little pieces

 
  When I was eighteen, my life, which I had been desperatly clutching onto, began to fall away from me. I had been refusing to confront the reality of my situation. I wanted to remain young; unmarked by sadness, untouchable and invincible. I was completly unwilling to give into a pain which I feared, I would not be able to bare. 
 
Unfortunatly, pain, like joy or hope, does not pay attention to readiness or willingness or any other state of mind or being. pain arrives, without invitation, and, at first gradually, undertakes its consumption of all that may have existed before it. I did not stand a chance. 

I hated my life whilst this pain resided in me, it left no room for anything lighter or brighter than itself. Eventualy I saw the world as though veiwing it through a murky pond. Everything I viewed was not as it had been, I knew this, but i could not explain it. Now I can say that everything was different, changed in some way, the world had gone askew.

I was so utterly empty, and sure, in my deluded state that if I were to be broken and opened, their would be no heart beating inside.  I was concinced that I had died inwardly, and that somehow, my body was continuing to function, that those around me knew this in some visceral way but could not verbalise such a horrible truth.  "this is death", I thought, "I have died and now my body just has to catch up","I am rotting".

Sometimes, a smell so putrid it made me wince, would hit my nostrils and my fractured, racing mind would set off again, with its terrified, macabre rantings: "its the smell of death" "now my body is catching up and I am going to decompose" this thought frightened me so profoundly that I could no longer keep silent. "can't you smell that?" I asked my father and the doctor who sat opposite me, in an appointment made by my parents. "no", the doctor shook her head, "no, I can't smell anything".
   
I half understood that the smell was smelt only by me, in some way I even recognised that the world had not changed for others; that the eerie green light,the jumping shadows,the whispering voices , were only for me.  Still, at that moment my stomach lurched horribly because I knew then that the dreadful new reality that had become my life, was being created by my mind.
At this point (my strange ideas were transient and constantly changing) I had been expecting that the doctor would take one look at me and have me rushed into hospital for some lifesaving treatment for the strange illness which I had obviously contracted. I was so completly confused. Instead, she asked, after a long silence- in which I stared nervously around the room and opened and shut my mouth-,and to my genuine amazement-if I considered myself to have an eating disorder?  Another terrible moment of realisation followed.  I stared down at my legs and saw for the first time how thin I had become, my jeans, which had once fitted snugly around my thighs, sagged. later at home I took off my clothes stood infront of my bathroom mirror. I gazed first at my eyes, which seemed to me to contain no light, no life, a window not to my soul, but to an empty place, a joyless, pitiless expanse, and then at my body. It looked frail and fragile and not at all what I was used to seeing when I looked into the mirror.

It was such an awful time, dark, deeply lonely, and an experience from which I truly could not imagine recovering.  I saw no end to it, could not imagine feeling even remotely normal, let alone happy.  laughter, my own laughter that is, was a fading memory.  Photos of myself looking happy and content might as well have been someone else entirley as far as I was concerned.  That person had no knowledge of what life had in store for her had been given only hints, little emotional nudges towards the pains the world can contain for its occupiers.
 
I believed with great certainty at this time that I would never be happy again.  I was severly depressed, dillusional, depersonalised, underweight, deeply exhausted, yet unable to sleep. I went through a period in which I experienced, long, full blown panic attacks which were made even more distressing because to me, in my pychotic state they were confirmation that I was either about to die, or had been possesed by demons which wanted me to experience a living hell.

However,eventualy ,and with the right medication, the depression lifted, and while it would be a lie to say that my life has been nothing but fun since-life is rarley that-I have my sanity, my heart and all the parts of me which I thought I had lost forever, with the added strength I have gained from withstanding such an experience.

  "In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible    summer"