Alice “How long is forever?”
White Rabbit: “Sometimes, just one second.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Spirals. All I can see are spirals, circles of smoke everywhere I turn. I can’t tell which way is up, which way leads me back to sanity and salvation. The voices in my head, my dear friends, try to help, but they don’t know which way leads home and which way leads to Wonderland. My chest heaves as panic sets in, the feeling of being shut up like a telescope within my own body. Breathe, I think. Breathe you idiot! But I can’t, my chest is too tight.
Then the hallucinations set in. Graphic depictions of my own impending death play over and over before my eyes. The sensations of blood, bugs, and other sickening combinations run along my body. I try to scratch and rub the sensations away, but they don’t leave. They never leave. I watch my body swing from a noose, collapse from blood loss, drown in a body of water. I think to myself, “Have I gone mad?” and more often than not, I have.
The other voices then cloud my every thought. “You’re not good enough, you’re never good enough..No one truly loves you..The world would be better off without you…” I try to plug my ears to escape the lies, but how can you escape what’s inside of your own head? I feel the heaviness in my limbs set in as I continue my slow fall down the rabbit hole. I feel the impending sense of doom fill my veins like mud. My fairy dust has run out, and I have no happy thoughts to carry my back into the sunlight. All I can do now is let the dark void swallow me and hope that I can find my way back this time.