New Day Rising

When I finally drift off that night my mind is filled with swirling colours, patterning my skin with all the colours I have gathered in my jar, as I struggle to travel incognito through my dream world...but something’s wrong. It’s not as easy as it usually is, I feel like the mask is slipping...just as I begin to feel unsettled, I snap awake. Disoriented I watch my ceiling fan spin, what was happening in my dream? Uh, it’s fading fast already. I vaguely remember not fitting in...Oh what’s new, stop thinking about it already.

As I lay awake I feel suffocated by my duvet, I can feel the panic rising as I kick my way free and lie panting under the turning fan, and my mind is reaching already. I can practically feel it dragging towards topics I just don’t want to think about. Going through this afternoon was enough, I’d finally gotten to sleep, so it seems cruel fate for me to have to face it again- but now I’m up I might as well deal with it. There’ll be no rest til I face it down and win. It probably doesn’t seem like a lot, a mother raving about her pride in her daughter as she has gone through her final year of schooling with so much happening, without giving in to her less healthy ways of coping. Well that’s how she sees the reality of the situation. Only I know better, only I know how well I can really pretend...

A moment of weakness had overwhelmed me, listening to the praise was finally too much “I’m not alright ok!” I’d snapped “I’m not perfect and brilliant and always relaxed!”... “I’m falling apart! Why can’t you fucking see that I am broken?!” Oh no, I’d regretted it instantly but what could I do, the seeds of destruction were out there, I’d have to explain what I’d meant somehow. Eventually I could find no better way to elucidate what I had meant by ‘broken’ than to tug up my sleeve and flip over my arm, exposing to my mum my pale inner arm, and along with it, my darkest secret. The one I had held within my heart, heavy as a stone, for the past year.  

But she thought all that was over, I went willingly enough to the psychologist...and soon this supposedly highly qualified doctor pronounced me fine, I didn’t need to go back, I was ‘better’. Until that day, I never really knew how well I could pretend. As far as my mum was concerned we’d dealt with that, and we’d buried it in the past. Just something else to make me a stronger person. When really, I was so much weaker I was just a tremor away from shattering into a million and one pieces. And that tremor, turned out to be her speech on pride. No one ever warns you enough about words...sure you learn from an early age that you can hurt people with words, that you can tear them down, that you can humiliate and expose people with words. But you want to know the secret? You know what they don’t tell you about words? The most dangerous words of all are the ones we speak with good intentions. With a whispered I love you a partner can be dragged unwillingly into something they weren’t keen on, your sincere I’ll miss you could be unknowingly preventing your sister from moving away, and a truthful speech of pride from a parent- well that can make you feel like dying, because you know it’s just not true. And if they love you for a persistence, courage and strength you just don’t possess...how could they possibly care about the shell of a daughter who’ll be left behind when all the lies burst like overinflated balloons, stuffed with the weight of possibilities that they just couldn’t match.

Lying on my back I can see the golden orange sun beginning to rise, hanging low above the horizon as it begins its unhurried daily trek across the wide sky. Seriously, how many times should one person have to see the sun rising in one week!? Twice in two days, that’s just not on. I mean, I know I don’t sleep, but usually I’ll be asleep for four o’clock or so to get a couple of hours before I have to act awake and refreshed for school...or at least, for leaving for school. Stretching I sit up, and swing my legs off the side of the bed, might as well start getting ready, there’s no point doing otherwise at this stage.

Hey Guys,

Just wondering if you got that the bit in italics was a flashback? I'm not too sure about this bit to be honest, I think I'm rambling to much, need to get my storyline running again! Grr. Oh well, for now, words are words. Stay safe, RJx