Mind Games

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Across
  1. 3. Maybe it is an excuse for your inability to function. Maybe it is a valid justification. Either way, it seems to all pile up. More and more. Dealing with your family, your body, your ex, and, worst of all, yourself. The more that comes, you can’t help but think, “I’m gonna carry this burden. I’m gonna feel the weight of this baggage.” And your shoulders get exponentially heavier with age. And you can’t help but wonder if you will soon just collapse from it all.
  2. 5. It is possible with time, right? Or maybe it is something that will never happen. You will try with all of your might to reach this state. With enough pills and appointments and years, it must be achievable. Right?
  3. 6. The scars that affect you mentally. It sticks with you and haunts your dreams and reality. When you see someone with the same hands as him and it sends a shiver down your spine and a quake in your breath. And you are sent back to a time when you were touched without permission.
  4. 9. Staring at yourself in the mirror imagining all of the chunks that you would like to cut out. Seeing yourself as skinny one day, but fat the next. Pulling and tugging at little bits of flesh. Hours in front of mirrors and hours avoiding them.
  5. 10. Being surrounded by a deep and unforgivable sorrow. It traps you in your bed in the morning. It keeps you from seeing the people you love.
  6. 12. 15. You start at 10 milligrams. Then that is not enough. So 20 milligrams. Then 50. Eventually you find that this one doesn’t work. So you try another. And another. And another. Eventually you find one that “works” for you. You take it daily. A daily dosage of artificial serotonin that comes with endless side effects.
  7. 13. The counting of calories and sugar and protein and carbs. The feeling of nausea creeping up every time food touches your lips. The tears that come from changed pant sizes. The poking and prodding at bones peeking through, like badges of honor. The fasting until hallow.
  8. 14. Dizzy head. Sleepless nights. Itchy skin. Endless fears. Shakey hands. Frightening thoughts. Bumpy hives. Panic attacks.
Down
  1. 1. Swearing you can hear ghosts in the middle of the nights. Seeing their outlines and the echoes of their footsteps on the carpet. Reaching out and squinting hard enough until they reach back at you. They say you are imagining things. That you just need to go to bed. But what is imagination, anyway, but a different segment of reality?
  2. 2. It is quite silly how unreliable it all is. What is real and what is not? This seems to betray you, sometimes. Your brain seemed to erase the most scarring years of your life but hold them in a little cave to be released in the most random moments. Reminding you of things you subconsciously thought you forgot forever. Faces and voices and moments that all taunt your present reality.
  3. 3. If you go here every week, you will get better. So, they say. Just make sure you have the time, money, resources, energy, and support to access it. If you have these things, it is easy!
  4. 4. The need to consume with no end. To constantly do something and fear not doing it. To feign control over the situation but deep down knowing there is no quitting. There is no quitting the thoughts, the feelings, the actions.
  5. 7. A complete disconnection from what is going on. No thoughts exist. No body exists. Nobody exists. You are instantly a nonplayable character in your own reality. Nothing exists beyond you. And you do not exist.
  6. 8. Staying up all night with your mind running on a constant hamster wheel. Hoping that the little guy will eventually go tired and pass out against his own volition. Getting up the next day feeling worse than the day before. Energy levels on negative values.
  7. 11. An inability to breathe. Spending hours hiding on a crusty bathroom floor instead of in class. Curled up like a fetus. Trying to catch even a morsel of air and wondering what will kill you first: the shortness of breath or dehydration from hours of water lost in tears. Ribs raw from all the heaving.