Writer's Block: Close Call
Quetiapine overdose = coma and acute respiratory distress. I might have come much closer to death than I thought. According to Josh, a sure sign that you are, indeed, dying, is loss of reason and coming to terms with the fact that this IS, in fact, THE END. Because of course, all I could think about for the god-knows-how-many-hours I was lying there was that I'd never finish the novel I'm writing, without a single thought to family, friends, etc. Oh well, I thought, any minute now I'll have no consciousness left with which to be disappointed in myself. This was Wednesday morning, guys. So the past weekend was incredibly stressful, and on Monday night I ended up suddenly bursting into tears and on Tuesday night I ended up suddenly bursting into tears again, screaming at my family, and retreating into my room. I took my medication as usual and went on the computer to write for awhile, quite frankly forgot that I had already taken my medication, and took it again. It knocked me out immediately. Then, in the early morning, I drifted suddenly awake. And I realized that I wasn't breathing. Why the fuck wasn't I breathing?! "Breathe!" my brain told my lungs. It was like a patch of dust suddenly becoming a vast desert, such was the effort it took to take a single breath. The medicine normally causes dry mouth, but not only was my mouth devoid of any moisture whatsoever, but my throat all the way down to my bronchioli was parched. The air that I tried to inhale further aggravated the dryness, and it took all my muster to attempt a swallow, which in turn was feeble and practically worthless. Even you humanities majors should know that breathing is an automated function. Well, on Wednesday morning, for me, it was not. I realized that in order to keep myself alive, I just had to keep focusing on my breathing. People who meditate do it all the time, how hard could it be? So I counted each breath. One, two, three, four, five... and I was out. Thanks, quetiapine, for not causing complete and total loss of consciousness, in which case I would have died peacefully and never had another concern in the world. But no... I would drift out, and only come to again once I realized that I was suffocating. How many seconds did each loop of this cycle last? I have no idea- I had completely lost my sense of time. But I heard my sister getting ready for school, which must have been around 6:30. I attempted to call out to her, and I must have made some sound, because I heard her call back, "Bye, Alie, I love you, too!" before exiting the house and leaving my alone. I knew that all I had to do was get up and get a drink and just walk around for a few minutes. But my body, of course, was not listening to my brain. I could not even roll over, let alone get up and out of bed. At what must have been about 8:30, I heard my mom getting ready to leave for work. I tried calling out again. Miraculously, she heard and came into my room. "Water," I managed to choke out. So she went out to the garage and got me a water bottle, and even opened it and put it on a chair next to my bed, and then left. I could not even reach out a hand six inches and grab the bottle. And so I lay there still, breathing for approximately five seconds, passing out, and then waking again to breathe for another five seconds, and repeating over and over and over again. Never before in my life, even with numerous suicide attempts [read: attempts, not just thoughts], had I been so certain that I was going to die. Nothing mattered in those six or so hours before I finally recovered enough consciousness to sit up. Even the single most important thing in my life, my novel, inspired only a weak, distant sense of regret. Well, I must have finally fallen asleep and recovered my normal breathing, and got up around 1:00. But even that night, I still felt very much out-of-it, and since then I have still not yet regained full control of my mind. In another strange twist of irony, the first being the fact of this fitting prompt tonight, it's almost the exact two-year anniversary of the last time I lost control of myself, at Senior Prom '07 when I was hypnotized (having a hypnotist show at prom is a Pennsbury tradition). The experience managed to wipe my memory enough that I lost precious sentiments from the time I was in middle school. From that point on, everything was hazy, and now when I try to look beyond May 19th, 2007, it's all a superficial reflection made up of its impression on me from the time I was hypnotized, and not a moment before. Well, I am afraid that the process has repeated itself. Once again, I feel like I am drifting at sea, like I don't know who I am, and like I have to rebuild myself from the ground up. Again, very ironically, it occurs just as things are starting to look up for me. Just I am beginning to love the person who I have become, I lose her forever. Maybe it would have been better if I went into respiratory arrest. Maybe it would have been better if my novel remained pure in its adolescent brevity, instead of forever trying to acheive what cannot be recovered, what the universe intended it to be. Thanks, quetiapine. You saved my life once, you almost lost it for me, and then, you voided it of everything that made it worth living.