Sunshine

I saw the sun for the first time in two weeks today. I went downstairs (as we are now living in a new condo – the 4th place we’ve lived in since the start of the year) and purposely blinded myself with the sunshine. I was wearing a sweatshirt with the hoodie raised though as I could still feel the cold from the basement, as if it seeped into my bones permanently. I’m always cold now. Those two weeks away from the sun might very well have been an eternity.

I was sedated for the first two days. Dreamless sleep is a gift. After that though, the dreams were all the same. All so painfully hopeful, juxtaposing with reality in ways that made them medicate me even more. All the meds in the world, and I still couldn’t forget. Maybe I just want to forget. Remembering is so painful.

On this, my first day out of the basement, I find myself falling back into the routine that they established down there. I even let my husband do the mouth check after taking my meds. Is it strange that I find comfort in that? And stranger still that, on this, my first day out of the basement, all I want to do is...go back? It was safe there. Clean. And it was okay to be weird, crazy, to have an episode. Down there I was so far away from everything that hurt. And now, all I see are glimpses of what put me in this position in the first place.

All I see is...

I went downstairs to see the sun, but I want to go back to even further down, back to the basement, so I won’t have to remember that the sun continues to shine, even without...that.

They’re trying to cure me of this. Maybe that’s why I can’t see how Some Day can happen anymore. I don’t know anything anymore. I want to wait, but I’m so tired. And it’s only been two weeks.