That Other Me
That Other Me is a series that explores the immediacy and intimacy of various mental health episodes I’ve experienced throughout my life. 2016 I walk and walk and walk, taking a roundabout course from my home, unable to settle thoughts much too quick to be contained or moderated, the agitation from their mania pulsing through my body. Is this it? That’s a question growing increasingly prevalent in my forties – to have emerged from five years of severe agoraphobia, decades of anxiety and all these other mental health challenges, only to be here, much more capable in some ways but mentally unstabler in others; circumstantially unsatisfied, physically debilitated with chronic…
OCD’s Intrusive Thoughts: Knives and Me
That Other Me is a series that explores the immediacy and intimacy of various mental health episodes I’ve experienced throughout my life. 1989 I hold the point of the knife to my belly. Dare myself. I feel the point prick my skin. And there’s the possibility I might, I just might, thrust, and impale myself. A friend tried to take his own life this way; he told me as he felt the blade going in, he couldn’t keep pushing – it wasn’t so much the pain, but the sickening realization of what was happening. But I’m not standing here with the intent of taking my own life. It’s the thoughts…