Writing to reach me

Listening to this whilst reading Marblehead by Rebecca Lindenberg "not to be in love with you I can't remember what it was like it must have been lousy" My breathing speeds up and tires me out throughout the day. My panic is a constant low hum and it demands concentration to bring my breathing back. I know I need to work, and yet the work strikes such fear into me. I schedule regular breaks, and during the breaks I panic and fret.  It takes me several minutes to bring myself back to the mindstate to do any useful work, and after very little time I'm rewarding the work with another rest. I set myself micro timers and feel tense as their secinds run out. Each alarm clenching more tightly into my chest and making my head throb and my neck crunch more tightly. I never feel my work is finished, I always feel too scared to face it, and I constantly feel hot dramatic, breath-taking (in that they really do take my breath) pangs of guilt for not working on it, and I ...

The want to harm myself hits me in waves throughout the day, as I try and drift into the gentle rhythm of the book I am reading, I jolt. At first I don’t understand why my body clenched - but then I realise it’s a wish to stab myself in the breastplate has made my whole body shudder. I ball my hand into a fist and make jagged movements, imagining a dagger pumping into my chest. My body is tense and my temples clear and sharp with the pain. I hear my own breathing, inconstant and forcing air out in panicked, ragged pumps.  I wonder how long I’ve felt like this today, how many hours this has continued and how many more I can bear before I pick up a blade, before the dark waves pull me under completely and I lose the grasp of my self control completely. How much further before the natural need to protect my own life is torn apart under the weight of this urgent and desperate competing need to silence the hatred I feel for myself. I cradle my head in my hands, foetal and feeble until...