My emerging psychosis

It seems to start so innocently. A flash of movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn to determine the source of the shadow that has sped past so quickly, but there's nothing there. A few hours pass and it happens again. The visions build each day to the point where I'm seeing them hourly, sometimes multiple times an hour.

Following the shadows, as if on invisible command, come the thoughts. I'm suddenly convinced that these movements I see are not merely figments of my imagination. They are spiders. The more I see them, the bigger they become until my mind truly believes they are tarantula-sized spiders. That's why they move so quickly and disappear into hiding places before I can actually catch sight of one. I'm afraid to touch anything. Afraid to make any sudden movements. Afraid to be in the house because I don't know if there is just one spider, or many.

The thoughts continue to get more bizarre. We've moved past the shadows and spiders. Now I think they didn't perform surgery on me two weeks ago, they artificially inseminated me and I'm pregnant. I have to fight the urge to run to the drugstore to buy a pregnancy test because to do so would mean giving in to a reality I'm fighting not to believe.

I ask questions, trying to do the reality check they taught us in the outpatient program. Can it be true? What reason would they have to get me pregnant? Who would the doctor be working for? Do you know how many people would have to be involved for such a thing to ever take place? Couldn't the symptoms I'm experiencing be contributed to something else besides pregnancy? But the longer I ask questions, the more realistic the answers my mind is providing become.

Should I ask someone else if my thinking is screwy? How do you tell someone you think your doctor and the hospital deliberately knocked you up? How do you ask if that could really happen, without them thinking you're completely nuts? It sounds weird. A part of me knows that it has to be a delusion. It doesn't sound plausible, but yet...it so completely does.

The temptation to get that pregnancy test becomes irresistible and I go to the store. A negative test should provide my mind the proof that it needs to quell the bizarre thought that I'm pregnant. But all I hear is that voice saying these tests aren't 100% reliable. Maybe it's a false negative. I can't make an appointment with my doctor to find out the truth because he's the one that did this to me. Am I seriously going to have to wait for several more months? Wait and see if a belly develops or not. If I begin to feel a baby moving within or not. By that time it would be too late to undo what has been done without my consent.

The stress of it all triggers even more stress, but it was stress that triggered the initial movement caught from the corner of my eye that seemed so minor. As the stress builds, the more I question reality. The more I begin to have bizarre thoughts, the more I see things that may or may not really be there, until eventually I begin to hear things. It's just a matter of time. I wonder when it will happen. Tomorrow?

I'm still aware of my emerging psychosis at this time. I know it's happening. I still have the ability to question things. Yet I can't convince my own mind to stop, to remain grounded. The strange and unfathomable gradually become truth. If my stress level drops, I have a fighting chance of eventually becoming grounded again. Not completely, but at least as grounded as my mentally ill mind will ever allow me to become. However, with a completely full schedule until at least August 24th, there seems to be no time to stop, to even slow down.

Please mind, don't let me crack and lose touch with reality. Please. Please shut that voice up. I've been down that road before. I have the written ramblings of a person whose handwriting I don't recognize, of events I don't remember taking place. It was a scary time and I'd really prefer to never go there again.