmed quickly once safe at home.

I wrote about it, and published an entry, and felt better, and then wrote some more.

Maybe it’s the Haloperidol that I’ve been taking this week helping me slowly, and that’s totally okay if that’s been helping because that’s the whole point, right?

Healthier coping tools and mechanisms are now folding into place with me.

And I never thought I’d be here this long.

Age wise or time wise.

I never thought I’d ever have tools that work.

Even with the suicidal ideations and intrusive thoughts, I’m still here today.

They may be with me every day but they don’t win 90% of the time.

And the 10% of the time when they do win, it’s never final, it’s just a bad day.

The intrusive thoughts don’t define me.

They don’t have anything to do with me.

And once I separated myself from my thoughts I’ve had an easier time addressing the real concerns.

Because my mind plays tricks on me all of the time.

A lot of times, I don’t know what to believe.

It’s now Thursday afternoon, almost evening, and I’m not feeling myself.

I’m feeling manic.

Scattered.

On the verge of some sort of episode or something – and agitated for no reason.

I’m home for the rest of the day now, but I still feel on edge for some reason.

I was just out at my parents house and got suddenly overwhelmed, so I had to leave.

It’s now Friday morning and I feel like I’ve for sure been overstimulated this week.

Like I’m in overdrive or something.

And overdrive is usually not good.

I think loving myself through all of this is the most difficult task.

And I can’t live for me.

I don’t even really like me.

I’m still not a big fan of myself, but that’s a work in progress.

What I’m saying is that you can live for something else, someone else, anything else.

This is why I always have a dog.

I live for Bruce at the moment.

Before then, I lived for Otto.

And after Bruce, I’ll live for the next dog.

You can live for a person, a thing, an animal, a stuffie, whatever you want.

It can change every second of every day if you’d like.

Don’t let society tell you you have to believe in yourself, because sometimes that’s a very difficult if not impossible task.

You can believe in, and live for, anything you’d like.

Anything that keeps you going.

If you are feeling helpless right now, I encourage you to reach out to someone and chat about it either locally or by texting/calling 988 if you’re in the United States.

You are not alone.

– Keren