  

I want to know how to calm down. I never feel safe. Nothing has ever really helped, and I have zero support system. I want to learn how to meditate but I don’t know how to quiet my mind. Its this constant screaming match in there, sometimes it is literally just the sound of me screaming in my thoughts. Like when I am in public or walking down to the hospital that I get treatment at, the only sound in my head is the sound of me screaming. My face will be completely set and stoic, but im screaming in complete existential terror, literally, in my head.

I was diagnosed with PTSD after trying to kill myself back in 2012 for something that I don’t really want to talk about right now. And within the last few months I have also been diagnosed with BPD. I became an alcoholic around 2013 or so after being released from the hospital post-suicide attempt after a 6.5 month inpatient stay. It wasn’t long before I chased away all of my friends and not long after that that my family turned away from me.

For a few years I spoke to absolutely no one. I moved from state to state. A new state every year. Hardly ever left my apartments, and just stayed awake and drank in silence and darkness. No texts. No facebook or other forms of social media. No real going outside other than to grab some more bottles and food. I didn’t sleep. For a couple of years I would just stay awake for days at a time, the fear of going to sleep and having nightmares being enough to keep me awake. For money I lived off of my military disability… well I guess maybe I should mention the suicide thing then. I worked as a medic in the military, tried to kill myself about a year or so after getting home from Afghanistan.

I don’t feel safe. I constantly feel like I am being hunted. And that if I am ever caught I wont just lose freedoms but I will lose things that make me human. Suicide seemed like the right choice before but two things stop me now. The first being that those 6 months I was in the hospital my mother would visit me on weekends and I could see that every time she had been crying before she came in to visit me. It was a locked psych ward, she would bring me a large coffee on the weekends and we would talk a little bit. I could always tell that she had been crying before she saw me though. And secondly, after some reading, experimenting, and growing since that attempt it feels more like if I kill myself the punishment will be significantly worse than this, eternal, and outside of anything I could possibly understand with this simple human mind. Cosmic, otherworldly torture. Hell. Be it biblical or otherwise.

I have done some horrible things. Things that I regret so very much. Things that will follow me for the rest of my life. I decided a while ago that the best thing that I could do was to completely isolate myself. Sometimes weeks or months can go by without me saying a single word, in real life, through text, or online to anyone. I have been trying to fix things lately. I am enrolled in school now. I have a few different accounts on reddit and every once in a while I talk. I made a friend a couple months back. I seek regular treatment at the VA hospital now and am back on my meds. I am desperately, so desperately, trying to quit drinking and making some head way.

Im very nervous. Very scared and angry and afraid. I want to cry all the time but I hardly ever do. I just want someone to hold me and tell me that things are going to be ok. I also feel like it is now my responsibility to keep myself away from people. People don’t need my negativity. I don’t want to be a basket case. I want people to be happy. I don’t want to hurt people anymore. Im very sad. I wish that I could kill myself more often than not. But I can not do that to my mother. Not after seeing her all those weekends, all those years ago. Not after seeing how it destroyed my family the way it did. 

I just needed to let some of this go. I just needed to remind myself that Im still alive.