It’s here again: the thoughts that keep roiling, filling your eyes with tears. They say that you have to fight the battle, to not give in, to keep moving. But what if you no longer have the energy to wade through the murk? Slowly but surely, you’ve become a charity case, your issues out in the wind for people to smell. Weirdly, you don’t think you stink of problems. But what you think — your subjective — ultimately doesn’t matter to the world. It is what they think; it becomes how they see you. And you are desperate to be nothing if not perfect.
You’ve tried to hold yourself, to pick up the broken little pieces of glass stuck in your skin. You are a conundrum, a paradox. You remember how your English teacher carefully explained the meaning of the word paradox, right there in the classroom of your secondary school. It is a cold Harmattan morning when you hear the word bittersweet for the first time. But this isn’t a paradox like that. Bitter and sweet, slow and fast, total opposites in every way.
This isn’t a game of opposites, of red versus black. Think of a coin — heads and tails, but much worse. Like the other side of the moon, you remain an unknown. Even to yourself. You try to love your quirks, your moods. You thought you had learned to acknowledge the highs, terrible and beautiful, and the lows, tense and murky. Nobody tells you how these two can wage war in your head, of how crippling the anxiety becomes due to the uncertainty. For someone who has been stuck in his head all his life, this is all too new.
Paradoxes remind you that after bitterness there’s a sweetness that leaves you with a toothache. That you could be slow one day, and you’d pick up the pace, outrunning the world at breakneck speed the next day. But this paradox leaves you broken all the time, sometimes lost, sometimes on the brink of death. Like now, you are unable to let out all the feelings in your head. You want to crawl away from the world, to hide, to scream. You yearn for something lost, but don’t know what that is. It’s like when you have an itch, but you don’t know where to scratch because it itches all over.
The thing about this paradox is that it’s all-consuming, torrential. Sharp as a knife, tempered steel in your gut. Cold and hot at once, burning you nonetheless. You’re on the run from yourself, contemplating whether there is a God. If He exists, then things like this are not supposed to happen. We’re supposed to be perfect little creations, without malfunctions.
What kind of God would subject his creations to things like anxiety? Your heart racing without stopping, panic sizzling through your veins, running sprints through your mind. Your mouth is dry, your tongue tied in your throat. Breaths come out in gasps, pain circulating through your chest as lances of fire spear through you. You clutch your chest, urging yourself to calm down. Sweat forms on your face, stinging your eyes as it trickles down your skin.
It doesn’t end there. You rethink every scenario, wishing you could have acted better, done something less awkward. You’re in the present, but caught between the past and the future. You can control neither of them, but they plague your mind like locusts, eating the last shred of everything good in your life. You struggle to keep the thoughts in check, but your brain starts to obsess over them, both the truth and the lies. Caught up in things beyond your control.
The world becomes too loud, and the rain becomes fire. You feel the sting of breathlessness, your body trying to survive. Pressure builds up in your body, and when it has filled every pore, run through every synapse, and left you paralyzed, it becomes tears. Scorching, filled with the heat of your thoughts. Your asthma kicks in and the panic reaches a fever pitch. You long for silence, for peace, for respite. You bring the inhaler to your mouth with shaky hands, tears dropping onto the exam paper before you. Your fingers refuse to work, and the inhaler drops, the sound of plastic hitting tiles punctuating the silence. Everyone turns to look at you, but you cannot see through the tears.
“Keep it under control,” you mutter, berating your body for failing you. Someone hands you your inhaler canister, and another the actuator system. You assemble them, cursing for almost dropping them again. The tears keep coming, dribbling down, embedded with tiny memories. And when you can finally coordinate yourself, you take deep breaths and depress the canister.
Drugs fill your lungs, and they open in response. You take greedy mouthfuls of air. Your leg still taps against the chair, and you are suddenly back in your therapist’s office. He smiles at you, watches as you fold and unfold your hands again and again. Your hands are sweaty, and he asks you to breathe, to keep breathing. You keep taking in air, your chest expanding with each mouthful. Every deflation feels peaceful, as the jumble of thoughts in your mind leaves with each exhalation.
