It was just a thought.

She messed my meds up. With her PhD and her Indian accent-nearly as thick as her caterpillar eyebrows, inching closer and closer before they finally met, with a kiss, in the center of her brow. I'm bipolar. You've heard of it, I'm sure. There are times when I'll be reading every store sign, billboard, and street name and then a little bit later, I'm fantasizing about the feel having shards of glass embedded in my entire body. While riding in the passenger seat of a car, I'd find myself praying for us to crash. And I'd slowly, quietly unbuckle my seat belt and wait for it to happen. I wanted nothing more than to crash through that windshield. But before I crash all the way through, like before I'm ejected from the vehicle, I just wanted to hit pause and stay in that moment forever. That moment where I'm just stuck in a shattered window and all the shards of glass are creating gashes in my face and my palms...my forearms sliced, blood trickling some places, streaming others, and still some gush. Around the time I visited her in her weird-smelling office, I wasn't too concerned about the excessive energy and chatty Cathy-ness of the mania part of my bipolar, yeah I was a bit more distressed about that whole wanting-to-lunge-my-body-through-the-windshield-of-a-moving-vehicle thing. What does she do? Prescribes me lithium. A lot of it. And nothing else. I don't know if you know, here's a fun lesson!

• Lithium is prescribed to treat mania in bipolar and manic depressive disorders. 
• It works by decreasing abnormal activity in the brain.
• One side effect of lithium is depression.
• If you overdose, you can die 
The thing with behavior altering medicine is that it can take up to three months to take it's full effect. Psychiatrists strongly suggest you stay on the medicine for at least three months. By strongly suggest, I mean they will not switch your medication before that three month period is up. Into the first month, I had already begun feeling worse. I went to her and told her that I had been feeling more depressed and I didn't think it was helping. She refused to switch my medicine and insisted that I remain on the lithium for the next two months. Of course my mother counted my pills every night to make sure I had in fact taken them like I assured her daily I did. So simply not taking the pills was out of the question. And so I went on through the next weeks growing more and more suicidal every day. My fantasies of death and pain and blood and relief were increasing with every sunrise. One night, I was crying in my bed like I had done every night of my memory and I thought, I just want to sleep. Sleep forever. Have the ache of a hollow, lonely heart lifted finally. I'm going to sleep tonight. I'm going to sleep tonight and sleep forever. I grabbed the bottle of gloomy pills and poured the remaining contents-15 pills- down my throat then laid down in my bed to sleep the sleep I thought was going to last forever. 
My heart sunk into the pits of my ever so nauseous stomach when I awoke the next morning. I opened my eyes, confused, why were my eyes opening? I'm not supposed to be here. My eyes aren't supposed to open. My confusion grew into pure bewilderment as I realized, I couldn't see a thing. A bright blob-I think that's the window. A dark blob-the hallway? I pushed back the covers- if I wasn't dead, I had to get ready for school and act as normally as possible. If my mom knew... Oh my god. She couldn't know. I'd be back in Marillac just in time for their "pizza" and "pudding" lunch special. No. If I wasn't dead, I had to get to school, away from my mom, and let the symptoms wear off. I should be fine by 3. Right? I put one foot on the floor (that was tingly.) Then the other. Putting all my weight on my feet, I rose up from the bed, only to collapse to the floor. Not only could I not see, I couldn't stand either. How was I going to walk around school if I couldn't even stand? Whatever, I thought. I just have to...somehow...get to the bathroom and get ready for school. I'll figure out how to skip out of school later. One thing at a time. Get to the bathroom. I crawled to my door, grabbed hold of the door knob and pulled my body up. Holding on to the wall and moving as quickly as I could given the circumstances, I managed to get into the bathroom, pull the door shut, and lock it. I shut the lid of the toilet seat-covered in lavender shag to match the hand towels- and sat there, feeling drained, nauseous and blind all at once. I grabbed what I hoped was eyeshadow and compact mirror and tried to put on my make up. Have to look normal. My hand was too shaky. I failed pathetically and so I gave up. I'll just say I don't feel well. Wasn't a lie in the slightest either. I remember very little of the ride to school. I kept blacking out, then coming to. Throwing up in my mouth, then trying to play it off as a burp so Mom didn't get suspicious. But I do remember school. Oh so well. I spent my entire first