I’ve been needing lots of sleep lately. I have been sleeping lots lately.

I need to be left alone. 

I need to feel taken care of.

I need to not be so broken anymore.

And for a bit now I’ve been hungry but just can’t stomach eating.

I make myself eat, or Ma’am does.

Even eating ice cream last night was hard. And I love ice cream.

I ate it, and enjoyed being with Ma’am, but eating is hard.

Like I have to choke food down, even if I like it.

I feel the physical pangs of hunger, but eating just feels so burdensome. It takes so much energy to eat.

Same thing with talking to people. Phone rings, I know I should answer it, but I just don’t have the energy to deal with people. They want to ask questions or complain, and the mental effort it takes to answer them is so heavy. 

I feel that each time I’ve had to go into the hospital, something inside my head has been broken and it’s never the same afterwards. Like something got busted or short-circuited and it doesn’t work normally anymore.

And how it’s so *hard* to put into words what happens when I try to work, because I do okay and then my anxiety kicks in which kick-starts my Depression, which ramps up my anxiety, which feeds my Depression, which kick starts the insomnia so I can’t sleep, so I’m late for work, and my anxiety makes my work performance suffer, because I can’t concentrate because of anxiety or Depression or both, and I just come off as irresponsible. And so I get fired, or laid off.

I can’t even consistently do things for Ms Jennifer,even though I know I’m supposed to. 

I need to finish filling out that paperwork. It’s important. And send that other paperwork to the hospital so they can bill Medicaid for my stay.

I want a tattoo or to color my hair. Something, anything to just …make it all stop, even for a little while.

And inevitably someone will ask “make what stop?”

And the only answers I can think of is “Everything!” Or “My head!” But that doesn’t help. I’m not a help. How can anyone help when I can’t put words to chaos?

Everyone wants words.

Doctors, lawyers, judges, owners, partners, people.

But how do you words this? And make people understand, make them see it, feel it?

How do you describe chaos?

A suffocating, weighing down of your mind and thoughts, your body, your heart, your sense of self and soul?

How do you describe the tornado that sits in your middle and tears you raw and on edge from the inside out so that your screams are silent so you don’t unleash this horror on those you love?

That some days you feel so fragile that the wrong look or word, or tone will shatter you into a million pieces, because you’re being held together by straw?

That emotions become so thick that they suffocate you, starting in your chest to wind up into your throat and your lungs until you can’t breathe? That the tears they squeeze out of you only increase the pressure in your chest and around your windpipe?

I feel so weighted down. When did my own limbs become weights? My internal organs heavy like individual steel pieces.

How do you prove that food tastes like sawdust and every movement, every thought, every anything takes so much effort it’s exhausting,and just trying to keep up with the bare minimum is like climbing a mountain wearing clothes made of lead?

Because you can’t prove those things. There’s no measurements,no test, no testimony. It’s all just words and they tangle and scatter like feathers on the wind until they’re a mush of words that prove nothing but doubts.

In the end, that’s all I am. Nothing and doubts.