I Am Beyond Help

This year has been especially rough.

I lost my grandmother at the beginning of April. She died slowly and alone. I sent her flowers right up to the end but I couldn't be there because at that time there was a ban on flying. She cared about me more than my own parents ever did and now I'm having a breakdown every other day. This is the most horrible feeling I've ever felt. Sometimes I can't even breathe. She is gone and I wish I was too.

In mid July, I lost my cat. She was my best friend and she passed away without warning. I watched her die in front of me and there was nothing I could do to save her. What's left of my heart went with her and I've cried every day since. I lock myself in the bathroom and hold my breath while I sob so my husband doesn't hear and wake up. I cry until I feel faint and my vision starts to go dark. Then I gulp a few breaths of air and keep crying. I cry until it starts getting light outside and then slip quietly into bed.

When I dream, I dream of the ocean. Always the ocean. I never know why. I'm so afraid of it. And yet here I am, on the beach with rising tides and stormy skies. Houses right on the coast being battered by giant waves. Flooding. So much flooding. It's so real, so vivid that I wake up gasping for air. By then it's almost noon.

I eat half a meal a day. Now and then, I won't eat at all. I've lost nearly 30 pounds but I've plateaued. I've tried to eat more, but I get sick.

I've found signs of pre-cancer.

My best friend is no longer my best friend, according to my therapist. She speaks to me maybe once a week if I'm lucky, and it's only ever one message at a time. Maybe two. I've tried to forge bonds with other people at the insistence of my therapist, psychiatrist, and family but I just can't. Every time I try, I feel this barrier between me and them. I dissociate. I go numb. I try to ask for help, but no words come out. 

So I just fall silent, expression blank, and take whatever pills they put in my hand. They can't get through to me and I've stopped trying to break through the glass wall to them. I've given up trying. I've given up talking. I've just given up altogether.

Stare. Take pills. Zone out. The days blur together. I can't remember the day before. They give me tests. They assess. I grieve. I have private breakdowns, private hell. They give me more pills. I stare. I am still and silent while the world rushes around me in a blur.

I am beyond help.

I Wrote Her A Letter

I wrote her a letter today
And I tucked it away
I told her all the things that I couldn't say
Back when she was part of me
I told her how I drank
I told her how I wanted to die
Each and every time she made me a bully
In her mind
I told her how I cut myself
I told her how I cried my heart out
I counted every tear for her in the palm of my hand
And fed them to the dirt

I cut myself open
Right down the middle
And peeled back the layers like the pages of a book
I showed her the gouges 
That she made in my heart
I showed her the blackened spots
She left on my spirit
And then I showed her the crumpled, pathetic ball
Of what looked like paper
And told her that was how she left my soul
In between sobs
I begged her to understand
Why I had not spoken to her in over a year

And then I led her to the pit
The bubbling, churning tar of depression
And tendrils of the inky mass
Whipped the air and wrapped around me
In ropes and ropes that pulled at me
"This is loneliness," I told her,
"The loneliness that you left behind,
That I tried to fill with other people
Other hobbies
Other pills
To distract from the space where you had been."
And then it engulfed me
And she walked away

I wrote her a letter today
And my fingers grazed the key
But I couldn't press send
And so I sat in silence and stared at the screen
Wondering if thousands of miles away
She was staring at hers
Writing a letter
To me