Trapped In My Own Head

There are times when I'm silent despite the tears rolling over my cheeks, even though in my head, I'm screaming at the top of my lungs. I'm clawing at the inside of my skull, trying to escape the monsters which torment me. But all my attempts to escape are in vain. They always have been. Every light I think I see blinks out, leaving me in a dark pit which seems ever more sinister.

You see, the monsters don't want to let me go and they extinguish every spot of brilliance which might lead me to freedom. Three of them are as familiar as old friends now, although they're my jailers rather than much loved companions. Their names? Despression (D), Anxiety (A), and Suicidal Ideation (SI). They claw at me, feed on me, slowly eating me alive while I writhe in the dark, trying to find a way to escape but knowing it's hopeless. There is no escape hatch in my mind and despite my screams, no help is coming.

There are probably other monsters tearing chunks from me too, but they're as of yet unnamed. Vague, undiagnosed, not like the three I'm on first name terms with. Those three seem to have been my life long companions. I can't remember when I finally learned the names of the beasts who'd began to torment me before my age reached double digits, nor can I remember when they first clawed at my still developing sense of self.

The struggle has gone on so long now, that at times it feels like I'm going mad, losing control of my mind. My thoughts spiral. Worries and paranoia tumble over each other until I can't understand what I'm anxious about, and A mocks me as he predicts catastrophe after catastrophe. Meanwhile, D whispers his insidious lies, telling me that no one could truly love me, that I'm worthless, that my family would be better off without me. D is best friends with SI, who is arguably the most dangerous of my three tormentors. She is the executioner. A and D are mere interrogators, they're torturers and judges. It's SI who sharpens the weapons of my demise, because it's SI murmurs constantly in my ear, plotting all the ways I could end my life and tempting me with them daily.

Being trapped inside my own head with such gaolers is hell. So many times I just want out of there, that dark cell where my screams go unheard and the monsters remain invisble to the people passing obliviously by my dead outer shell. Mental illness is a lonely prison where friends often don't exist, but where hungry demons of your own creation feed on your spirit and drain you of energy. They devour your will to live until all that's left is the desire to die.

I don't want to live this way any more. I don't want to cry and scream as I try to escape my mind. I want to be normal, and if not normal, I would like to push SI from my mind and have the strength to fight back against A and D. I want some quiet. Some peace. I want the scars to heal, then maybe I can heal too.

There's a problem with that though. Some people say they want to become who they were before their illness, but I was a six year old girl back then. My personality and knowledge hadn't finished developing. I don't know who I would be without D and A, and that itself is terrifying. Although perhaps not as much as the feeling that there's a bigger predator circling, one caused by traumas in the past, which simply hasn't been given a name yet.

Pseudonymous Zombie
xxx