June Blogger Challenge: Day 10 — Emotional

Emotional

I am a very emotional person. For a long time, it felt as if my emotions would kill me. Literally.

A fear-filled drive during a raging snowstorm sometime during the winter of 2009. I remember waking up, anxiety so great that I thought I would die. Or I wanted to die. That is all I remember. What triggered it? Trying to gain weight? My fragile marriage? My stressful job? Everything....


I have spent decades trying to mask my emotions. Alcohol. Sex. Tranquilizers. Sex. More Alcohol. Alcohol with tranquilizers.

Yes, it could have killed me. But the emotions felt as if they were killing me...

How does one describe all-pervasive anxiety? The kind that fills every pore, suffocates each breath, and threatens to consume...

Words are banal. Trite. Cliche.

Therefore I struggle, remembering, but unable to convey the feelings fully.

I remember once, twice, perhaps three times...slamming a coffee cup against the stainless steel sink; throwing a plate, one with delicate, twining green leaves and slender branches, the promise and hint of spring; angrily destroying my flesh, carving "Hate me" and watching the blood seeping into minute trails, mimicking rivers...

And I felt a fleeting sense of relief.

I have worked through it. Confessed all to my psychiatrist. That I did misuse the Valium and Ativan given to make things easier for me, to give me a chance. I blew it. Mixed these pills with wine each day, crashing on my couch in a stupor, blunting out all emotion...for a while, at least.

The thought that I could have died did not occur to me then. I just wanted the pain to stop. My husband had left me — for the third and final time — and I felt that all life was over, that I was worthless, ugly, too emotional.

Now, an eerie calm, coupled with brief bouts of minor anxiety, fill my days. Still panicked, I reach for the PRN Seroquel, marveling that not too many months ago, I was sure I would fall apart without alcohol and tranquilizers.

I feel clearer than I have in years, decades, perhaps my whole life.

The emotions are still there. But they no longer can kill me.