Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Blowing a Gasket

It was the first time I ever sought out Alcohol to drown out the pain…

It was the period starting somewhere in the middle of 2013 to the early part of 2014. Life happened! Yes, life happened and I found myself in precarious situations I had little or no control over. It came with an unimaginable bout of anxiety and the feeling of helplessness. The anxiety was so much it seems it began to take a crack at my mind...

This was when I was made acutely aware of a distinct part of our well being as humans...our mental well being, and that it is as susceptible to malfunctioning and in need of care just as our physical well being...Not that I have never been through situations that were extremely stressful, I have...and I have my occasional bout of the blues, and fatigue...but none has ever matched the intense craziness of that period…

Things started happening…

It literally felt as if fire has been set to my brain...and then at some other times, it feels as if cold hands made of steel, were mercilessly being inserted into my cranium…

Then I became mildly scared of sleeping! Yes! The thought of letting go of my consciousness to be enveloped, by the brief oblivion that comes with sleep became such a terrifying thought…What if? What if what? I did not know. It just felt terrifying.

Thinking and concentration became a laborious task also, it felt I needed to apply as much as 10x the effort to perform simple cognitive tasks…remembering stuffs also literally hurts...

...and with all these pain going on inside, on the outside, I looked and acted absolutely normal!

And this was the most scary part. The fact that my mind had such capacity to unleash that amount of distress and pain, and yet it remains all invisible...at that point I understood how putting a gun to your temple could feel like the way out to some folks, how swallowing pills or slashing your wrist could feel like the escape yearned…

I had a brief empathy with certain dark corners of our humanity...I understood.

It was a period I would never have a repeat of. It has taught me the need to be gentle with life, with myself, to devout as much attention to mental well being as we do to our physical well being...we eat good, exercise, avoid toxic habits, so also is the need to avoid ultra intense situations, the benefit of surrounding oneself with positive thoughts and family, learn not to give a fuck, cast your cares, and even if life happens, learn how to still not give a fuck, or better still, if you can, know how to stick a middle finger back at life...just do about everything you can to shield yourself...

We owe ourselves this.


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