Will typing help?  It used to.  I don't keep up with journals very well anymore, but it's worth a try.

I don't know what happened.  I've been okay all day.  I was fine during Brother's birthday party at the bowling alley.  After about half an hour on the computer, though, I just... I don't know.  It's a hard feeling to describe because there's not a word that feels right.  Misery, I guess.  Depression.  It's that kind of sudden sadness that wraps itself around my throat and makes everything in my chest hurt.  I've thought about naming it--this misery that hits without warning or provocation and physically hurts.

Wilhelm.  I'm going to call it Wilhelm.

I guess I don't experience Wilhelm as much as I used to, but it still happens.  Sometimes I'm out in public, sometimes I'm cleaning, sometimes I'm just getting ready to answer tags, sometimes I'm petting the cat.  There's no trigger than I can find.  I can be thinking about something or just letting my mind wander--doesn't matter.  

Wilhelm is that hitting-rock-bottom feeling.  It's that moment when you hear terrible news--all of the emotion and shock without the news.  It's wanting to throw up and cry and curl up in a corner until the world stops because the world is dark and awful and pointless and nothing matters because everything ends and dies.  It's wanting to claw your skin off because it doesn't fit and it never did fit.  Plans for the future sound impossible.  The future sounds impossible; to get to the future you have to make it through the present, and the present hurts too much to exist through.  Any nice words--self-generated or said by others--are just words.  They're insubstantial.  It's like trying to fix a broken levy with a tiny piece of tape, or trying to stop a semi with a butterfly.

It's hopelessness and fear and horror and sadness and pain.  Not knowing why it's happening makes it all worse.  Think of an animal that's just been injured.  It doesn't know why it hurts or what it did or how to stop hurting.

It's knowing that even when this Wilhelm passes, there will be others.

It's wanting to wake up your mother even though she'll be mad just so there's someone there to keep you from doing something stupid.

I'm crying.  It doesn't help, but I can't control tears anymore than I can control whether or not Wilhelm happens.  I want to scream but I don't think I could physically get so much as a whisper out, let alone a scream.  I tell myself things will be better, but I don't understand how anything can ever be better.  There is no better.  There's being alive for a while and then dying.  There aren't any connections to other people or any other living creatures because they're in the same boat.  They're all dying and hurting, too--they just aren't aware of it. 

Wilhelm is knowing that, ultimately, I'm alone.  It's knowing that, ultimately, I am nothing.  It's an existential crisis wrapped up hurting and despair.

It just hurts.  I want to tear myself open to get at whatever is crawling around inside of my chest and scraping across my ribcage and squeezing my heart and tying knots in my guts.  I want to cut myself out of my skin.  I feel like I could be better if I could escape my body and be something more real.  I don't know what that is or what it means, but my body is an enemy and I need to get rid of it.  I feel like I would be beautiful and happy and calm if I could get out.

But I'm rational enough.  I've gone down the path of self-harm and it wasn't a pleasant path.  I've been institutionalized (I asked to go in a fit of Wilhelm) and that was awful.  I've been trained to think of suicide as selfish--no chance of that.  How do I cope?  How does this sliver of rationality that keeps me from escaping hold me together until Wilhelm passes? 

It doesn't.  It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't.  Wilhelm can last for minutes or hours.  I can't control it.  I can't escape.  I usually curl up in bed and cry, if I can; I've never typed during it.  I've never tried to revisit Wilhelm after it's over to explain it.  I don't want to worry anyone.  I don't want to sound crazy.  I don't want to admit that this thing that I can't explain happens.  I've read a lot--neurobiology and psychology.  I can't explain it.

I hate it because it looks attention-seeking and dramatic.  That's shallow.

I can't cope.  Now that I can't hurt myself, I listen to music or pet the cats or--more often--just lay in bed when I'm overwhelmed.  When I'm out in public and the world is too much, I can shut down enough of myself to deal with what's absolutely necessary.  None of that works with Wilhelm.

Typing didn't help.

I'm going to leave this unlocked.  If you find this--however you find this--and you've ever felt this way, I want to know.  Please.