Eight Days Ago, I Lost It. Here’s How I Found My Way Back.
What it feels like to sense a second nervous breakdown coming on — and successfully evade it
I don’t remember much from last Tuesday, but I do know I definitely shouldn’t have been driving. I was crying too hard and my mind was so scattered I could barely concentrate. Trails of mucus snaked down my face. My brain refused to process the choice between going to my psychiatrist’s appointment or the emergency room. I wailed like the hurt animal that I was.
Worst of all, my elderly mother was in the car with me. I gripped the steering wheel like her life depended on it, an ice-cold finger of consciousness shooting up my spine, alerting me that the worst thing I could do would be to hurt my mother by allowing something to happen to the car.
I could have cared less if something happened to me.
Ultimately we arrived at the psychiatrist’s, and I helped my mother into the office with the tears still pouring down my face, but quietly now. I saw him for the requisite 15 minutes to get my prescriptions refilled. My mother, who has no experience with these matters, was shocked that he did not spend any more time with such a distressed person. “That’s all they do,” I wailed to her, as we shuffled back out to the car. “They…
