Not a terrible way to die.

I can’t take it anymore. I press the palms of my hands hard into my eyes until it hurts. The pain makes me feel better somehow. It reminds me I’m real and that I don’t like pain. I roll over to look at the small wood clock that sits on my bedside table. Two am, the witching hour. Not that I believe in any of that but I did spend a great deal of my life believing I was cursed. I sit up and see the small chocolate cake sitting on the table in my kitchen. “Accept it” my therapist voice echos threw my mind. I run my hands threw my ear length hair angrily.

Theres no way my new neighbor knew I was allergic to chocolate, she was just being nice and bringing me a gift as a new neighbor. She was small in stature with blond hair and a welcoming smile. It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know that after she told me her name and offered me the cake that a flash of images plagued my mind of her falling and blood coating her nicely light hair a dark red. I had immediately felt sick, grabbed the cake thanked her and welcomed her before slamming my door in her face and running to the restroom to cry. The images flash bright and persistent in my head again and I want to scream.

“Continue whatever you were doing prior to the intrusive thoughts while allowing the anxiety to be present. You have to accept and allow the thoughts into your mind, don’t try and push them away.” My therapists velvet soft voice washes over me in soothing waves but I feel anything but soothed. Accept the thoughts she says, easy to say but she doesn’t have the thoughts! She doesn’t know how hard it is to live with these thoughts. Harm OCD she called it. The term is used to describe OCD with intrusive thoughts that focus on the possibility of harming others or others harming me. The thoughts make me sick, physically and mentally.

I was normal once, at least I feel like I was. I can’t really remember the time but I feel like it. I remember when I first confided in a family member and the look they gave me hurt so much I waited years until I told someone again, and that was only because it had become too much. Im damn near a recluse now. Being out and around people makes the thoughts worse, and my reactions to them makes the attention I get feed it all making it a vicious cycle. Now I’m hiding in my home being paid by disability afraid of my own mind. I roll out of bed and pace the length of my floor.

Most days when I the thoughts invade my mind I feel like throwing up, or crying, sometimes I pull out pieces of my hair. What do you do when your mind is literally a horror movie. I don’t even like horror movies. I would never hurt anyone on purpose. I don’t want to be hurt either. So what do I do? How can I live like this? How can my therapist think that accepting it would even be a good idea? Is it that easy? “Pause, give yourself time. Float and practice allowing time to pass and try not to engage with the thoughts in any way.”

I would love to think its that easy but she said that approach can be difficult. Difficult she said, what a major understatement. I know logically these thoughts aren’t my choice, that they don’t make me a bad person like I’ve always thought. At least that’s what Ive learned in all my sessions. The question is how do you accept something like this. Wouldn’t it make me a bad person? To be okay with thoughts of blood and gore? I eye the chocolate cake again. She did this to be nice. She is a nice girl and did something nice and I deserve to have nice things.

I round the table and sit staring at the cake. I am a good person and I deserve to have good things. Don’t I? Cant I? I lean back reaching for a fork from the counter turning back to the small hand size cake. I let the thoughts run free in my mind. Along with the self pity, loathing, denial, ugliness of all the feelings that come with the thoughts. I take a bite and the sweetness is like breaking the surface of water after being under for too long. I take another bit and my skin starts to itch all over. Images of blood and pain feel my head. Sounds of popping and thuds and squishing feel my ears. I eat more and the tightness in my throat starts to make it hard to swallow. This feels horrible and it just reinforces that fact that I could never intentionally do this to anyone else. I finish that cake and stare down as my eyes burn and breathing becomes harder. Then the thoughts pass, my mind doesn’t clear but its mine again and I drag myself to the drawer just on the other side of the fridge and pull out one of the EPI pins around my house plunging it in my stomach.

The relief is both gradually and instantaneous. I can breath again, it hurts more than breathing should but I can breath. The red splotchy marks on my arms don’t go away but they itch less. Death by chocolate cake doesn’t sound too bad honestly, It wouldn’t be a terrible way to die, but I don’t actually want to die. The thoughts came and went when before I would fight them and they would torment me more. As I stand here staring at the empty cake box and the pen sitting beside it. I guess just like the marks on my arm, just like these intrusive thoughts, it will pass. I am okay and this too will pass.

Ill have to thank my thank my new neighbor tomorrow for the delicious cake.