Functioning

I can manage to deal with each day. I can deal with getting up. with being me. It seems, however, that I am only able to do so when things are predictable.
It only takes one thing, not even something that is perceivable to others, to completely unravel me. I send a text message and don't get an immediate response ( or goodness forbid i should get no response at all!). I am in an instant state of spiralling thoughts about what I have done, what a mistake it was to text the person, how weak I am to need the person to contact me, and a million other thoughts smashing themselves against my insecurities like stormy ocean waves trying to tip a fragile fishing boat. I panic. I have to resort to trying to pull myself out of complete breakdown mode. Then the day becomes entirely about trying to get out of crisis mode, and then recovering from my crisis hangover. the slump of weakness and self-hate that follows and leads me to be hopeless. so, one small catalyst, leads me to a state ruminating thought during which I am so overwhelmed by emotions that I am unable to function. Emotions that are rushing, battling to be the top wave. Instead, while each wave brings a new onslaught of volatility and danger, they just continue to blend into the preceding wave. Joining the other waves as the ocean itself. Pulling me in all directions under water, choking, gasping for air as each time I resurface I am pushed under by the next wave and yanked around in it's undercurrent. Then, when the storm clears, when I manage to find some plank to hold to for dear life, I am left with the crisis hangover. I am exhausted, half drowned, bedraggled and feeling that rescue is never coming. So, why bother to hang on? Everything is hopeless anyway at this stage. I have survived the crisis but, not through any strength of my own. I have now proven to be not just all the negative things I was struggling with during the crisis (weak, needy, desperate, not good enough for anything in any real way), but I have also proven that I am too emotional to even be in control of myself. I am unable to maintain my own thoughts and emotions. So, I am even more hopeless than the initial onslaught was nagging at me.
At a time of crisis, I am unable to function and have no control. During the aftermath I don't function simply because I cannot make myself believe that anything I can do will make a difference.

How am I going to retrieve my life?
So much of what I used to have was based on the callous, angry woman I had become out of necessity for survival. the need for self-preservation fueled my functionality. So, even if i knew how to retrieve my life, would I know what to retrieve? Most of the time I can't seem to remember what I have been thinking over the past 5 or 6 years. So, who am I trying to retrieve? I don't want to continue to live as a woman who acts only out of anger and hurt. I don't want the life back that I had, though I had crafted it exactly as I wanted it, because it was based on choices made while I was that woman. Since being discharged from the hospital I have felt myself slipping back into being the volatile, fiercely independent woman that I was when I was 18. The woman who, while running on anger and hurt, had yet to suffer through the battles. She may have been fueled on negative energy, but at least she was hopeful of getting somewhere on it. Somehow, without even noticing, I slipped from the independent raging woman. She suffered the bruises and scars with me and lost her edge. It was too late. She was so set in her persona that people never questioned the manic episodes and life-altering decisions that resulted from those episodes. Everyone saw the 'super' side. The highly-functioning, super-capable, take-no-prisoners Laura and never thought that she of all people might need help. That she might need it more than someone else. No one, not even I, saw how deeply I had sunk inside the despondent pool that I had dug out for myself. Now that I am standing in the pool instead of laying face down in it like I was a few short months ago, I can't see where I used to be. My world only seems to exist until you get to the edge of the pool. While I am gradually pulling myself out, I can't see that anything else exists. It is a bizarre feeling to have faith that you can pull yourself out of a pond, but be hopeless that anything exists outside of it's murky edges.