sinking

Some days, like today, I feel as though I'm under water.

I've said many times I feel like I'm drowning and everyone around me is just swimming around oblivious to how much I'm struggling to keep my head above water... days like today I feel as though I've been dragged down. Like I am literally underwater. Everyone sounds so far away, and when I try to move it's slow and takes more effort much like being underwater, yet I feel weightless like I could float away. I am drowning, in the thick dark goo of my mind - of all the pain, anger, violence, and sadness kept somewhere behind my smile. Some days it engulfs me, makes it hard to move, and I get quiet,because if I open my mouth to speak the it oozes out of my mouth to bring down those around me, trying to spread like a plague.

This is what I try to avoid when I'm driving everyone nuts with my need to go and do things and not wanting to just sit around. This is what I'm trying to avoid when my brain goes nonstop.. because if I slow down the darkness drags me under.

I know it's not healthy to not give myself a chance to feel, but what if there is so much pain and sadness that I never work my way through to the other side? What if I just get lost in it forever, it seems rather possible considering the bad never stops. It's just one thing after another.

The thing is, I'm not sure which came first. Did I become so nonstop because growing up I was the butt of all the jokes at home and picked on at school and it hurt but if I let myself be sad or angry it made everything worse so I started not allowing myself to dwell on the pain? Or have I never learned how to process emotions properly because I've just always been so nonstop?

Many therapists have said my brain is like a hamster on a wheel, always going, always running. It's true, in many ways. It' also always going in circles and never really getting anywhere... they always say I need to get it to stop, but how? How do I just stop?