It’s weird. Almost every night before I fall asleep, I experience these moments of emotional chaos that are some combination of depression, anxiety, and snippets of other emotions that all coalesce into a slurry that makes my nerve endings stand on end. I know this is due to my nighttime meds, introduced into my body to help manage all these feelings. But it seems like, at least in the initial 30 minutes after taking them, that they act, instead, to create these feelings rather than to contain them.
Or maybe it’s just that it’s nighttime, and this is the product of being left alone with my own thoughts, with nothing to counteract them. Maybe these are just the little windows that my mental illnesses are able to break through, in the quiet, in the dark.
Or maybe it’s just one of the unfortunate side-effects of being an adult. Because the things that run through my mind all seemed determined to unseat me and throw me into a tailspin. At least for the few minutes before I’m able to drop off to sleep.
And every night I have to claw through the discomfort and disconcerting mental visuals to find enough peace to fall asleep. Usually, the medication kicks in enough to knock me out before I can complete the process, which ends up at the same result. But all through the process of working through that emotional chaos, I’m reminding myself that most of this garbage is lies my brain makes up to keep me down and I don’t have to believe them.
I find myself thinking, and worrying, about jobs and career. I end up visualizing all sorts of worst-case scenarios involving my kids. But I also end up feeling lonely and isolated — which I enjoy most of the time during the day. My teeth ache because I clench my jaw so hard. My stomach twists with anxiety. My skin feels alive like an electrical current is being run through it.
Fortunately, every day is a new day, and the brief mental upheaval of the night before rarely chases me into the daylight. I can move and function and breathe like a “normal” person (whatever that is). It’s just in those few minutes at bedtime, when my brain chemistry is being readjusted toward sleep, that I still wrestle with the spectres of my demons. But I can sleep and dream them away, and awake the next day free from their clutches.
One day, one step, one breath.
