My brain’s in a fog. I’m not here at all. Yet I’m fully aware of me. Like everything is looking at me. I can’t talk, I’m dazed, and the wall I’ve stared at for who knows how long now has become a blur.
My gaze is slightly down. I’m not sure where in my thoughts are at. Its like my mind is racing and I’m not able to keep up with it. It makes me feel more crazy than I already am.
My husband tells me to snap out of it. Look up, do something. So I pull out my phone and open my coloring app. I color the picture starting at the number 1. All the 1’s must be filled to move on. I can do it without having to think too hard, yet it requires me to be here. I want to be anywhere but my head.
I’m annoyed at him when he tells me to stop it, or snap out of it, or look up. He has no idea what is going on in my mind. If you only knew! … but I can’t tell you. Not because I don’t want to but because this, this I have no words for. I’ve been as open with you as I can be. The only thing left I can say is “I feel crazy, I’m crazy. Is it going to be okay? Will I make it?”
He of course assures me it will be okay, and I believe him, because I have to. He’s my best friend and my husband. I know he wouldn’t lie to me, but I also know he isn’t going to tell me what he is really thinking right now knowing it won’t help me.
I can’t think straight. Ever walked through fog so thick you can’t hardly see in front of you? That’s how my mind is. Except for them.
Them- the demons in my mind. They tell me I might as well give up now. Not even the medical field is caring enough to help me. I could have seen multiple psychiatrist today if I were just on medicaid. We told them we’d pay cash, just please help us! They couldn’t or wouldn’t. With every phone call rejection I heard my husband receive the tiny amount of will to fight I had was disappearing.
I felt so incredibly drugged. The medicine the Dr. gave my husband was supposed to help me sleep but when I woke up it made my world so much worse. My body couldn’t move, but my mind was still racing, faster. than. ever. I was going mad. Completely mad.
My husband trying disparately to do something to help me sent me to the shower to get ready and doll myself up. In that shower my world came crashing down and I landed in a ball on the ground sobbing like I’d never sobbed before. I banged on the wall praying my husband could hear me. Of course he was right in, why would I have thought he’d go very far with me like this.
I don’t know how long it was. It felt like every second was painfully slow on my end. I just cried as he rubbed my back telling me it would be okay and we would get help. At this point I no longer believed him.
As he pulled me out of the shower he told me to do my hair and makeup. Self care. It should help you feel better but it was really just a chore today. Breathing was a chore.
It was only an hour later I found myself talking to my Dr on the phone. He was telling me he had found a bed for me at a hospital. He wanted me to go in. He was worried about me and wanted to keep me safe. He wanted my husband to feel safe about me too. I couldn’t believe that this is where I was. Was I really that bad? What type of question was that? I’d said multiple times on my good days, when I could think clearly, I should have walked myself in and now I was being given the support to do just that but I was terrified.
This was written about January 25, 2019. You can read more about my story through Postpartum Psychosis and my hospitalization in my 5 part series “What Brought Me Here.”
Mother Hidden 