I can’t think this week.

My mind is fuzzy and foggy.

(before I forget, I talk about self harm in here in regards to an epiphany, but now you have been warned)

I have been teaching myself Spanish the past couple of months and I’ve only been doing one lesson a day lately as opposed to five or six like I was.

I just can’t remember things, so I’m going slowly right now.

The thing is, at least I know I’m not able to retain information right now.

Not this week.

Hopefully next week will be better.

After the psychotic episode I had a week or so ago, my mind is still totally scattered and will stay that way for a random period of time afterwards.

It happens every time.

How long this fogginess and borderline darkness will last, I never know, it just kinda fades one day when I wake up.

I’ll suddenly simply just feel less antsy, and I’ll have a better ability to focus one day.

I can’t rush it.

I can’t control it.

And I’m currently in that familiar yet foreign transitional time right now, and it’s immensely frustrating.

I seriously feel dumb today.

The most similar “typical” sensation I can think of is, you know when you’re jet lagged or can’t sleep, even though you’re exhausted, how you can’t think, and when you do think, it’s about the most anxiety producing things you can’t control, it’s similar to that.

Don’t think of how the body feels at that time, just the brain, how it’s slowed down and how it feels like you’re really unable to retain anything new, and you just want to be able to focus but you can’t focus?

It’s like that, kinda.

Sorta.

Not really, but kinda, ha!

But I just really can’t concentrate on anything, I tend to be super hot headed, and I’m full of a confused, ill-advised and irritated darkness that’s showing no signs of fading soon.

Like how when you feel like you’re never going to feel better when you’re sick, and it just keeps lingering and everyday you wake up hoping today will be the day you don’t have your cough anymore?

Similar feeling of desperation and thinking “this is just my life now, this is how it’s always going to be now”.

I’m always so fucking lost for a while after a psychotic episode.

I don’t feel like myself, and that can last for weeks or even months after an episode.

I’m agitated, impulsive, tired, achy, quick to anger, anxious and I’m dealing with residual paranoia as well.

I still feel like I’m being watched – that’s not a new feeling, but the intensity of it fluctuates.

It’s like my body and mind have to really play catch up after psychosis.

Because time has passed, my brain just wasn’t conscious of it or what was happening, so I do feel almost like I’m jet lagged or something – it’s bizarre.

I was plucked out of nowhere, and placed into a random, dysfunctional, irrational and sometimes scary situation that, without a doubt, IS happening.

And then again, out of nowhere, I’m placed back into reality but I’m getting slowly dipped back in, feet first, hands tied behind me, and blindfolded, and I’m left to deal with all of this and get out of the restraints, by myself.

I can talk to my therapist about the process, sure.

I can talk to friends and family about it too, but no one is in it with me, no one can help me, and no one can do it for or even with me.

It’s a fucking remarkably isolating feeling.

And I’m really starting to notice that stress is my number one trigger, full stop.

Any type of stress triggers my psychosis.

And I knew this, but I didn’t understand the severity of it.

Literally hours before my last episode a neighbor had asked me out for a drink because it was their birthday week too.

I don’t drink and my ex husband was an alcoholic, and instead of saying no I was people pleasing and said sure.

I ghosted them.

I know, but, honestly, whatever.

I don’t owe them anything.

And I still feel like an asshole about it and I have to keep walking by their apartment and one time a couple of days later they were outside and we talked for a second and I haven’t really seen them since.

I feel like a dick, but I don’t even know their name, I don’t have their number, and I had a filling fall out of a tooth that day and I just didn’t fucking feel like it.

I legit was extremely in my head about going out with someone, and who would drive and what if they suck and then I’m going to be stuck there and now I live close to them and I already have a problem with neighbors and I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.

But all of the negative thoughts kept cycling.

And the voices I heard, the conversation of the two people behind me that I wrote out, it was them and their roommate.

Exact same voices because the voices mimic my anxieties I’m learning.

Like they specifically were following me around the complex.

The first two guys that were following me at the beginning of my episode was not them.

But the conversation that I wrote out a two entries back was them.

And the kicker is, I should’ve known I was going to throw myself into a psychotic episode, I was totally ruminating and having obsessive thought patterns around an excuse plan if they were to ask about the drink – like it fucking matters.

And really, I’m more pleased with myself than anything for not caving and not just going out, because old me would’ve gone out and done something reckless and self sabotaging.

