this is like being in a car wreck

and losing a leg. no one can expect you to do all the things you did before at the same rate.

except with mental illness there is no outward sign. no missing limb. so people just keep expecting you to snap back to you. but that person is gone. those abilities are dead.

people, especially myself, have come to expect so much from me. and i am chasing my tail trying to keep that person alive. how do i make them understand that this disease has robbed me of her. how do i make them understand that the perosn they love is really just a manifestation of the hypomania and that if i allow her to live she might kill me when she spins out of control. each time i take those pills at 6am 11am and 11pm, i kill her over and over again and i mourn over and over again.

and their desire to have that girl back makes me feel like what is left of me is not enough. and it hurts. because what is left is not enough for me either. everytime they say "oh i am so glad to see you; i missed you." i know it is really a case of mistaken identity. they think i am her; she is who they miss.

that's why i want a fresh start. no one with any expectations of me. no one with memories of the person i used to be. and maybe without the things that remind me of the girl i lost, maybe i will forget her too. maybe then i could learn to love what is left.

So the key will be putting enough space between me and them very quickly. i keep thinking maybe i'd move to a foreign country. but i don't know how that would work.

and it is scary because the pills and my reliance on those who dole them out has me tied here. i know how bad the mental healthcare system can be. i knwo that i will not survive another episode of being off meds long term.

i don't want to end up being that biy at VA tech. he had to start somewhere before he descended into hell. and it is scary how everyone has made him out to be such a demon. no one is willing to see him and those he killed as victims of his mental illness. no one mourns him. but i do. i pray that god is merciful. i know how lost sometimes i can get in my own day dreams that i find myself emotionally reacting to them; like dreaming that the love of my life and i have to part ways at the altar because i realize that marrying him would put him in jeopardy. i sometimes snap back and realize i am sobbing. how many more steps into the darkness before there is no snap back to "reality?"

my biggest fear-that i would do harm because the illness got away from me. i'd rather die by my own hand.

ah well, back to rearranging the furniture in attempt to forget that there is life going on uoutside my door.

but it means walkign away from everyone. andit means doing it with no warning because if you tell them they will have a million reasons why you should stay.