My First-Ever Mental Breakdown Is A Fantastic Learning Opportunity!

~nsequeira119

I’m pretty sure I’m in the throes of what could, very shortly, devolve into a full mental breakdown. There are a wide number of factors which have contributed to it- most of these factors entirely beyond my control- facts of life, I suppose, irreconcilable things I can’t avoid. I imagine this is how most mental breakdowns are initiated.

Chief among these concerns is the stark realization that I can’t connect with or relate to anything anyone does anymore. I don’t understand why people do most things- why they have sex, why they pray, get married, get jobs, go to college, drive cars, own pets, etc. The only thing that brings me personal fulfillment or genuine happiness is the process of creation, of artistic expression, and I can only feel good if I write, or draw, or sing, and in so doing exercise my thoughts, expel them from my whirling cyclonic brain where 50 narratives scream at me simultaneously. As a result, I only understand people when they’re singing, or writing, or otherwise expressing their thoughts in some capacity.

Another factor- although I’m not sure if this is relevant- is that I tried weed for the first time ever around 6 months ago. People don’t seem to believe that a tablespoon of edibles could alter someone’s mind to the extent that it did mine, that it could have such lasting effects. I think that, even if the weed is technically out of my system, it awakened horrible things in the murky depths of my subconscious, rearranged vital neurotransmitters, irreparably changed me. I feel more emotions now, I can’t properly regulate my feelings like I could before, I can’t ignore physical sensations like pain or fatigue.

This awful state I’m in started about two days ago- I noticed that my blood pressure was much higher than normal, I could audibly detect my heartbeat and I could taste blood in the back of my throat. This is probably due to a lack of sleep, so I’ve been taking 5-hour naps during the day to compensate.

My condition currently probably shares some aspects in common with what’s generally known as creative burnout, although I haven’t really run out of ideas, or my drive to produce them. I still feel at my absolute best when my fingers are bouncing over the keys at a rapid-fire pace, I don’t have writer’s block or anything like that. I think a long sleep could do me good- and yet I find it strange that I suddenly need more sleep after 3 or so years of nonstop activity. I hate being chained to my body like this- and again, if I hadn’t taken the weed, I probably would be able to stay up as long as I wanted without any adverse effects.

What’s the strangest, though, is probably the way my body tangibly feels different. My limbs feel heavier, the effects of gravity are more pronounced, sounds are distorted sometimes, standing up is difficult, I shiver and tremble a lot. This morning I clutched at my chest, one of my arteries felt weird. I used to deny it, but I’m now extremely aware of the inseparable link between my mind and my body, how my brain needs a constant flow of blood from the heart and how the brain in turn provides autonomic signals to keep the heart beating.

It’s as if I’m locked in a mental battle, an epic struggle between my conscious and my subconscious, with my subconscious doing everything in its power to kill me. This is the self-loathing, repressed, hostile side. All the bitter emotions I kept securely held for years, now unleashed to wreak havoc on my composure and turn me into a miserable husk.

Probably the strangest thing about the process is that I actually enjoy feeling stress. I’ve never felt stress in my life before, or at least not for a very long time, at least a decade, so feeling it is a novel sensation I can’t pass up. This physical and mental anguish will build a lot of character in me, it will help me empathize more with people who experience mental illness and uncertainty, and weirdly enough I view my mental torment as analytically and apathetically as I would any other scenario I go through. I’m able to recognize how my behavior has shifted, modify it in turn, maybe grapple with it and eventually come to terms with it. Whatever happens, I’m in it for the long haul. It’s really fascinating to be caught within the process of your brain eating itself, and in many ways, it can make you appreciate life more.

The breaking point might have been this Wednesday, on Valentine’s Day- some friends of mine talked about how they were going to spend it with their boyfriends, and it occurred to me how I’ll never have any significant other, how I don’t understand most allosexual terminology, how this phenomena of romantic attraction is callously taken for granted as a universal constant, and how distant I am from ever knowing the human condition in any meaningful capacity. At any rate, I don’t really mind, because it makes my state all the more interesting and unique.

I think I’m manic, but not depressive, and I have autism but not ADHD. For whatever reason, people who have autism also tend to have ADHD, but my problem isn’t that I have a short attention span- my problem is exactly the opposite. I have an extremely long attention span. I can do things for hours on end, if someone doesn’t snap me out of it I just won’t stop. My manic tendencies make me exhilarated, I’m a cataclysmic fireworks display.

I never considered myself mentally ill at all before I took weed, and even before this past week it was somewhat tolerable, but at this point I would definitely say my mind is kinda falling apart. The key will be to keep track of it, and as in this piece, to closely monitor it. Part of the issue is that I need to unload my brain, and as such I think writing about it is healthy. My mind has too much excess going on, I need to separate the fluff from the substance, and putting it into words is very helpful. Luckily, this is one of my strong suits. I need to understand my brain on a deeper level, inspect it and unpack its contents.

I went out in the freezing cold today- it’s 21 degrees here in Denver but it feels around 10- I stayed out there for two hours without any hat or gloves, and by the end my hair was coated in ice crystals and my breath was condensating, and the nerve endings in my extremities took a while to warm back up. I think the walk got some of my fervent energy out, it cooled me off. I need more tactile sensations like that, reminders of my mortal coil to keep my ego in check, new sensations that keep me guessing. I need novelty, especially. I need surprises that I can’t predict, but those seem few and far between these days, when everything is rote.

Most of the writers and artists I actually respect, like Edgar Allan Poe, were mentally disturbed. I don’t think Edgar Allan Poe could have produced such great works of fiction if he were a boring stable guy. His work has always appealed to me because there’s something very earnest and open about it, you can taste his fear when you read it. I wasn’t able to fully appreciate fear back in the day, but now I can. Never before has my fiction so aptly captured my present condition, never before has my output been so vital to my survival.

I never knew what it was like to be a reckless creature of impulse before now, but I have in many ways been reduced to the level of those around me, and time will only tell if I can make it out of this one, but I figure my self-deterministic mindset and can-do attitude will help me through. I’ve just got to keep writing. And sleeping, of course.