On the subject of what is left of my mind

Someone said that if you possess the ability to question your sanity, you aren't insane yet. But I don't necessarily buy that. I think you can be insane and know you are insane and yet question the level of sanity.

Or maybe question how you are able to function while you are insane. And the more entertaining project of trying to figure out when, exactly, you crossed over.

I used to believe I could do anything. That no matter what gets thrown my way, I have this indefatigable energy and ability to handle it, if not solve the problem. That I was one of those women who, if their kid was caught under a bus, would have the strength to lift the bus off of them. That there was nothing bad waiting for my kids and if anything at all happened, I would find a way to save them, that the sheer force of my love would protect them from everything.

But it is becoming cruelly clear to me that maybe I can't keep handling it. That there comes a level of stress so heavy that anyone would break under the strain, even me. And the biggest change is that what I question now is how insane I can go and still function.

You probably think I am exaggerating, but I'm not. There is something fundamentally wrong with me that is more than stress, more than bipolar-ness. And there is some point at which it went more than wrong. There is some point where something just had to bend a little too far and broke. It didn't snap loudly, it just broke the way PlayDoh does when you stretch it too much.

And to be honest, it's a little scary. Because, now that I have allowed that I too can go insane, I have to allow that it is possible to go as loony tunes as anyone else does.

Catatonia seems to me a great vacation and that scares me.

Opening up my arm to see if there is anything like real bones in there has a pull to it, and that scares me.

That there is a part of me who would love to just let go of whatever branch I still have a grip on scares me.

I used to be suicidal. I used to say that if I didn't have kids, I would drive my car off a cliff. But now, I don't want to die. I want to let go. I want to curl up into a ball in a hospital and have no more expected of me than to turn over to let them take my blood pressure.

At one point, I hated the way that hospital smelled. Now, when I drive past it, I wish I could just go back to bed.

You think there is any way out of this? Once you have really allowed that you no longer possess all your marbles, is it possible to get them back or is that crossing a line you can never go back to? Once you have allowed that you aren't perfectly strong, doesn't a slow, unstoppable decline follow inevitably?

Hope not. Cause I do have kids. And they need me not to be screaming inside my head all the time.

This is one of those nights when my husband has to get me one of those beautiful little peach pills.