Fear and Loathing in Beverly Hills

I'm scared.

There's been a stormfront brewing for days, and it's finally hit land. I wasn't sure what it was, at first. As always, there's the unenviable task of trying to figure out what it was: bipolar episode, or borderline episode. There's no ambiguity left. I'm in the throws of a borderline rage like nothing I've experienced in many, many months, and I'm scared shitless. Normally it's an irritant, that's for certain. And I can choose to deal with it medically, or I can try to ignore it and allow it to run it's course while trying to moderate my behaviour on my own. Needless to say, that's not going to work this time.

Why the change? What's different this time? I have no clue. I only know that the intensity is so very different. This is like the ones I had last year, where my entire body is engulfed in anger; not at anyone in particular, and not because of anything that anyone's done. It's just THERE. That's the biggest frustration of all, I think. There's no REASON, dammit. There's no fucking REASON. And I don't know what to do with it.

It started with an irritation with others on the road. Granted, that's an easy thing to be annoyed with where I live. But where most people are bothered and get over it, I'm coming up with scenarios in my head that involve their personal retribution. Sitting in my vehicle, as I'm being cut off in traffic, as people take my life in their hands, I'm flipping them the bird, and screaming epithets at them in words that never once left my mother's mouth~streams of words that would make my father blush on his worst day. The utter folly of this is that it simply fuels the rage that's already coursing through the boiling red-hot blood in my veins. I kid you not. I'm positively seething. It's amazing that I can restrain myself enough not to follow then into parking lots and explain to them precisely why they shouldn't be on the roads at all.

From there, it's grown to where even being at home by myself isn't working. Rather than a low-level anxiety that I usually have, it's sky-rocketed to the top of my brain, much like filling a water balloon~you just keep adding water, and you KNOW it's going to go. You just don't know when. And the icing on the cake is that I AM medicating. And the medicating isn't working. Holy shit, am I in trouble.

Over the past several days, I've been taking the proper medication for this problem as soon as I wake up. Then I take it again in the afternoon. At first it helped. Now it's not. What do you do when your medication doesn't fucking work? Yesterday, I took it at 11am because my hands were shaking so wretchedly in agitation. By 12:15, I had to take it again. That finally took the edge off it. By 9:30, though, I was out of control.

Let me define, "out of control". It's nearly killing me, but I'm not going off. I don't want to go off. I can't. Everything in me wants to freak out. I desperately need to scream and rant and rage. I want to throw things, and break things. I want to kick and punch and holler until I have no energy left to do anything except cry. There are no safe people, and there are no safe animals. Nothing is beyond the scope of this incredible anger: there is crystal sitting on my living room table that would look spectacular as it flies through the front windows. I want to make eye contact with my husband and tell him, "THIS IS YOUR FAULT". But of course, it's not. So I can't. And it stays in. All tightly leashed ... and held with the strength of a string of thread that could go at any minute.

What's making this worse? Very little. A conversation with my son that sounded as if he was defensive and irritated with me, leaving ME defensive and saddened. And when that happens, it's all multiplied by 100. I have so little contact with him, as he doesn't live here. Now he's angry with me, I'm angry with me. Immediate self-hatred and loathing. Two of my very familiar buddies.

A promised night that didn't happen quite the way I expected it to, pushed the rage to a point so high that I had to leave the room to avoid losing control entirely. Things can escalate so swiftly. I'm quite honestly not sure where the strength is to keep it in. And I don't know if it will last. It needs to.

This morning while we were driving, my husband reminded me to put on my seatbelt; in a moment unlike anything I've ever experienced, my entire body was suffused with a rage from the tip of my toes to the top of my head. It spread like an electric shock, leaving me shaking. A new height in lows. I was quiet, though. Shut up, shut up, shut up.

That's my way of dealing with it right now: just shut up. To the outsider, it would look as if I'm giving the silent treatment, and I suppose in some ways I am. But mostly, I'm trying to keep everyone around me safe, by virtue of shutting the fuck up. Because if I speak, I'm not entirely sure what's going to start pouring out.

Never before have I been so desperate for Dr. Know. I hate that little prick, and I need him like never before. I don't have anything else to help me, and surely HE could do something ... couldn't he?