Saturday was a no good day. I was all keyed up with anxiety and depression at the same time. I wrote what I wrote in the morning and it just didn’t get any better. It got worse.

I call that particular mixture of crappy brain fail side effects “twiggy,” because as a writer, I assign silly names to everything. Or maybe just as a crazy person I assign silly names to everything. Either way, silly names will be assigned.

Twiggy is different from depression or anxiety on their own. It is the heightened anxiety and hyper-awareness of PTSD and anxiety disorder mixed with the woe-is-me-ness of depression.

Twiggy is dangerous. It’s the state of mind where I am capable of doing really dumb things and making terrible decisions. To be perfectly honest, if I was ever going to kill myself or someone else, it would happen while I was twiggy. It is one of the worst mixtures that my brain is capable of putting me through–worse even than the deepest, blackest depression.

When I get twiggy, I cannot get comfortable. I can’t concentrate. I can’t communicate. I can’t express myself. I can’t sleep or eat or do much of anything. I can’t lie down. I can’t sit up. Nothing is comfortable, not even my own skin. I am a bundle of nerves with absolutely no energy. All I want to do is wait for it to be dark enough to justify knocking myself out with sleeping pills. I want to hide inside with all the blinds shut and hope no one knocks on the door, because I just might hit them with a baseball bat. Twiggy is as close to making a tinfoil hat to protect me from mind-reading government aliens as I get.

It’s actually very similar to the feeling I got on methamphetamine. I hate meth because it made me feel twiggy. I’ve done it twice (because I’m an idiot), and both times, I got twiggy for days on end. Paranoid and unable to concentrate, I couldn’t make my mind stop while at the same time, my body was exhausted. I really do not understand why anyone would ever do meth. Perhaps the people who do it don’t feel twiggy like I do, but for my brain chemistry, it’s a terrible drug. It’s the least favorite of all the drugs I’ve tried, which is pretty much all of them. Don’t do meth, kids.

It’s lovely to know that my brain is capable of making me feel the same twigginess naturally as I do on one of the most hardcore street drugs you can get. Thanks, brain.

Thankfully, twiggy never lasts all that long. At its worst, it’s a day or so. Saturday, it only got worse as the day progressed until an obliging Male basically forced me to take one of his benzodiazepines. Normally, a klonopin would have knocked me out. I would sleep forever, but I was so wired on my personal tinfoil hat trip that it didn’t even make me tired. It did make me feel better though. The ferocious waves of paranoid depression quieted down and I was able to unfurl from my fetal position on the sofa.

When I woke up the next day, the twiggy was gone. It was just gone. Thank fucking fuck, because twiggy is not at all anywhere anyone wants to be.

The brain, my brain, is the entity that controls everything about me. It is my life support system. It is responsible for every action I’ve ever made, every word I’ve typed or said, and every sensation I’ve ever felt. Yet, my command center can also make me feel twiggy.

When I am twiggy, I try to remember that the entity that’s making me feel that way is faulty and not to be trusted. I cannot possibly make any decisions or think anything rational with a faulty brain, so I wait. I wait for the twiggy to go away. I wait to return to my senses, which so far, I always have. I forgive my brain for fucking up again and I try to talk sense to it.

I really hope there never comes a time when twiggy is my entire reality. I’m terrified that, one day, I’ll get twiggy and just never be anything else ever again. But, since my brain is ultimately responsible for both that thought and for twiggy, perhaps I need a tinfoil hat to protect my brain from my brain.