If I could speak during an episode I would probably tell you that your well intended jokes don’t make this easier. Faking a smile is impossibly hard when I am trying to disguise my skin and bones as an acceptable member of society.

Sometimes my emotions feel like a human being; physical, demanding and in need of my entire body. I feed them because I’ve never been able to ignore someone who is in need.

I must tap my foot faster than my heart or my stomach will explode into my chest. When my body is imploding in on itself because of my hair trigger brain, I run through the drills I was taught by someone who has never felt this way. By someone who knows that no amount of breaths will protect me from the blast. Like a school child hiding under her desk, this is only a distraction until the inevitable rains down and the whole world disappears.

If I could speak in this moment I would probably tell you goodbye. No matter how many times I have seen the end of the world, I always believe it IS the end. How could anything grow back in a place that repeatedly destroys itself. My body is a vessel and my mind is a natural disaster, senseless and unaccommodating.

The sand bags under my eyes are strong but they cannot stop the flood. They create a **** at best, until the stinging in my throat is no longer bearable and I willingly strip the windows of their boards and defense strategies.

When my chest becomes a balloon with a hole in the middle, when meditation becomes suffocation and I wish trees would produce helium instead of air so I could float away. When you look at me and think “it’s just in your head,” I wish you understood that ,yes, it’s just in my head.
It is in my head.
It is inside of me.
It is a part of me.

If I could speak in this moment, I would tell you that I have studied amputation but there are no Cliff Notes for taking out a part of your soul. I would tell you that attention is the last thing on my mind. I would explain why the closet floor is the only place I can be terrified of the world without the world being terrified of me.

I have watched the end of mental illness. I was there when schizophrenia turned to dementia and forced my grandmother to forget all the dilutions her brain worked so hard to create. As if nature was cleaning the slate but showed up 80 years past due and forgot to apologize.

When I look into the mirror I should see a solid form but sometimes I see static and I wonder if this means ,somewhere, hiding beneath my hair is an off switch. If it could be held down for ten seconds would I reset or lose the ability to come back.

If I could speak in this moment I would tell you I am not coming back. I am changed through every self induced tragedy. The chemical make up of my mind is an evolving experiment and this shell you see is just a test subject.

If I could speak in this moment...

If I could speak in this moment...

I probably wouldn’t.