blue state

I felt suicidal this morning. I don't know where it came from; it was like an episode, like having a panic attack but without the panic, coming on slowly then escalating to something unmanageable, then fading away. The whole episode lasted about twenty minutes. During the unmanageable part I had to lie on the floor and cry, shielding my eyes from the bright light and the ceiling fan blades making a vibrating white circle above me.

Right before that, I was thinking I should be back on Cymbalta, should call SIMS, the organization which has helped me find two useless therapists. I had the number on my cell phone screen when I decided to lie down.

Before that I was thinking about my dentist appointment this Thursday, about my critiquing group on Wednesday, about feeling like the least intelligent person of the people I know, about my failed year in college, about the fact that I don't have any friends, none who I could call in that moment to say I felt suicidal.

After the episode I didn't know what to think. I felt a little dazed and confused, thought maybe I should eat. I decided to get up off the floor and have a bowl of cereal, thought I'd better write this down.

When I transcribed what I'd written from notebook to blog, I Googled images for this post and came across a site with dozens of pictures of people who'd committed suicide in a variety of ways -- hanging, shooting, stabbing, drowning -- and I felt like I ought to add that I believe my compassion for my fellow human runs too deep to actually kill myself.