Walls, tears, and masks

"Brand" by April Mansilla

I feel so alone and scared. I'm not alone, Jim is here in the other room, but inside I feel like I'm cut off from the world behind a wall I can't break through or see through. Behind this wall I'm screaming, and punching it, but it only hurts my hands, there is still no way to get through it or past it. I feel like this depressive episode will never end. It was preceded by a hypomanic episode, and now I'm scared that when this depressive episode leaves then I'll become full on manic. I don't know which I hate more, depression or mania.

Some days I'm afraid reality will unravel and it will just stay that way forever. I'm scared a lot. I feel empty and dark inside, except for the sudden rages of anger and loathing directed at myself. I cry all the time. If I'm not crying from depression and anxiety I'm crying from pain. I wish EDS would leave me alone when I'm battling my bipolar, but it just doesn't work that way.

I'm so cold, and it reminds me of some really bad memories that keep flooding back that I'd much rather stayed way back in the corner of my mind so I don't have to think about it. I don't know what to say to anyone at the moment, except it means a lot that you care. It means a whole lot. 

I'm being much more open with this episode online (not IRL) than ever before, because I want people to know what it's really like to have bipolar. It's not manic pixey funky girl stuff, it's like a heavy, heavy boulder on your chest. They keep adding boulders, but it doesn't kill you, and they just keep adding these heavy boulders. Occasionally they'll take a few off, but it's just a cruel joke, because after that they'll add twice the boulders. You will keep existing this way, the boulders themselves won't kill you, they just make existing hell.

And through it all I fake smile and fake laugh so well that no one who sees me, unless I tell them otherwise, can see through that mask. I've been hiding it so many years I don't even know how to not wear a mask anymore, and it feels unsafe to take it off. So much of my life a mood episode meant I'd be emotionally and verbally abused while I'm at my weakest. So out of necessity I became really good at hiding behind that mask. Now I need help, but I'm just too terrified to let someone really see me (other than Jim) that I can't help but fake laugh. Fake smiles and fake laughter is so easy a part to play that eventually it's just too scary to let anyone see you IRL (and online to an extent) as I really am: alone, cold, depressed, self-loathing, defeated, numb, and crying.