In some ways, it’s good that I almost instantly access the Internet, whether through Twitter or through IM, when things have gone south. It’s better than what I used to do, which was to suffer alone for a day and go quietly mad. Most people seem to prefer to be there to listen and encourage.

Because my own memory is rotten when recalling these episodes (because I am the QUEEN of denial), here are some tweets in chronological order:

I can’t get up. Nothing is good and everything hurts. I hate myself so much. Somebody help—but there is nobody for a worthless shit like me.
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:50:13 -0700

I hate myself so much that I hope I die a horrible painful terrifying death while hallucinating that my father’s come to take my good times
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:51:19 -0700

I don’t know what to do and everything is horrible
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:51:47 -0700

I hate myself, I hate myself, I hate myself, and nobody can help me because I hate myself, I am hopeless and useless and worst than dirt
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:52:54 -0700

I am poison an no one should know me and I am broken
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 07:53:19 -0700

My doctors office told me they would rather I called back half an hour later during business hours as this is obviously not a rush call
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:05:22 -0700

I guess if I really needed a doctor I would have killed myself already do there’s not really a point in calling either way. So terrified
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:06:40 -0700

Hanging on for 10 minutes. If I didn’t have a cold I’d go into work. Work makes me feel better. But I’m stuck home going crazy and I’m oncal
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:22:12 -0700

Called my bartender left a message. He’ll call back once he’s out of session. Now I must be a friend to myself. Um. Breakfast I guess.
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:36:37 -0700

Just had poached egg, 2 chicken maple sausages, 2 slices GF home baked bread, 2 pieces of GF home baked cornbread. So tired now. May sleep.
Fri, 16 Sep 2011 09:08:50 -0700

(Note: and then I slept until just about noon.)

It probably should be pretty clear why I post under a pseudonym. Most people would take that as a sign that I should be put away for my own good, rather than it being my equivalent of, say, a migraine.

What brought all this on? Well, apart from bipolar being a bitch, being sick has its own demons for me. When I’m sick, I’m at home and not working. I actually was so sick that towards the end of the day I spent all my time upstairs, not speaking to anybody (whether over Twitter, IM, or blogging) and cutting myself off from all contact. Didn’t even say goodnight to people who I’d usually say goodnight to, because that is a reassuring thing to me, to have people these days to whom I’d say it too, all goofy and ^.^.

I think that’s around when the fever started. Fevers don’t play well with me. The bipolar then hit me with the depressive cycle when I woke up, and the PTSD trod on my fingers thereafter (I can always tell when it’s there, because I lose the ability to walk without leaning on walls).

I feel so upset at myself for allowing all this to happen. Technically if I were a better person I wouldn’t have done any of this, or felt any of it. I just can’t get away from that impression society gives me: that my feelings are worth about as much as that of a (haha) emo and privileged teenager. That if I were more mature and just better and sensible that none of the above would have happened.

This is why I hate myself, people. I see only a weak person in me. But the thing is… if this were happening to someone else, I wouldn’t see a weak person, I’d see a person who was in pain due to circumstances beyond their control.

But when it’s me, I’m not allowed to feel any pain or to have been beset by things beyond my control. Possibly because a lot of my reactions are based in a time when feeling pain and becoming emotionally overwhelmed were tantamount to letting my parents catch up with me and kill me, so I’m less sympathetic to myself than I might be otherwise. Survival doesn’t really care about justice.

So here we are. I’m feeling much better and there’s no more fever. There is rice noodle soup to eat. There is work to do, even if it means I’m working from home. I need to take up the reins of oncall again, although it all makes me so nervous (what if I fail again?) but… well, things have to be done. Smacking Doyle across the ear so hard about the next chapter of A Study in Scarlet will have to wait.