Help

C. screamed at me. He said, "I don't want you. Go home."

This is what a nervous breakdown feels like. When a truck makes a loud noise in the lane next to you, you start screaming, full throttle, the scream that you never scream unless you are physically assaulted by a stranger with a flamethrower. When you have to stop at a red light in the middle of an intersection, you start crying and leaning on your horn. When you go to the bank to deposit money, you can't add the numbers "55+55+55+60." They just don't make sense, all those fives and then carry the one and you have to add it to another five and then there's that six in there, two sixes what is that? it doesn't make sense.

I have a problem, I have to get six big packages to FedEx and FedEx won't pick them up and they won't fit in my car. I have to get a crate shipped to Los Angeles and the shipping companies haven't sent me the price quotes even though I've been calling and emailing. I have a client booked at 4 PM and I have to cancel but I can't cancel because I need the money. But I have to cancel because it is irresponsible and wrong of me to do any healing work on another person in my present condition. And if I try to drive again there is a strong possibility I will end up in jail rather than at the shop.

I have a number for an Interfaith counselor but I'm not sure I can use the telephone properly or make it into Manhattan for any reason, let alone a counseling appointment.

I spent 81 minutes on the phone to Canada last night and 169 minutes on the phone to Austin, how many minutes total is that? Does it work out to something even? I called C. and he said I was drunk like his crazy brother. I was drunk but saying I was like his crazy brother was going a little far.

If I put my head in the oven like Sylvia Plath the building might blow up and hurt the neighbors. There would be no-one to take care of the cats. If I put my hand on the cat while she is purring it sort of calms me down enough so that I can sort of sleep. But when I was sleeping I dreamed that I had my best paintings in a gallery, in the window, and then someone pressed a button and the walls all shifted and big schlocky slick abstract paintings were there instead and mine were gone. Then I woke up and had more ibuprofen and more water, and when I went back to sleep I was trying to get on a picnic table floating down a canal, but there were too many other people and when I stepped on the whole thing started to sink.

I used to think I was a strong person but I was evidently wrong. People tell me "you are acting like a child." All my nerve endings are on fire. I'm doing the best I can. This is evidently not good enough. If I do something to get myself put into the hospital things will be worse in the hospital, they are not nice to you in hospitals, it's cold and it smells and they don't give you enough blankets and the lights are fluorescent, I had better avoid hospitals. I feel like I need to be in a hospital for people whose energy fields have been ripped up from top to bottom and they have no defenses left and are just wandering around tweaking and jangling like stun guns. I need someone to put the psychic equivalent of a wet blanket on my energy field.

When my friends tell me things like "you will be okay, this is happening for a reason, you made yourself vulnerable, you are not crazy, I love you" this helps while they are saying it. It continues to help for a little while and then the tweaking jangling thing comes back. I can't have my friends around all the time constantly repeating these things, they have lives and responsibilities and I am being self-absorbed to be tweaking and jangling like that.

One of the neighbors down the street, an old guy who hangs out on the sidewalk drinking, asked to carry my bag when I got home and I walked past and he said, "Well, I tried" and I burst into tears and apologized and said I'd had a very bad day, and he carried the bag and said he feels like he doesn't want to get out of bed in the mornings and he just turned fifty and maybe we could be friends, and he held onto me until I stopped hyperventilating and sobbing uncontrollably, and told me his telephone number, and he did his best but it was still a drunk old guy using my hysteria as an excuse to put his hands on me and I put up with it because anything else would have been worse.

I read a girl's blog where her boyfriend broke up with her and she said she hated herself. This was very difficult to read, it was like watching a train wreck, I am different from her but this doesn't mean I think I'm better. I don't hate myself at all. I did the absolute best I could. I fell in love with someone and I loved him and loved him and loved him. We would be together awake all night and he would rub his nose back and forth with mine. He said he was happy and that he always wanted to be this happy and I thought this would be easy because I would always keep loving him like that.