period puking in the bathroom and passing out at my desk. Then, while stumbling back to my computer class, I passed out in the hall outside the door, causing the teacher to call an aide to take me downstairs to the nurse. There, in the tacky nurse's office, covered with posters of cute little ducklings and monkeys smoking cigarettes with slogans like IT'S NOT CUTE WHEN YOU DO IT EITHER  and NOBODY LIKES BUTTS and a betta fish named Darth Betta sitting on the desk, I confessed to my school nurse what I had done. And though I pleaded her to do otherwise, she called my mom. In my defense, I was inebriated and my persuasive skills weren't at their usual top notch, otherwise, I'm sure I could have been more convincing. I was so scared, sitting there in the nurse's office, waiting for my mom to come. I knew I was going to get it. I might as well say good-bye to everyone here because I'll be in Marillac for a very,very long time. I can just forget about going to WPA (women pay all) with Nick because boys don't want to go to dances with crazies. God. I had already puked my guts out and now I felt like I was going to puke more. More guts out. If I had any left. Mom picked me up, silent, scowling, sneering. Eventually, she spoke. Though what she said, I couldn't tell you. Remember, I did that whole Jack and Jill went up a hill shut up shut up shut up thing when she talked to me. But I'm sure it was something like, "I don't know what to do with you anymore...You're doing this for attention...I have a lot of things to do today I don't have time for this...My world doesn't revolve around you...What do you want me to do?...You're out of control...Blah ba dee blah blah..." My mind was still shutting off and then turning back on again and I had not yet gotten my vision back when we got to the hospital. I don't remember much of that part either. But I remember my mom signed me in and then left. She had to take my brother to a dentist appointment. They told her they were waiting for the results of the test they ran on my kidneys, but judging from the fact that I had taken 1500mg of lithium at one time and factoring in my height and weight, they told her there was a very good chance I was not going to make it.  That I would, in fact, die of kidney failure. She told them to call her on her cell if anything happened. And I laid there in that bed, wondering if I really had succeeded. If I really was going to die. And I laid there, watching Wheel of Fortune on the television set mounted into the wall of the hospital room, praying that the doctor would come in, a look of sorrow, guilt, an unwillingness to tell me that, she's so sorry, but there was so much damage to my kidneys, and again, I'm so sorry, Miss Angelino, I don't know how to say this, but there's nothing further we can do. The doctor came in. I knew instantly from the look on her face. The look that said "You oughta feel lucky. That little stunt almost cost you your life." My heart sandbagged to the pits of my stomach, crushed under the weight of diminished hope. I was going to have to live. And not only live, but leave this hospital and go...worst case scenario: Marillac...best case scenario: back home with my mother to hear about how selfish and terrible I am and how I cause so much grief and irritation for the rest of the family. I exhaled, now four hours after I woke up, I was feeling sicker than I felt all day. I was going to live. That much was certain, and that much was terrifying. After the doctor left, a psychologist came in. I had made up my mind to explain this was all an accident, by gosh! No I'm not trying to kill myself, jeepers! Didn't realize how much I was taking, my mistake, Doc. Anything to keep myself away from Marillac. She came in. I don't recall her name but I remember she had beautiful, dark hair cut off at her chin. Soft, loving hands as she grazed my forehead, looking into my eyes not with judgement, but empathy. "You sweet thing," she crooned. "What happened?" Maybe it was the comfort that overwhelmed my body when she touched me with the hands a loving mother has or her espresso colored, almond eyes filled with pain as she looked at the freshly cut welts smarting my forearms, but I broke down. I told her everything. About the lithium, my mom, the rapes-the nightmares. She listened, nodding at times, sighing sympathetically at others. Finally she said, "You aren't crazy." Everything in my mind-my body-froze. The blood running through my veins, halted for fraction of a second as did my heart, my lungs, my brain. I had never heard those words spoken to me before. For years I had heard exactly the opposite. By this point, I was ever so convinced that I was a freak, a loony, a psycho, a monster. Something to be poked, prodded, tested, analyzed. She had my undivided attention. "You don't need to go to Marillac. You feel this way because of your mother. And I've never said this to a seventeen year old girl before, but get out of that house as fast as you can." 

