The following was written by my daughter while she was struggling to come to terms with her illness.  My daughter’s blog is located at http://mymentaltrampoline.com .

I found this short piece of writing in one of my old journals. It brought back very emotionally charged memories.  When I read it over again I had to take a couple of deep breaths and remind myself I wasn’t that person anymore. Sure, even now the feelings in this piece sometimes rear their ugly head, but it’s different, I now know I am not a freak of nature.  These emotional crises are par for the course when it comes to my disorder.

At the time I wrote this I was ignorant of what was incessantly battering at my mind.  I was thrust into an emotional battle I couldn’t remember wanting to get into in the first place.  I didn’t know why this was happening to me and no one else ever seemed to be bothered by such things.  I felt very alone.  Back then I used to try to exorcise my demons by scribbling them out on paper.  I still do, but now my fingers actually physically ache when I think of expressing my feelings on paper. It’s harder now to put the words together.

The Struggle within Me

Sometimes I wake up with this sharp taloned creature in my chest.  It’s sitting hunched around my heart, perched on a rib.  Everything that goes on that day seems to irk it in a strange way.  It show its displeasure by squeezing tighter with one twisted hand, its claws inching deeper through the soft outside layers of my heart’s flesh.  The weight of Golem seems to bear down on a lung and make it harder for me to breathe.  It can even read my thoughts and lets me know which ones are disapproved of.  It doesn’t seem to let me forget uncomfortable thoughts or memories.  Rather he dotes upon them; sometimes he even places them within my mind’s eye. As each intrusion on my thoughts adds to the others, it seems that I find it hard to keep track of them.  I am seized with an anguish which only stirs deeper my anxiety.

Soon I am a garbled mess of confused imaginings and unfounded conclusions. Clearing my mind at that point is impossible. The only thing left to do at that moment is to lapse into a semiconscious state.  My heart feels as if it will burst and my whole being, flesh and soul, will spatter across the wall.  All this because of the pressure exerted by that little fellow within my chest.  I can hear him snicker, it is then I start to scream silently in my soul, I cry out for release.  My pain rises from the depths of my being with ever increasing pitch.  It is then my stomach clenches, and my throat burns with the scourge of vomit.  My head is always the one that pays most dearly, after the dizziness has past.  It throbs incessantly as I slump to the floor weak, empty, numb.

This short piece describes how I felt on a daily basis as an undiagnosed manic depressive.  It may seem over dramatic, but I did not write it for public consumption. I wrote it to describe the personal hell I was experiencing at the time.   I am sharing this work with you in hopes that those suffering similar experiences will find they are not alone and seek help.  Some of you may recognize the emotional storm described in the piece as a panic attack.  All I know is that the Golem lived in me for many years.  There were times when I yearned for physical pain as a tangible release, instead of those sharp talons scraping at my soul.  If you identify with anything in this excerpt please seek help.  There is a release from the pain.  There are viable treatments. You can be free of your own personal Golem without physically harming yourself.