I woke up early on Monday, January 21, 2008 and started to get ready for work, like usual. I got dressed and made coffee and then went into the bathroom to put on my makeup.
That’s when everything stopped making sense.
Looking in the mirror, I couldn’t recognize myself anymore. I couldn’t remember how to apply any of my makeup, either. While trying to apply eyeshadow, I felt a strong desire to smear it across my cheek instead of my eyelid. It just seemed like the more logical thing to do. Some part of me knew that that wasn’t right though, so I stopped what I was doing.
Suddenly, I was gripped with an intense fear that all of my co-workers who were already working that morning somehow knew what was going on with me at that moment and were just waiting for me to get to work so they could tease me about it. I felt like my every move and thought were being broadcast to everyone.
I started to think that if I wrote out “go to work” twenty times, it would fix everything. I didn’t think I would have enough time to be able to do that before I had to leave though, so I just started writing a mental note to myself instead, in the third person. “Kelley is going to go to work & nothing bad is going to happen to her. Nobody can actually see her thoughts & nobody is going to make fun of her. Nobody hates her. Everything will be okay.”
Ten minutes before I was supposed to be at work, I was standing by my front door and desperately trying to shake the fog out of my head so I could drive. I started thinking about everything I had to do at work and it seemed utterly impossible. I was afraid to go out the door and even attempt to drive because I couldn’t remember in what order to do anything. Nothing was making any sense at all. I started panicking. I woke my mom up and asked her to call in for me and say I was sick and wouldn’t be at work for the day. I didn’t do a very good job at explaining what was going on because I was literally losing the ability to talk for some reason, but she understood enough and called in for me.
From that point on, I don’t remember the exact order of what happened, so this might get a bit scattered.
For most of that day, I thought I was just dealing with a panic attack, but as hours passed and I was still lost in a fog, I started to get scared. I could type and write fine, but I was having trouble talking. The desire would be there, but I couldn’t get the words out for some reason. Even worse, occasionally I would get so frustrated with it all that I’d start hitting myself in the head with my hand. I couldn’t control it; it just happened. I eventually realized that if I wrote down what I wanted to say and read from it, I could talk without a problem, so I started to do that.
I started to think that I needed to go to the hospital or see a doctor or something, so I called around to try and reach one of my parents (both work in the medical field) and ask what they thought I should do. I think I spoke to my dad briefly, but he wasn’t able to talk long, so he had my stepmom call me to get a better idea of what was going on, since she was home and he was working. I was afraid to tell her about everything at first because I thought it all sounded stupid and I didn’t think she’d believe me. There were also parts that I knew on some level were crazy and I was ashamed of speaking about some of them out loud. I ended up telling her everything though. I was crying and gasping for air during a lot of it. I told her that I was sure I was going crazy and I felt like I was disappearing and had very little time to get help before “they” got me. I spoke in very broken sentences because I was still having difficulty talking, but I did my best to explain who “they” were to her–the voices and the creatures. I believed that what was happening was due to the voices commanding the creatures to attack me, but they were being held back in their world because there still existed a very thin barrier between me and them, but I didn’t know how long it would hold. My stepmom reacted calmly to everything and comforted me as best as she could, which really helped, as I was completely terrified and starting to fear for my life.
I eventually talked to my dad an hour or so after that conversation, and he did his best to comfort me as well. He said that what I was describing sounded like I might be dealing with schizophrenia, but he assured me that it didn’t mean anything was my fault or that anyone was going to treat me differently. They were going to get me help. I remember crying a lot during our conversation and pleading that someone get me help as quickly as possible. “I feel like I’m disappearing and I don’t know how to stop it. I’m really scared! I don’t want to disappear!” I choked out between tears.
Long story short, since it’s difficult for me to put these events in order because I don’t remember a lot of it, I called around to various psychiatrists (I had to do it myself since I was over eighteen and nobody else could handle my medical issues, legally) but I either never received a call back or I couldn’t be seen for weeks. I didn’t want to go to the hospital and my family was trying to avoid that as well, so I eventually called a psychiatrist I had seen years before and I was able to get an appointment for that Wednesday.
I’ll end this post here because it’s (mostly) the story of what happened in the physical world during this time. Describing what happened in my head will involve quite a bit of writing and I feel that it should be broken off into a separate part
(ETA: Part II has been deleted for the time being)
