I wonder, every day, am I really in that much pain?   Am I so bad that I need benzodiazepines?

My fears convince each other.  I’m exactly where I began: debating myself.  I just want an answer: what should I do?  No one can tell me.  They don’t seem to have the answer for themselves, but they aren’t sinking like I am.  They seem to have grasped onto self-denial.  I need an idea that’ll float better.  Or is self-denial really to be my saver?!  If it is, I have to wonder if I wouldn’t rather sink to the depths of this depression.

The problem—and this is where my psychiatrists and I have always differed until now—is I want do more than just survive, but I need help.  When I’m not on these drugs, I’m passionate and alive.  I make lousy choices, but at least I feel powerful.  I float.  I have fun.

For a time, I have fun.  An irony of being on medication for me, the reality of mania: I feel my best when I’m completely unmedicated—not even on Lexapro.  During those med-free days, I didn’t want anything to ease me.  I was indulging my mania, letting it kill me with anorexia and burn out.  My body had me pumped so full of adrenaline and seratonin, I was literally naturally high. I was doing so much, I would often break into a run to be late to the next responsibility on the list that day.  I had no time to do anything more than lie.  I seemed to be lying my way through my days, waiting, screaming silently, for someone to notice.

I felt myself crashing even as many told me I appeared to them to be a happy floater.  What they were actually seeing was my attempt to run from the screams inside my head.  I would dance ecstatically until I would literally near collapse.  I would feel myself dying inside.  I’d excuse myself to the bathroom, dry heave, and return to the bar and my acquaintances: sad, scared girls and horny boy-men laughing hysterically over lies.  I often danced by myself, leaving my friends to their devices, so some strange man could grope me and make me feel wanted.  I was a smart girl who did dumb things to distract myself from the insanity happening in my brain.  My bed became my enemy.  Sleep has never been the same.  My body aches and my head hurts from the deprivation.  It drives me to tears sometimes.  More often, it drives people away.  No one wants to be around a sad girl.

—Oh!  I guess I am in that much pain.