I’ve Only Had One That Mattered

I had a hallucination in which CIA was out to get me, and it had been orchestrated since I was born. All of these connections from my past kept piling up, and I believed that I was chatting with CIA online. I was in some sort of deposition, because CIA indicated counsel was in the room.

The reason I know it was a hallucination is that I cannot find the actual chat window now. If it had been real, I’d be able to see what I typed. It was seriously intense, because it was an excavation of everything I knew about everything. My reality turned inside out, and I lost the frame.

I thought I was going to be a casualty of Washington, and I knew why…. so I admitted myself at Sinai and thought it was over. But once I got into the hospital, I got the frame back. My hallucination was a mix of real things and fake, because living in Washington, of course I ran into a lot of people that worked in all positions in the government. Them being interested in my work is a good thing, because they’re a force multiplier. The government is a small town.

My personal and professional life got straightened back out so that I’m not beholden to anyone nor think I’m under some sort of neighborhood watch. Everything I have been carrying came down on my head, and it was not pretty.

There are elements of that hallucination that still feel real, like there is more to be explored.

• Why did I feel like Heytch wanted to meet me where she worked and take me on vacation when we hadn’t spoken in years?
• Why was I grateful at the thought of living with her without thinking of my own boundaries and issues? Why did I lose self-care?
• What was the point of the repeating line “you are always the best?”
• Why did I feel responsible for her having to drop out of a race?
• Why was I told that Meagan was there and then the door was locked?
• Why did I believe that my mother died because my writing was so embarrassing… just because someone said it?
• Why did I believe that my entire family wanted to exclude me?

None of it was based on truth, but the frame my mind let go of when I went into psychosis. I felt like my friends from USG were all around me, some of them masked and unmasked. There were little signs all over the hospital that my reality was the correct one, that CIA was communicating with lights. It was real and it was deep. I’m glad I’m not swimming in those waters anymore- trading the Potomac for the Chesapeake has its advantages. It’s still the mid-Atlantic, but so annoying a freeway most Washingtonians don’t want to drive it.

I don’t carry the feeling that I’m being watched anymore, and there’s a solid reason for it. Anything in my real life that inspired those hallucinations is gone and I’m back on a solid foundation. It was a process to regain up from down, but this time it feels like the ground isn’t going to disappear again. I am slowly putting down deep roots, and surrounding myself with people who are also struggling with mental health issues so that I never feel isolated. I have a case manager that will advocate for me when I need it so that I do not have to handle everything alone.

I think that my closest friend has no idea what I went through, and it will always sting. Because it was her lie that made the hallucination almost indistinguishable from reality, and I thought I was being hunted. Now that I’m free, I am not interested in litigating the past. I am interested in knowing how to recover from the fact that my diagnosis has changed to bipolar with psychotic features, and I still feel like the same person inside.

Reality didn’t break, it braided itself with impossible things and asked me to pick truth from sort of truth.

What I know for sure is that today is all about dirt. It’s as real as it gets. I need to feel the soil under my fingernails and take off my shoes while it’s still wet outside…. hopefully without stepping in goat shit.

I’m not at the farm, but I’m leaving in a bit. Going to miss traffic and then show up around lunch.

The point is to surround myself with my people today, working on projects emphasizing home and family. I mentioned that this is the year of the baby- Tiina is having her first grandchild soon, so everything is geared toward starting the treehouse while also making this new little person comfortable in their digs. The baby is not going to live in the treehouse as of yet. Those are two separate projects.

But what I know for sure is that I’ve never had a recurrence of losing reality like that, and I don’t know the combination of factors that made it seem so real and yet when I look back?

Nothing.