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A Brain That Isn't Mine


Sometimes, I have these episodes where everything just hurts so much. It kind of feels like there's some kind of force pushing against my ribs, about to break my bones. Like my abdomen is the inside of a laundry machine, tossing and turning and foaming from the unforgivingly artificial and acidic smell of detergent. I feel like I have lost my dignity, like I'm stripped naked against my will, tied to a pole, and laughed at. It's like I'm tied to a stake and there's fire inching up, it's reached my legs and my feet have burnt to ashes.


In these moments, I lose all sense of logic and reason. It's this kind of desperate feeling where you feel helpless, like you want to stop feeling what you're feeling, no matter the cost. The only thought that I have is, "oh my gosh, I am hurting so, so much right now." The rest of the world is just a quiet backdrop, a bystander to what I am experiencing internally.


Sometimes, people tell me that they've spoken to me in these moments, and it's like they're talking to a completely different person. They hear it in my tone of voice, see it in the glazed look in my eyes, sense it in my posture. The strangest part of it all is that I don't understand the crude logic I have in these dark moments when the episode is over. I think. "how could I have possibly thought that dying was a good solution?" In moments of clarity, I am puzzled by these thoughts that seem to belong to a stranger. These thoughts don't feel like my own but nonetheless leave scars on my body and consequences on my life.

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