Relapse

The break comes slow; a funeral’s pace for the brain’s unraveling. You stop swallowing the pills, and the shadows surround you again with their familiar comforts and unbreakable grip. Death seems so beautiful; an epic climax to the moving picture that is your insufferable life. Stop, go, drive. Tell them you have lost yourself again when you get there. They’ll ask you if you have a plan. I do. I did. Sit down, dazed, and let a stranger take your vital signs. There they are on the beeping machine, screaming proof that you’re alive. Lie down in a cold, dark room. The bed is like concrete, the silence would lull you to sleep if not for those voices and their cacophony. Meet them, all the others who tried, like you, to abandon life. They don’t look at you like the others; they observe your pain and compare it to theirs. Take the pills you’re given in a tiny plastic cup. Turn off the sound of your racing, unbalanced mind. Tell yourself you need the medicine. Meet a forgotten, abused mother who sat in a running car in a locked garage. Meet the one who slit her wrists. Fall in love with them, laugh like you’ve never laughed before. Leave them when you are declared sane again. Hugs, touching words. Remember the way you belonged with them in a way you’ll never belong with anyone else. The world doesn’t provide a warm welcome. In fact, it tries to crush you all over again. So you fight against it this time; you give yourself another chance. Open your eyes in the cold, clear light of morning peaking in through your own bedroom window. Stay sick, but stay well. Breathe, live, repeat.