‘What if I’m not good enough?’ you ask yourself. You hate the pedestal everybody has put you on: the smart, vastly intelligent individual capable of doing no wrong. You hate being perfect, but you cannot be less than perfect. You want to go slow, to keep your mind from churning, but you cannot. Insomnia becomes your friend. It’s less intense when you’re among your friends, because you’re caught in the moment. But the moment you leave, you rethink all the interactions, becoming a judge of your own character. You become a prisoner of perfection — judge, jury, and executioner.
Everyone depends on you. You hate the responsibility, but it’s something you’re born with. You yearn to be reckless, to have other ambitions. You want to piss off the neighbors, to laugh at the wind, to howl when you’re in pain. But you cannot because the paralysis eats you alive. You listen to the sickening crunch in your head, the bones breaking, leaving splinters that nick your veins. The voice in your head keeps you from people. You cannot afford to tell them anything because then, if you do so, the facade of perfection will be broken, and they’ll see the rot inside.
‘People pleaser,’ that’s what you call yourself. Not because you shame yourself, but because it is the truth. You become torn between decisions, wanting to make sure that everyone is happy. You become the gift that keeps on giving, pressing at your own boundaries, blurring the lines as if they were written on sand, something for the wind to erode. You are unable to scream, to voice your opinions.
The thing about things rotting in your mind if you don’t say them is true. For what else can you call the twisted, judgmental voice in your head? The one that keeps you on your feet, that makes sure nothing is enough for you. You never allow yourself to live in the moment, for the moment becomes the past, filled with mistakes. You become sleep-deprived until you watch your life slip through your fingers.
‘Fuck the world,’ you want to say, but you think about what your parents will say. You want to walk out on them, to forge your own path. ‘What if I don’t make it?’ ‘What if I never get a job?’ ‘What if I never become a writer?’ ‘What if I lose my way?’ ‘What if there’s no one out there for me?’ ‘What if I am just a burden?’ ‘What if my friends lie that they like me?’ ‘What if my work never makes it out there?’ ‘What if I never leave my mark on the world?’ ‘What if I never leave this hellhole?’
You crawl into bed, shivering from all the thoughts and what-ifs. You cannot control the future, because, like Schrodinger’s cat, life is complex. There is no answer, unless you make a decision. But you cannot, because what if you make the wrong decision? You are too scared to even start because you cannot stop obsessing over the consequences of everything you do. You pull the rug under yourself, losing bits of yourself with every indecision.
One time, you decide to stay in for weeks. The fewer people around you, the less you fixate on the past, your interactions with them, their thoughts of you, and other things you cannot control. But you begin to think about the future. ‘Go forth and multiply,’ you read from the Bible. You want to use your talents to show the world your brilliance. But what if there is no brilliance? Because you cannot multiply, you let God down. If there is a God, you hate him for giving you this burden.
You become blinded by the lights of reality, relying on nothing but salbutamol and fluticasone. Before long, the thoughts start to take a dark turn. You become lost in the multitude of pathways. You start to question every decision you have made throughout your life. You wonder what would have happened had you made different life choices. The panic is replaced by a deep-seated fear that you will lose everything.
That is when you find out that you need help. You crave silence, a way to escape your mind. You do not want to claw your way through the murk anymore. A part of you wants to jump without thinking, to give the middle finger to the consequences. To not care if you are wrecked, because you can finally live. You want to let yourself burn, and then you ask, ‘Who am I?’ And that is when you decide to go for therapy.
After doing your research, you decide to go on a Thursday afternoon. The sun beats down on your back, and you want to run back home. You doubt that help will come your way. You have always lived in your head, imaginations running wild. It is a trait that has helped you come up with amazing stories, but it is also your downfall. A double-edged sword. You doubt that seeing someone will help, and you rethink your decision a million times before the cab unceremoniously drops you in front of the hospital.
The thoughts make an entrance there, and your mind bursts into a million fractals. They tell you to go back. That you are beyond help. You want to listen, but you start to fight it. They tell you that the therapist will laugh at you. That he would send you to the psychiatric clinic, and you will spend the rest of your life in a mental institution. You think of all the psychological thrillers you have read, and how you will be stuck in white jumpsuits for the rest of your life. You think of your mother’s face when she hears her son has run mad.
You turn around.
