I think there can be no greater suffering than the state of mind I find myself in at present. I am sane enough to know that I am no longer sane. Somewhere, somehow, I am being dragged over a line, a line which never even existed for me until now. It’s I, not someone else, but I, who am crossing that line, and I see no way to stop myself.
I have become, inexplicably, a wandering and completely bewildered stranger in the realm of my emotions. I can no longer find my way back to my familiar and known world where I did dwell once in some harmony with myself. Everyone is one the other side of an impenetrable glass. We can see each other, but we cannot reach each other, and I am stretching out my hand in vain. I am alone and abandoned in the dark, and I am terrified, beyond any understanding, and the not understanding leaves me in a state of paralyzing panic.
I can’t move in any direction.
I am becoming more and more rigid physically. I am afraid that if I turn my head, even a little I will see my horrible terrors and they will overwhelm me. I think I’m being followed—I am running through endless, twisting, pitch-dark tunnels, and I can’t find my way out. There is no light at the end of any turn I take. I can’t turn back. I am being backed into the darkest and last corner of all.
I long to escape from these feelings that I can neither understand nor bear. Where is there a place for me, where can I go, where can I turn, save deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of my poor sick mind?
My mind is dying and I want to die with it.
The pain is too much to bear.
Even my body hurts.
My terrors are crushing me, smothering me. I can’t breathe—I can’t communicate my fears to anyone with any hope that they will be understood. I am locking myself up in a prison of my own making, a horrible, painful prison, to which I have no key.
There is only one escape, and that is death. I plan each day and night how to take my life. It is hard to believe that I, who loved life so much, am planning to kill myself—find myself longing for death. I am obsessed with one desire — to blot out a mind that can harbor and play with such thoughts.
Someone must help me—safe me from myself, for what will become of me?
