White noise

Apparently I've been too brave not so long ago, in the sense that I thought I could handle some things in my life that I actually can't, or so I'm told. Yes, I'm talking about the voices in my head. Not even a week ago, I wrote about them on this blog. I also talked about those two bastards last week with two friends of mine, very openly and freely. Somehow, I thought I was stronger than them. But I was wrong, horribly and irrevocably wrong...

Right now, while I'm writing this, I feel quite all right, though. Things were a lot worse yesterday and the day before yesterday, when it all started. I spent last night at the psychiatric clinic. Things weren't going too well and I knew that if there was somehow no protection, things could really get out of hand. Luckily, I could rely on the rational me, and that one told me it would be better to sound the alarm. I have really reliable and professional therapists, and although one of them tells me time and time again that, when I'm in a crisis, there's no possible way to talk to me or to make arrangements with me, I think I made the right decision this time. 

At this very moment, I'm listening to the radio, and that keeps the voices out, albeit for now. I'm quite sure they'll be back later today, when I'm getting weaker and tired. Unfortunately there are only a few possibilities that could be of a help when I want to keep them out of my head. One of those is medication, another one is getting lots of sleep. Mostly, those two go hand in hand. The good thing is that I have a feeling of inner peace then, the bad thing is that I'm not capable of studying, teaching or anything else that requires some concentration. So actually, I'm their puppet. The past two days were horrible, they wanted me to do crazy things. Luckily, I'm at a point in my life that I can share what they want me to do with other people - or myself, for that matter. Yesterday evening, while talking to a psychiatric nurse from the clinic who is actually a very good and reliable man, I felt this urge to attack him and to fight him, only to see what would happen. Why? Well, mainly because that's exactly what the voices insisted on. So I shared this with him, and he said he didn't like the idea. Nor did I, but I had a constant flow of compulsive images, very lively and real, richly detailed... You know how hard it is to fight against the urge you feel to just do what they dictate? What's more, they wanted me to end up in an isolation cell. This part I didn't share with the nurse, it was just too confronting. I saw those images from the time in Belgian psychiatric clinics, all passing by in front of my eyes, as if I were watching a movie at double or even triple speed. All those images, in front of my eyes... The voices thought I deserved it to be locked up and eventually tied up, as was the habit when I was in the Belgian psychiatric clinics. I was so afraid, but this I couldn't share, this wound is still too fresh, even 13 years after the facts... 

Anyway, it all started last Wednesday. I was at creative therapy, and we were talking about my feelings of low self-esteem. Suddenly, I went numb, I couldn't communicate anymore, I was feeling so weird. My head went all crazy, and there they were: Male and Moses. I was lost, lost in space, or so it seemed. I felt this frustration deep inside of me, they were taking over. I had to hurt myself, I had to kill myself, so my instinct told me to just shut myself off completely. It didn't work, though. Other people wanted to talk to me, so I had to encourage myself to keep on talking. It was very hard to remain conscious of the fact that there were other people in the room. I'd rather shut myself off completely, because then I'd know for sure that I wouldn't hurt anyone but myself. And that's exactly what they wanted: They wanted me to cut myself, and not just a few superficial cuts, no, the real stuff. But I didn't want them to win this fight, so I tried to knock them down in my mind, which wasn't really successful... Actually, I was the one who was knocked down by them...

I was terrified, you know. And that's what I told the people around me, but I don't think they were able to grasp the seriousness of the situation. For one, they don't hear the voices. For them it's just something weird, maybe even insane. They just can't imagine what it is if one hears voices that are not theirs in their head. Anyway, I was so scared to go home, but there were some nurses that encouraged me to go home. As they were strangers to me, I didn't feel safe, and I didn't tell them about the visions. Visions in which I saw myself riding my bike and showing up right in front of a bus, only to be overridden and not yet killed, but barely alive. 

My blog is the only safe place to write about the voices. I don't even manage to write about them in my diary anymore, although I have no clue what the difference is. Maybe it's just that via my blog, I expose those bastards and they can no longer deny that they are evil. Because that's what they are, pure and utter evil. How to deal with them is a tough question. My pastor and I agree on the fact that these voices are sent by our enemy, the devil. They are certainly not from God, and although I admire Eleonora Longden, I can't see how these voices can be a part of me. Such destructive thoughts don't belong to a person who cares so much about animals and other people. It even hurts if I have to kill a spider, imagine! How could I have these bloody thoughts of hurting myself or even other people? It's abhorrent! These malignant thoughts are like a tumor, they have to be removed in a figurative way. 

I just deleted an entire paragraph, written a couple of hours ago, when the voices were back to attack me and to make me hurt myself. I called my nurse immediately, and although we almost had a disagreement, she was of valuable help, and I decided to take some pills. It's just that something had to be done. Now I'm feeling more quiet once again, there's tranquility in my head, and let's pray that we can keep it this way for the rest of the evening as I'm all alone. I wish I could do something more permanent about this problem. I wish it were possible to have these voices surgically removed. People are frightened when I talk about their aggressiveness. They don't trust me, because they are convinced that one day, the voices will win this fight. And in fact, they have good reasons to assume this, as I allowed them to take over in the past. Now, however, I have my God, who is bigger than all the problems I've ever had. He can heal me, he can save me from the utter destruction. I trust upon Him. He will show me the way. He'll never let me down...