You start to make the long trip back home. But this is not the first time you have been on the brink and decided to turn around. The abyss contains too much stimuli, and you are afraid of overloading, of combusting. You count the minutes until you get home, but the nagging feeling in your mind stops you beside the large billboard. You are afraid of what will happen. You try to remind yourself that nobody can save you, and this is your burden to bear.
‘If you do not go now, you might never come again,’ you scream in your mind. You are tired of fighting, but you do not want to fracture your mind. It’s the only good thing you have. And you are afraid to lose it. You have said those lines more than twenty-seven times over the course of three months. That is when you realize that you are only holding yourself back.
The need for silence trumps the voice holding you back. You lean on the billboard, and a tear escapes. You sniffle, turn around, and break into a run. You run as fast as you can, for you know that if you slow down the voice might overtake you again. You become irrational, throwing caution to the wind. You can see from the way people are looking at you that they think you are mentally unstable. You smile at their confused faces, knowing that they are right. Yes, you are mentally unstable. And that is why you keep running.
You slow down to a jog when you get to the gate, just so that you don’t look like a thief. You can feel the fear coming back, the panic finding its way into your muscles. A scorch erupts in your legs, but you don’t mind. The burn is ecstatic, a necessity towards freedom. You take life by the reins and break into a run. Past the manicured lawns and staff quarters, you keep going. You take a turn past the geriatric clinic and down into the General Outpatient Department.
There, you allow yourself to breathe. You fish out your inhaler from your pocket to calm your seizing lungs. The joy from running still courses through you, and that is when you decide to start running every day. It becomes a ritual, a way to relive the day. That is when you finally take life by the reins for the first time. Even though you don’t know who you are, you do not let the thought control you. Instead, you run against it with all your might without minding that people look at your chubby legs or think you insane.
Therapy started that Thursday afternoon. Now you go there every week and just talk, pour out your heart. Sometimes you cry, but it’s relieving. Your therapist just watches you, enraptured. He takes notes diligently, and you complain. Your anxiety acts out, and you worry about what he writes. You are scared of the horrible things that he might have written. You make up things in your head, and they become facts. You become worried that he is sharing the file with a psychiatric clinic and that one day they will come to take you away.
Sometimes you withhold information. You feel like therapy is not working. You feel safe when you are in that little room with your therapist. Nothing can come in there. Not even your thoughts. You lay it bare as it is. But when you come out, step into the sun beside the little palm tree outside the clinic, the voice is back. It judges you, asking why you are spilling everything. It hacks into your head, and brutality becomes the order of the day. You withhold information because you are afraid of yourself.
When you go there on a Wednesday afternoon, after your chemistry class that droned on and on, you tell him about your fears. You tell him that everything is getting worse. You cry, unable to stop yourself. You wish he would appear as you expect him to: revolted at the sight of snot running down your nose, angry that a man who is supposed to be strong is breaking down. But he lets you cry. He doesn’t come close to you, for fear that he might spook you. Instead, he speaks softly from a place of understanding. He recommends psychopharmaceuticals. Something to take the voices away. To calm your dissenting thoughts and stop your descent into madness. But that is when you truly run mad.
The voices stop for a while, and you are happy for the first time in years. The olanzapine takes the edge off, lulls you into a state of stasis, the self-hating phrases gone from your mind. You begin to wonder how a little white pill can change your entire mood, your state of mind. That week, you’re happier than ever. Unbreakable. You are no longer a trainwreck. You relax into bliss, and the cruel voice sinks into the background.
But this only lasts a moment. Well, a month, but that’s what it feels like. The side effects are ravenous, hungry. Like vultures circling carrion, they come for you, swooping through the clarity. First comes the slumber. You fall in love with it. It is feminine, like Odessa. You miss it, long for it. The first few times, it hits you fast. The thrall of it is dazzling. After a long time of insomnia, you are finally able to lie down without worrying, lost, carried on wings of nothingness.
The first episode lasts sixteen hours. You wake up in the middle of the night, afraid. It is like a hangover and your head is buzzing. But you serve yourself some food and pop another one of those lifesaving white pills. You welcome it into your arms, and it feels like home. You are finally healing, no longer miserable. You sleep again. And again. And again. Until you spend almost all your days sleeping. You sleep almost through the entire month. You miss classes, but that does not even bother you. As long as you have the white pills, you have no worries in the world.
