Vigilance

I had one of those moments today, where I'm driving down the street & I realize that I'm about to aim my car into a streetlamp. It's not as if I've been particularly depressed lately, nor have I been actively thinking about suicide or anything of the sort. That's part of what makes it so unnerving... I'll just out of the blue realize that I'm about to try to hurt myself. I never actually veer off, I always catch myself, but it freaks me out nonetheless. It's like that part of me that really wants me dead just tries to sneak this action past my conscious mind, & the intent-to-act kicks in for some self-destructive behavior without first passing through the conscious decision-making portion of my mind. I always seem to catch myself before I act on it, but it worries me. What if one day I don't catch it in time? What if that death-wish manages to actually act (veer the car, thrust the knife, step out the window) before the logical part of my mind catches up with it? Just creepy.

It reminds me of a line in an article I was reading about Eric Millegan & his struggle with bipolar disorder. He said,"You realize when you have a mental illness like this, you don't want to kill yourself for any specific reason. You want to kill yourself because your brain is actually programmed to want to kill itself."

You can read more of the Eric Millegan article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-frevele/eric-millegan-on-living-a_b_336305.html & http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-frevele/eric-millegan-on-living-a_b_338419.html