I've been having these weird outer-body experiences when Gavin and I argue. It's so bizarre because I haven't had these in a long time. Not since I lived with my mom. It didn't used to be something that just happened to me; I forced it to happen. It was so hard to do but as it happens with most things one does habitually, it became easier and easier to do until it finally just- kicked in when my mom and I would argue. She always said the most hurtful things, most I told tell myself she didn't really mean, when she was angry and so to- shield myself from it, I would make myself separate myself from- myself. It's difficult to explain. Basically it's like this: after every argument with her ended, I hated the way I felt. In reality, I hated who I was. She said things that really made a person hate themselves. It was so easy for her to do and she was so successful in tearing me apart because she was the person who knew me the best. Inside and out. She knew where I hurt and where I was weak. As my mother she should have guarded my soft, child-like spots, but instead, she used her tongue as the dagger to puncture the skin of my underbelly. I couldn't make her stop saying the things she said, but I could make myself not feel it. So when she would start, I took a deep breath and when I exhaled, a chill would take over my whole body, goose-pimpling my flesh. And I was gone. Looking at the fight from the safety of somewhere deep inside my head. My mouth on autopilot responded with words I didn't think. I stared her straight in the eye through the whole thing and, though she was peering through what they say is the doorway to your inner being, she didn't see the shiny, robot eyes peering back at her--

I don't know what is wrong with me. I feel so stupid. So ridiculous. I'm disgusted with myself. I'm so sick of constantly feeling threatened by other women. Be it the leggy blonde who confidently walks past me, the smell of perfection suffocating me in a plume of perfume, or the actress on television whose rack is spilling over in her tube top, I can feel my intestines twist inside me. My stomach flips on its side, my mouth dries up, and then the thoughts start rushing in. You'll never be that. You'll never look like her. She's the type he'll leave you for. She's they type he wants. Everyone knows you can't choose your soul mate, but you can choose who you cheat on the soul mate with. And that is exactly the girl he'd cheat on you with. She's everything you aren't. She's everything you could never be. He's thinking about fucking her right now.   He'll be thinking about her while he's fucking you later. And while I know that none of these thoughts hold any shred of accuracy, I can't help but feel like it's all 100% true. But see, it would just be so much easier if I didn't know that my thinking is delusional. So much easier because if I truly believed that the thoughts I think are completely valid, I wouldn't have to feel crazy on top of it. But I'm totally aware of my insanity. I know I'm crazy. And in turn, I'm lonely. For fear of people knowing how extremely insecure I am and how fully delusional I am, I can't tell anyone how I feel. Not even Gavin. Especially not Gavin. What, and give him an even better reason that my physical imperfections to drive him into the arms of another? Yeah, right. Instead, I sit there, feeling my blood congeal in my icy veins, trying to focus on something else, somewhere else, someone else, anything else. And I combat the crazy thoughts screaming mercilessly into my head with "Shh"s and "Go away"s. And I feel the skin on my arms and the back of my neck turn from people skin to goose flesh and I want to do nothing else but lay in my bed and cut the cold out of my body. Cut the bad gunky out. But I don't. Because then he'll know I'm crazy. Right now I think he only suspects it. And only now and then. I try to keep the crazy thoughts to myself. I've made the mistake of telling him about the thoughts before and I could just see it in his eyes. He was doubting my mental stability. After years of being insane, I know the look. It's the same cold-eyed look that prick of a psychiatrist gave me when I was 16. "You see this sign?" he said, gesturing to the cluttered clipboard hanging on the wall adjacent to his desk. His finger was pointing towards a decorative sign made of card-stock and stamps that read  I AM UNSTABLE,  some letters drifted towards the top of the sign while some sunk down to the bottom, conveying both the word as well as the definition. "You ought to be wearing this around your neck, huh?" I said nothing. I looked from his coal-like eyes back to the floor of his office, staring at the multicolored weaves in his carpet. It looked like low-pigmented rainbow vomited all over the floor. I wished the vomit floor would open up and swallow me whole. Or maybe it would open and I would fall into a pool, like in It's a Wonderful Life. I wasn't so lucky. The douche continued. "When you...mutilate yourself, you are saying this to the world. You're telling the world you are unstable. Do you think people want to be friends with unstable people?" I took the question as rhetorical even though he paused for me to answer. "Do you think people want to date unstable people?" I'm not going to answer that. "I don't think that's the sort of message you're looking to send people." I don't think you know anything. "Gabrielle, you need to rethink how you portray yourself if you want to be successful in life." And with that, I resumed tuning him out as he rambled on about God knows what and wrote me prescriptions for anonymous pills that I obediently slipped down my throat, and after a while, I was out of there and on my way to forgetting. I'm almost there now. I've forgotten his name. I wish I could forget what he said. Or the way his hairline ran terrified from his forehead to the safety of his crown. Mostly though, I want to forget that place entirely. First it'd be nice to just forget, even for only a second, that I have so much to be self conscious about. I wish I could watch whatever and not have to worry about how I will feel about it afterwards. Some women allow their boyfriends/husbands to go to strip clubs and receive lap dances, I won't even allow mine to watch the nude scenes in rated R movies. And that is yet another reason why I know he will end up leaving me for someone else. Someone sexier, someone more compatible, someone simpler, someone sane.