It’s hard to believe it has been almost a month since the event with Poe. To say that I fell into a depression is an understatement. What happened with Poe, coupled with the traumatic discovery of a profound breach of trust with someone else in my life that same night, I felt like my skull had been skewered on a white hot lance. The adrenaline, the fear, the fall out, all slam dunked me face first into a depression like nothing I’ve experienced. I was in some kind of mind purgatory with no beginning and no end. I lost hours every day. I don’t know exactly where those hours went. There was no anxiety, no sadness, just this…nothing.

From my journal after I got Poe into detox:

For days I crunched my teeth together while invasive thoughts of putting broken glass in my mouth surged and went, surged and went. Physical pain would have been a welcome diversion from the chaos pain in my head. The chewing glass thoughts have subsided to a weak murmur now.

It is night that is the worst. During the day I am barely hobbling along, not really getting done all that needs to get done. I feel like a stroke victim struggling to teach my limbs to move again. But they do move in their crippled sporadic way. Sometimes I get the dishes done. Sometimes I am able to put clean clothes on my body. Sometimes I am able to lift a heavy fork to my mouth. Sometimes I’m able to get a little work done. I am struggling against, not just the recent blows, but the ones that I know are to come. Some of them will come because I’m still recovering from the last. My rent will be due soon, my oil tank needs to be filled, but the money won’t be there because I can’t get my crippled psyche to get moving at full capacity. Poe has upcoming expenses, care, and treatment that will all cost money. Alba’s 16th birthday is approaching fast and I won’t be able to provide her with the magical day and gifts she is hoping for.

At night, when I put my head to the pillow, there is something there with me. A cold, damp thing clinging to my back, wrapping itself around my stomach squeezing and pressing down, reaching through the back of my skull to slide its cold dampness over my brain. Sleep comes quickly and hard and I know that what I want is to not wake up this time. I burrow into the covers, tuck my face down and shut it all out, melting into the embrace of my invisible, dark companion.

Hours came and went and I couldn’t remember a single thought during those hours. A habit I’ve long had of rubbing my left eyebrow when thinking became obsessive. By the end of two weeks, half of my left eyebrow was gone. When I wasn’t rubbing my eyebrow, I was compulsively running my fingers through my hair, and as the weeks progressed, my hair starting falling out in handfuls.

I knew I needed help. Every day I considered checking myself into a hospital. I really wasn’t sure I was going to make it. With Poe in detox, I finally found enough of my mind to make the decision that I could “stand in” for his neurofeedback sessions. I’ll post more some other time about what neurofeedback is and how it works, but for now it’s sufficient to know that I knew it might help. Meds would take too long. I would need to get an appointment with a psychiatrist, then have the long talk sessions, and then we’d start on the journey to find the right meds and the right dosage, all of which would likely leave me with side effects. Neurofeedback would be almost immediate.

Remember that scene from “Back to the Future” where Michael J. Fox is on stage and all his efforts to control the events that led up to his birth have gone wrong? He’s playing the guitar and starts to feel weak and notices that he is literally starting to disappear. He is ceasing to exist as the probability that his “parents” will kiss grows smaller. He begins to falter, there is no more fight in him as his very mind begins to be erased. Then, finally, just before MJF disappears from existence, his parents seal the deal with a kiss and Michael springs back to life.

That’s what neurofeedback has been like for me. Yesterday I went for my second session this week, and for the first time in a month I felt like I was suddenly back in my body, back in the room even. I yawned for the first time in a month. I immediately stopped rubbing my eyebrows or running my fingers through my hair and I didn’t even have to think about it. I smiled my first genuine smile in a month. But the most interesting, the most telling, is that when I took my first bite of food after the session, my jaw tingled.

My brain, under psychic shock, had checked out, literally. Neurofeedback is helping me to bring it back.

With love,

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