The Struggle Within

It was happening again. She could barely breathe. Trying to take a breathe felt as if she had been hit hard in the stomach and had the wind knocked out of her. As she sat there on the side of her hospital bed with her legs dangling over the side of the old rusty metal bed, she knew what she was experiencing was not real, but it did not make it any easier none the less.

Her heart was pounding so fast, it felt as if it would explode right out of her. She could not catch her breathe and she began to heave heavily as she rocked back and forth. She tried to do what the doctors had suggested, to find something in her immediate environment and focus on it instead of her anxiety and fear.

Only there was not much to focus on, since her room was less than appealing with its stark white walls. There was wooden cross on the right side of the wall and she knew it was there but could not bring herself to look at it, let alone concentrate on it. She could turn around and stare outside the window, yet the view was of the hospital's drab rooftop which left less to be desired.

She found herself instead staring at the old gray linoleum floor beneath her. She could tell the floor was cold just by staring at its shiny appearance. As she concentrated harder and harder on the floor her anxiety did seem to be lessening.

Perhaps the panic attack was subsiding, one could hope. She hated the panic attacks which seemed to take over her body so completely, wrecking havoc with her whole being. They felt as if she was having a heart attack and maybe in fact in some way she was.

That is a heart attack of the mind, as if there was such a thing. These were the vacant and lost thoughts which appeared in her mind so effortlessly these days. She could not explain what caused such thoughts to vacant her mind but nor did she feel the need or have the energy to even try.

She knew she felt ashamed of these bizarre thoughts and they were part of the reason she ended up in this dreadful mental hospital. Yes, mental hospital! Even now after being here a whole week she could not get use to the idea of where she was.

She suddenly felt the urge to look over her right shoulder and gaze upon the wooden cross hanging on the wall. She couldn't help but think there must be something sharp that was used to hang the cross, a nail and it being wooden and all, there would be splinters in the wood, she could use the nail to gash open her wrists.

That would be a quick way of dying right?
Gosh how could she think such things, if she even admitted to thinking such things as these, they would never let her out of here. Then who would look after her new baby?

Surely her husband could not handle taking care of their infant permanently. She wondered what he thought of her in here. He had visited many times over the past week.

She wondered why he bothered to come; he just sat there staring off into the right hand corner of her white forsaken bland hospital room. He often stared at the cross upon the wall as well.

Maybe he was silently asking God:” Why did I end up with a crazy wife?" I know I'd be asking this if I were him.

It's funny in a way because I know I am not crazy, yet I know these thoughts I've been having since the baby's birth are irrational. I know their irrational but I can't make them go away.

The thoughts scare me sometimes, especially the ones which involve me ending my life, yet I know I would never harm myself but am still consumed with thinking of new ways in which to do so.

The doctors say it’s just post partum depression. Brought on by the decrease of hormones that vacated my body after the baby was born.

I do not feel depressed though, for it would suggest feeling something and I feel nothing these days. This is why I sit here in this drab, bland hospital room hoping and praying, perhaps to the wooden cross upon the wall that these thoughts will too begin to lessen along with the panic attack.