I am going to destroy myself someday. (or: how sometimes, the brain can't be trusted)

It comes on suddenly.  It doesn't begin that way, however-- the feeling creeps and lulls around in my body and in my mind for hours, sometimes days.  I try to fix it ahead of time-- get some rest, get a bite to eat, relax, have some fun.  Whatever it takes.

But I know it isn't going to work.  I lie to myself and say that I can stop it, that I can cut it off somehow, but I know that isn't true.  I can hardly even postpone it.

It comes on like a sickness, like a flu that starts with just one sneeze.  An itch.  A crawling feeling, like tiny worms are writhing around just under my skin, pushing against hair follicles and nerve endings, setting off the alarms that tell me to scratch.

But scratch everywhere.  Every inch of me a miniscule warzone, and as far as my senses are concerned, I must be covered in ants carrying feathers.  There is no relief from this maddening itch, and soon enough it progresses, and heads inward, and now I itch from within.


All the while, I can feel my cheeks and my ears flushing hot and red as blood rushes to the surface; every sound unbearably loud, every source of light intolerably bright, every sensation horrific and insufferable.  My muscles ache and creak, as though they've somehow come to exist too large for their fleshy casing, at any moment ready to burst out of the fascia and skin reining them in.  Everything tenses and squeezes, tonic and sore, and the pressure feels as though it threatens to snap my bones like dry tinder.

What I want most in this moment is first to flay my skin completely, to peel it off like a giant, dead scab, the kind that forms over a deep burn and loosens as pus builds under its surface.  I want, desperately, to be bound into immobility, wrapped up so tightly that my blood can hardly traverse its vessels, and on top of that pressed down with immense weight.  Perhaps not so much that I couldn't breathe anymore, but close enough to it.

I don't believe I've ever had a seizure, exactly, but I imagine there must be a form that feels rather like this (though of course I assume an actual seizure to be much worse).  I am rendered incapable of sitting still; rather, I writhe and twist, my hands in fists and my toes curled, my arms and legs gnarled in bends and my spine wrenching into tight, crooked arches, all indications pointing to me being a fat contortionist.  It even appears, at times, that this lack of control gives me incredible strength, as I find myself holding my own body in odd positions that I might not be so able to hold while calm.

But it is exhausting, and awful as I am sure it looks from the outside, it is even worse from within.  Anything inside of me-- partially digested remains still in my stomach-- are most certainly to be purged.

And through all this, my mind is a haze of overstimulation, and I am lost in an endless sea of perfect rage.  I can only even describe this as some sort of Heironymous Bosch-esque hell, with so many images and thoughts passing through that there is certainly no way of putting any sense into it.  It is, in essence, a pure and vitriolic violence, and I get the faintest sense that if I were to let go, even for a moment, I might break apart the bones in my own hands all in an effort to find peace again.

But, but, perhaps the worst notion at all, is that there isn't really anything that can be done.  It's all I can do to ride through it, to suffer and endure until it finally passes on its own.  I'm not sure how long it lasts in realtime-- I would estimate not more than 10 minutes at its worst-- but it feels like ages, endless and limitless.  That is one of the truly terrible fears-- the, "what if this time, it never ends at all?"

I'm told this symptom is akin to a panic attack-- the difference being that instead of a fear response, something triggers the "fight" in me.  Rather than being overwhelmed with terror and the desire to run away, or the shaking and sweaty palms, I am thrust into the suit of the berserker, an impenetrable and unbeatable force of brutal rampage.

And then, just as it began... it is gone.  And I am tired.  And I try not to think on it too much, other than for the purposes of keeping track of when it happens, or what may have triggered it, or in this case, for documentation.  I know it does no good to dwell; still, I often feel like I am just waiting for it to happen again.