And instead, I stayed at home, and yes, I ruminated myself and worked myself up so much that I went into an episode, but I learned something and I practiced self care.

I didn’t want to go out, so I didn’t go out.

I didn’t people please like I normally do and make myself uncomfortable to make someone else happy.

So it is a win.

Because even when I’m stressing out about a stupid drink, or what I’m going to wear today, or if I miss a stupid doctor’s appointment, anything like that can send me into an episode.

My therapist and I came to the conclusion that if I’m starting to get in my head about anything, even something as small as cooking dinner, or what to watch, I need to be extremely cautious in all other areas of my life so that I don’t add a spark or any fuel to my psychosis.

I have got to learn how to self soothe, and I have to maintain my self care, full stop.

And then this week, coming off of that recent episode, I had an epiphany.

My “random” bouts of anger – and at times rage, stem from me being in or coming down from or being in an episode, full stop.

Last Friday I was giving Bruce his night medicine and I knew he was going to spit it out, because he spits it out twice a day, everyday, since he started his medicine.

But when he spit it out that evening, I instantly stood up, turned around, and lost it. 

With a closed fist, I hit my head as hard as I possibly could, several times over, then the millisecond that was over, I bursted into tears.

I went into the bedroom, where Bruce had gone to, and sat on the floor, hugging him for over twenty minutes, crying and talking to him.

I told him how sorry I was.

He hates it when I self harm, I do too.

To him I’m sure it’s super random and it is an act of violence towards myself.

And obviously he doesn’t know what I’m thinking and it’s hard to explain it to him, to explain that it’s not his fault, and he did nothing wrong, and he couldn’t have stopped it, I couldn’t stop it, all that shit.

I made a promise to him several years ago that I wasn’t going to self harm anymore, and I keep randomly breaking that promise to him.

And every time I do I’m exponentially more disappointed in myself.

And I know I did self harm once in January this year, but the time before that was summer of 2024, over six months ago.

I had been doing so well till the beginning of this year.

And the last time I self harmed, this last January, I had a psychotic episode in late December through the beginning of the year.

Time before that was June of 2024 and I was coming off of a psychotic episode…

It just fucking repeats.

It’s a cycle, a brutal, self loathing, intense, cycle.

My rage comes out of my psychosis and multiplies like a group of healthy mice.

The next thing I know, I’m drowning in them and it feels impossible to get rid of them.

And I’ve just kept thinking about my “random” anger this week. 

I always thought I was an angry person who just grew up in an explosive (but loving) home, and I simply adapted and took on the behaviors.

Everyone in my immediate family is volatile, my parents, my brother and I.

All of us fed off of one another, but I never wanted to be like that – even though I would find myself completely erupting over stupid, small, uncontrollable things all the time.

I can’t tell you how many door frames I’ve hit as hard as I could with a closed fist, or slammed my head against, just as hard.

And I was so volcanic, over nothing substantial at all.

(please remember, I’m working on tolerating and eventually liking then loving myself)

(I’m also working on stigma. It may be hard for you to hear, but this is the raw, honest truth of what I go through and my behaviors. I have never ever had a desire to turn that on anyone or anything but myself and never ever will)

(I self harm because there are still parts of me that turn to shitty behaviors and hate myself)

Back to it because my rage is not random.

My anger stems from my psychosis, full stop.

I never knew that I was experiencing episodes till a year or so ago so no wonder why I never fucking put it together.

My stress morphs into psychosis and comes out of it as rage, the rage fades into a thick, gloomy depression and one of these days soon, I’ll wake up in the morning and simply just feel better.

I can not control any of it.

Not a single aspect.

My mind heals when my mind heals, not a moment before.

There isn’t a pill I can take to get to that spot, I just have to go through the process and the motions and fucking deal with it all.

It’s obnoxious.

It’s completely draining.

But at the same time it can be eye opening when I have clarity, it can give me a chance to reflect like this – when I’m able to, when my brain will work.

My emotions have been like a rollercoaster this week and it makes so much sense now.

I’m slowly becoming able to see myself and my behaviors.

My therapist Jessi said “this seems huge”, and I agree, it IS huge.

I never knew where my anger came from and it always seemed so random for so many decades.

But there was a pattern I wasn’t seeing that’s blatantly obvious now.

– Keren