I want to document all of this weird psychosis I’m going through because 1) if I turn out to be correct it’ll be a crazy story and 2) because I feel like not enough people talk about what mental health is like as you’re experiencing it.
To put it plainly, I do not feel well. Mentally. Even physically. Two of the weekends in February I have had events where I feel like I am having a heart attack. That is normal when you eat like garbage and don’t exercise. Plus I just hit 40 and my family doesn’t really have a great track record when it comes to hearts. I believe my grandfather had his first one in his 30’s but I might be wrong and it was in his 40’s. Regardless it was the second one that took him.
What makes this feeling exceptionally worse is that I feel like I have had “premonitions” of my death. I am lying in my own bed, the ambulance crew comes in and starts working on me, but I end up passing away before they even get me onto the gurney. My boyfriend is telling the EMTs about our prior experience of having called for an emergency crew and how I am “fine.” Then there is darkness and all I hear is my BF’s voice calling my name and saying “Stop faking. Josh, wake up.”
This last detail, the haunting words, is an echo of when I went to the emergency room a couple weekends ago thinking the same exact thing. The only issue was, I wasn’t having a heart attack. My heart rate was off the charts but I am mostly certain that was caused by my paranoia and panic of my own demise. The demise I “foresaw” when we were driving down to Palm Springs a month ago.
It should be noted that with each of the above events I was thoroughly, utterly, off my tits stoned. I had had far too many edibles. And in this stupor I believe I “had flashes of the future.” Ones which I started to feel again in these noted moments above. Aka De ja vu. It’s been happening quite frequently lately. This is where I started to feel insane, because it is like the de ja vu becomes more frequent as I get closer to the moment it actually happens.
For instance I feel like I have done this before. I am having de ja vu even now, as I write this.
Maybe it is this weekend when I have my real heart attack and die.
It’s thoughts like that that have kept me on edge since Friday and I cannot shake it. I keep feeling as if I am marching toward my inevitable demise. It is stressing me out and making all of this way worse.
So, to be proactive I have reached out to my therapist to get a sooner appointment than March 9th. I need some advice because this overwhelming, all consuming, feeling/thought that I am about to die is really, really not fun.
I also made an appointment with my primary to get my heart checked out. The last few days my blood pressure has been elevated. So I am documenting it, while also trying to think soothing/calming thoughts.
The one thing about all of this that upsets me more than my own death, is how I am stressing my boyfriend out. I’m getting flashbacks from when I was 4 and my dad was having his mental breakdown. I vividly remember him standing in the living room, my mom sitting next to me on the couch, trying to talk him in to going to a hospital. He had just spent the last few hours swinging a broom around in the backyard killing demons. At one point, he had to put on yellow kitchen gloves because he was getting blisters.
I love my father, with all of his flaws, but I refuse to let this be a memory, of me, for the ones I love.
As I was writing this, my therapist called and we had a quick chat before rescheduling. He told me that people don’t have mental breakdowns now like they did in the 80’s. That was because people were over-stimulated and didn’t know that was the issue so they would check themselves into a hospital to find respite. Fun little fact. He also said that sometimes grief will manifest as panic/anxiety attacks. That one really hit home. A lot of the time when these events occur is in moments where my husband either should be there or he would be upset if he knew what was happening. My therapist explained that it is the lack of this person that makes you start to panic or feel anxious because they’ve always been there.