What Happened Next - Getting Better

I feel fine.

I mean, I feel fine. Great, even! Yesterday I decided on a whim to ask Dad if I could go to work with him today - take my laptop, start the work for my new job search, and just hang out with him for a while. He said sure, Fridays are a slow day for him anyway and hardly anyone goes in to the office. So this morning I got up at five o'clock, walked with Dad to the bus stop, and we talked for the next ten hours - on the train, in his cubicle, at breaks. I talked his ears off! I was bubbly. He kept teasing me, and I laughed every time. And I didn't just have fun - I also worked through a couple aptitude tests, rewrote my resume for the general public (as opposed to education administrators), searched for jobs and even applied for one at the MTC that I think I'd be great at. It was a terrific day. I hummed; I skipped; I danced around.

I was joyous.

. . .
. . . .
. . .

And that bothers me.

Now, with the night falling around me - and after talking to a few people who came with shoulders to cry on and found me singing instead - I feel uneasy. Bad. Betrayed.

Betrayed? By what?

By the medication? Do I think the medication is stealing away my rightfully-earned pain? Do I feel like it's turned me into something fake?

Or am I feeling betrayed by myself? Like my present self has killed my past self, erased her and the experiences, cut her loose so I can be free?

I haven't forgotten my students. I haven't forgotten the time I spent there, or the effort and dreams I had invested. I haven't forgotten any of that.

But I have forgotten the pain.

Already, I can't reach it anymore. I can see (through a haze) the wretched, desiccated girl who was so torn by agony it ripped the sinew from her bones. I can see her, and I know that she is me. Not was; IS. Fundamentally. She is a part of myself without which I would not be myself.

But I can't feel her anymore.

And it makes me angry. I'm watching my other self through bullet-proof glass (for my protection, they say), and I can see they've got her in a padded cell. She's bound, tied up like a criminal, like she's crazy. And I know she has screamed herself to exhaustion because I can see her, straitjacketed, leaning against the wall and crying.

But she's not crazy. I know her; I've known her all my life. I love her! And I can't stand to see the way they've chained her up and condemned her to bedlam. I want to yell at the doctors, rage at them, tell them she doesn't belong there - she's not crazy!

Would they believe me?

This. This, I think, is why I'm upset about being happy. Because my health set against her illness makes her look crazy. And the speed of my recovery makes my affliction seem ridiculous. The reality of my joy makes my sorrow seem fake.

And it wasn't fake.

Whatever the cause, I know with every fiber of my being that the darkness that engulfed me - that nearly consumed me - was REAL. It was substantial. It existed within me as tangibly as the oxygen atoms in my blood that keep me alive. It was more than fancy, more than feeling. It was.

But I can't feel it anymore.

And if I can't feel it, can't hold it, can't shake it in the faces of the naysayers, then how can I prove that she isn't crazy? To the doctors, or to myself? How can I get them to let her go, to let her come home with me?

How can I be whole again?