Under Rose-Tainted Skies

by Louise Gornall

Forcing your crumbling kid to move is near impossible for any parent with a soul.

A parent with a mentally ill child needs to have a lot of patience.

“It’s not stupid if it makes you feel afraid.

TRUTH!!!

“I know it’s irrational,” I tell her, because I do know that. I know that you can’t live your life waiting for disaster to strike. I know this.

The worst part about being mentally ill is knowing that your thought process isn't rational.

It comes and goes like most of my compulsions, depending on how stressed/emotional/sleepy/hormonal I am.

I did not know that is how compulsions work.

YOU MIGHT THINK THAT now that sustenance has been thrown into the mix, my debilitating agoraphobia will take a back seat to my survival instincts. You’d be wrong.

Again... our thoughts are irrational.

My fingers find an old, flaking scab on my knee and pick it until it bleeds. I need the sting to bring me back, force me to relax, but it doesn’t.

That sounds familiar...

It’s never made sense to me, how I can crave fresh air and be so afraid of it simultaneously. Dr. Reeves tells me it’s not supposed to make sense.

Being a bitch is something that often happens when I’m forced to endure things I’m afraid of. It’s my least favorite stage of anxiety.

Irritation

“I’m going to study architecture over there.”

That's why she builds things with spit.

See, anxiety doesn’t just stop. You can have nice moments, minutes where it shrinks, but it doesn’t leave. It lurks in the background like a shadow, like that important assignment you have to do but keep putting off or the dull ache that follows a three-day migraine. The best you can hope for is to contain it, make it as small as possible so it stops being intrusive. Am I coping? Yes, but it’s taking a monumental amount of effort to keep the dynamite inside my stomach from exploding.

Of course I can’t ignore it, because there is a certain amount of safety in knowing everything there is to know about a situation.

But all I see in my real-life reflection are blunt smudges of shadow. Fragile. Upset. Weak. Thin. Afraid. Failing. And tired. Above everything else, tired of battling with my own mind.

If he comes back, if I let him in, as hard as I try, I won’t be able to hide all the madness from him.

she doesn’t like to interrupt my stream of panic because she knows my mouth is directly quoting my mind and she wants to hear exactly what is going on inside my head. I think she’s brave.

Which sounds so simple, but whether I like to admit it or not, anxiety has become my best friend.

“I’m sick!” I shout. But not because I’m angry. It’s like I’m trying to make myself listen. No, not listen, hear. The same way a sergeant drills instructions into the heads of his platoon.

We can assume the best, but we can’t choose how people perceive us. We can, however, choose how those views affect us.” I stare at the tree on the table, realizing I’m a hypocrite. I’ve judged Luke before he even had a chance to judge me.

It’s weird, the release I get from dragging the tiny metal arm across my skin. It’s like slamming on brakes for an emergency stop; my head will go dead the second I feel the blade bite into me. All the buzzing receptors in my brain will forget the panic and concentrate on registering the hurt, the blood. It’s drastic, a last resort. But so easy. Like breathing, blinking. One beat in time. One quick slice, where nobody can see, and it all stops. This is not about dying. This is about trying to get back some control.

Mental health is usually the last place people go when they think about someone being sick.

“When people say weird, what they really mean is different. And difference has never been a bad thing.”

We’re both laughing. This moment right here, this is the best normal moment I’ve had in the past four years. I want to put it in a box and keep it forever.

The general populace is compassionate.

“It’s not okay,” I snap. How can it be okay? I don’t forget to do things that make me feel safe. I don’t. Except I did. Who even am I?

“Do you think maybe I could borrow your no-bullshit shield for school sometime?” “Absolutely. I’ll mail it to you. What’s your address?”

“This might sound odd, but I can’t wish he were any different, you know? Like, I can’t start wishing away pieces of his personality, because then he wouldn’t be my dad.”

“How does a person, let’s say a guy, in this case, go about making plans with a girl who can’t leave her house?” He lowers his chin, looks at me from under his eyebrows. “Hypothetically,” he reminds me.

Sooo cute.

You are beautiful, always. You would be beautiful if you got a giant butterfly tattooed across your face. Beauty comes from how you treat people and how you behave. But if a little lipstick makes you smile, then you should wear it and forget what anyone else thinks.”

I feel a sting in my thumb like I’ve been bitten by a fire ant. My nail’s broken through skin. There’s blood. My mind flashes back to last week and the well of scarlet pooling on my thigh. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t. I was just itching. Everybody itches. Everybody.

“Obviously,” she says. “I’m just a little shocked you made it.”

It’s official. I’ve become that kid who’s best friends with her mom.

“She can leave her house whenever she wants? Ugh. So unoriginal.”

“I’m confused. Is this about me kissing you or about your own insecurities?”

He was right. I wasn’t angry because he kissed me. I didn’t tell him to leave because he made a mistake. We came undone when I let my insecurities take control. Because I was obsessing over everything I wasn’t, and everything I thought he wanted.

I meet with resistance, like there’s an invisible barrier between skin and scissors. I can’t make them touch, can’t make myself do it.

He makes me feel safe. I need to feel safe again.

I liked reading Audrey’s story because never, not once, did she entertain the notion that she had been beaten.

Your mind adapts to what worse is. Suddenly, that thing that seemed so terrifying at first is dwarfed by the next challenge that comes your way. But you adapt again and again and again, until you find yourself fearless.

The medicine I’ve started swallowing delays my crazy just long enough for me to complete the action before deciding it’s going to destroy me.

But not before I take the last step twice.