Three weeks pass by and my lid remains screwed on tight - my effervescent emotions contained by some bottle of strict control. Little happens to shake me. I feel awful inside, but I work hard not to show it, resolved to flatten out the fizz in a display of look-how-much-better-I-can-be. I invest monumental effort in acting out the role of "Everything is okay, just let me go home now, please." I am miserable, but everyone else is happier when it can't be seen - when it no longer overflows in a mess of sticky froth that someone has to clean.
I am rewarded for my efforts: long weekends in the quiet of my parents' home; lengthier periods off the ward, alone; eventually, access to my car keys and the glorious, tear-inducing excitement of taking myself for a swim.
By some strange sort of irony, it's these brief encounters with "normality" that begin to unsettle me - every experience of the "real" world leaving me shaken. Every little thing feels overwhelming. Every engagement - good or bad; positive or negative - sets off a cascade of thought and emotion that begins, painfully, to bubble and fizz.
Before I know it, it's all too much to keep inside of me. I try my hardest to turn the cap gently, letting some pressure off in a controlled and gradual way, but everything builds too quickly and the bottle explodes, centre screen, in one disastrous and all-too-familiar scene. I have ruined everything. I am demoralised and disheartened - my hard work completely undone.
I am never getting out of this hospital. We are right back at square one.
And yet February has other ideas, it seems - not quite ready to close on this scene.
Just as the darkness appears to settle heavily, wrapping itself around my bones like an extra layer of skin, something unexpected comes my way - a sudden, tiny glimmer of hope breaking in. It is surprising and unfamiliar - its shape still blurred around the edges, not yet definite or guaranteed - but as the month ends and the credits begin to roll, I find a distinct fragment of light reflected in my now-glittering tears.
Before I know it, it's all too much to keep inside of me. I try my hardest to turn the cap gently, letting some pressure off in a controlled and gradual way, but everything builds too quickly and the bottle explodes, centre screen, in one disastrous and all-too-familiar scene. I have ruined everything. I am demoralised and disheartened - my hard work completely undone.
I am never getting out of this hospital. We are right back at square one.
And yet February has other ideas, it seems - not quite ready to close on this scene.
Just as the darkness appears to settle heavily, wrapping itself around my bones like an extra layer of skin, something unexpected comes my way - a sudden, tiny glimmer of hope breaking in. It is surprising and unfamiliar - its shape still blurred around the edges, not yet definite or guaranteed - but as the month ends and the credits begin to roll, I find a distinct fragment of light reflected in my now-glittering tears.
xo
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