Then you miss a test. The pills are gone now, and you have to go to the clinic for another prescription. You look in the mirror, and you want to shatter your reflection. You are overweight now, from eating and sleeping all day. You cry, the voice you hate so much dropping like a bomb into your mind. It explodes, a living labyrinthine mass. You become trapped, and you look around the house in search of solace: the white pill that brings bliss. But you find only the empty container sitting on the shelf beside the pile of unread books.
You race down to the clinic for the next appointment out of desperation. The voice is back now, stronger than ever. After being repressed for so long, it has run wild, out of control. The voice now commands you to do things. To jump. To run into oncoming vehicles. To pick the soap and eat it in greedy mouthfuls. The voice has become another person, assuming an alternate identity.
Auditory command hallucinations, the psychiatrist calls them. You are confused. Thoroughly. Why was the voice telling you to kill yourself? To run in the middle of the street and spread your arms as if you wanted to fly? You want to ask it where it got the nerve to hurt you like this, but it does not care. It is supreme and it could not be disobeyed. This is penance for ever trying to suppress it in the first place. The voice gains a persona in a short amount of time, and it becomes a being greater than God. It compels you, takes away your choices, and forces you into submission.
This time they give you another, different pill. A large red one to stabilize you. They give you an injection too, and you take it like a champ in your bum. You feel the pressure as the matron pushes the fluid deep into your muscles. It hurts, but you do not care anymore about the pain. You just want the suffering to stop.
As for the large red pill, you take it diligently with the little white one. Your heart beats fast as you swallow. You want the torture to end. And it does. The next month is the best of your life. Everything disappears. You gain total control over yourself, your actions. The drugs course through you, strengthening you, giving you purpose.
You decide that you will continue taking the drugs while doing therapy. You go for the next dose of the injection. But the matron makes a mistake. She gives you double the dose. You don’t scream or fight. It lulls you into fatigue, and you lose your will to live. You want to drive your head into nails. The sky falls before you, and your mind takes flight. You are unable to concentrate, and you become restless. Your mind eludes you when you need it the most, and you fail your exams. Worlds collide in your mind, big and small, particle and wave.
You fail your exams because you lose your mind. Then you decide to abandon all the drugs. The white one that brings bliss and comfort, the red one that stabilizes you, the injection that turns your mind into a tabula rasa — a blank slate. You are tired of the feeling of having wool in your head, of being unable to form words for how you feel. You are battered, lost, on the edge of insanity now. You hate yourself. You hate that you even went to the clinic in the first place.
‘This is the end,’ you tell yourself as you pour the silver blisters and transparent packets into the bin. You go cold turkey, not caring about withdrawal. You only want to get well. Or, rather, back to the status quo. You can still control the voice if it’s nagging in your mind. At least that’s better than the full-blown terror that commands you day and night.
The drugs wear off after a few months, and the voice reduces to feminine softness. The masculinity is gone, along with the commands. You slip into the cycle of thoughts again. Your palms become wet with perspiration and your legs jerk without your permission. You clutch at your chest as you cuddle yourself in the safety of your house. It’s empty, but the voice is with you. You scream at it, asking it to leave you alone. It doesn’t. You cry and beg.
You slip the inhaler between your lips and actuate the cold propellant fueled with drugs filling your lungs. You giggle as you catch your breath. You realize you will never be normal. That if there was a God, then He would be amused by your antics of trying to get rid of the burden He gave you. So you accept it wholeheartedly. On some days you become free-spirited, your thoughts happy and filled with spider lilies. You think of books and the mundane. Of poetry and good tidings. The thoughts fuel you to do more for yourself.
As you finish a story, you slip a hand into your pocket and feel for the shape of the metered dose inhaler. Your thoughts settle into a cadence known to you. Light and dark, two sides of the same coin. You realize that this is your second piece in six months. The anxiety took away your talent, burying it beneath a pile of insecurities. You don’t have it back yet, but you don’t mind. You enjoy the bursts of creativity from time to time.
You fish the familiar blue plastic, rub your thumb over the cold metal of the canister. You set it on the desk and send in your first proposal after six months, despite what the voice tells you. This is the price you pay for the talent you have. Then you inhale. You smile at the screen.
It is not over yet. You have therapy tomorrow. You are still insane. Or, rather, anxious. ▪