This is the letter you will never read. Sometimes my head gets itchy. Like my brain, on the inside. When it does it feels like a swarm of bees has been trapped inside of it. They burrow into my ear canals until it feels like I cannot hear the world anymore. I slipped into consciousness some time ago, and then I fell out of it again. Now that my eyes are open, I take a deep breath as I run my pen along the paper. My heart flutters.
Like a diabetic I merely have a condition that I must yield to. I must remember my medication, know my symptoms, my triggers, and my limitations. A healthy sleep is vital to me, food (blood sugar levels) affect my mood drastically. I do vigorous exercise regularly as it releases endorphins and sets the pace to the drum beat I run beside. The drum beat of my life. The bee like thoughts in my head are the foundation for panic attacks, anxiety, paranoia, delusions, hypo-mania, and sometimes a hypo-manic induced depression. Most of the time to be honest though the thoughts don’t race. Most of the time I forget any of this exists at all. When panic does strike my heart, when my thoughts do race or become dark, I pull away. I become distant. I retreat back inside myself. I feel embarrassed when I stutter as I attempt to speak, or when I go to eat and am unable to swallow because my brain thinks that I’ll choke. I don’t ever feel embarrassed of the scars on my arms, but I feel embarrassed by 80% of the stories I can tell about my life. I often choose silence in new social gatherings and can come across as distant, shy, reserved, or snotty. I feel embarrassed when I can’t organize my thoughts. Sometimes it feels like my mind is about to implode on itself and that no one can sense the pressure that's making me collapse. It makes me want to run away, to hide myself from all the stupid glances and leave myself alone with the swarm of bees that reign inside of me. I feel embarrassed to talk about some of the things that happen when I do get ill, like last night. I don’t ever gain much faith in people so as to let them into my mind. I mean, I do. I post stuff on Facebook all the time. I just throw it out there though, I leave it for the wolves. *** I lay in your bed as you slept last night and I heard people wander around your house. I don’t know when I wrote that stupid note and slipped it under the door. I know you never received it, I was too crafty and took it back later in the night. The whole thing made me feel childish. Like this is right now. Like I cannot use my own tongue and teeth to talk. I listened as the people went about the house, like a scared child I clenched the blankets. Your roommates were gone, I know, and the house lay dark and empty. I heard them underneath us, the people. I heard them in the basement. A familiar noise shook my memory like the blow of a starting gun. You did not understand me this morning. You laughed at the 'thieves' you called them, I said they were ghosts. You said I should have no worries, that you could protect me. You did not understand that with all your strength you could not protect me from what’s inside of me. I could not leave the bed last night, it became my iceberg in an ocean of an empty black room. Realization hit me as I lay frightful in the shadows. I began to fear you, thoughts churning that there was an evil presence who’d taken over you. Like an Arctic wave it hit me with an icy sting. The sting of a swarm of bees. “He’s possessed” I whispered to the hollow room, the words contracting through my body. Like a sketched out addict I reeled to the side of the bed. I panicked. I lay in horror as my perception deceived me and a dark shadow loomed near the door. I lay with a small section of blanket, a shield pulled up over the tip of my nose. I made sure not to let my body touch yours. I closed my eyes with a clenching tightness and imagined nothing was going on. I must have fallen asleep that way. I left your house feeling utterly confused. I didn’t understand my own thoughts and I couldn’t convey them to you, although I tried. I feel like I stuttered a page of nonsense at you. Told you about some note, and then I childishly held it back. I feel like you’re thinking that I went all crazy and emotional on you. That I have too much baggage.
This is the letter you’ll never read because it’s simply been written so that I may make sense of the words that get lost in there with all those bees. So here’s to unread letters - I raise my pint. Unread letters, and ghosts in the night.