How It Feels to Float

by Helena Fox

And almost every second of every minute I’m with them, I feel like I’m seeing the scene from somewhere else. In front of a screen maybe, watching someone else’s life.

You can wish as hard as you want for something to stay, but it will slip right through you, drift to the bottom of you as you stand, watching, watery, logged, bleating bloated blubbering, doing and holding nothing. Look at yourself, Biz. Do you see? pushandshoveandslap How useless/stupid/hopeless you are? Of course the waves should take you. Yes. Of course. They should.

I didn’t ask to be born. But here I am.

wait in bed. For time to pass. For life to stop being bad/worse/worst. For the thoughts to stop sauntering in.

Grief feels like this: an okay day and a good day and an okay day then a bad. Bad that follows and empties you. Bad like a sinkhole. ° ° ° ° ° It feels like an unrelenting urge to lay your head down on the table, wherever you are, whomever you are with.

He said, “She needs medication.” He ripped off a piece of paper with words on it. I squinted at the prescription. He’d written medical words and a signature that looked like it had gone through a mulcher. But all I saw was: Elizabeth Martin Grey is a fuckup and should probably not exist.

Have you felt so sad you couldn’t breathe? Has your throat hurt, your chest hurt, your bones? Is this why you have become benumbed? Are you still obsessed with death with deathwithdeathwithdeath? Do you still feel alone in spite of being surrounded by almost eight billion people including twins who come into your room and kiss your face and a mum who brings you warm soy milk when you can’t sleep and a house with walls and a roof? Why are you so sad and empty when you have a house with walls and a roof and people who love you?

“What do you wish for, Elizabeth?” she says. She says it gently, like she’s coaxing a kitten out of a box. I keep it simple. I say, “I would like my dad to come back.” This feels like an uncomplicated answer: Once upon a time, I had a dad and now I do not, and wouldn’t it be nice if he returned?

Of course. Here I am. The sad girl. This is sad. My dad is dead. People are sad when people are dead.

want Dad here, hovering over the edge of the chair while I talk to Bridgit. I want him on the end of my bed, on the arm of the couch, beside the sea, with me. Telling me stories in fragments, putting my past together like pieces of sea glass. I want him here, whole, pinned into place. I want him to not be disappointed in me. I want his eyes not to go widewidewide. I want him talking, being; I want him dead or alive.

If we are a blip between non-existences, why bother staying?

don’t understand anything and it’s like my sadness has drained my brain and now I can’t learn.

You’re not lesser for having the need; just remember this. You might have to burn some days, dodge other days. It’s a constant adjustment, isn’t it, to survive?

Can you be better when you’re still sad—long patches of sad swooping in at night when there aren’t any sounds to cover it? Are you better when you still feel blank, fog rising inside you, great empty spaces like those moors people walk on in British films? Are you better when, as you’re going through the motions—talking, laughing, listening, walking the dog, helping Mum with dinner—at the same time there’s this lost feeling walking beside you, so you can touch it, like a tongue on a tooth? Here’s the shape of it. Here’s the gap. Here’s the space where something good was. Here’s the want.

I have pushed myself out into the world because logic and Bridgit say if I keep myself busy and in the moment, I’ll get happy. So look: I’m out and about! Present and accounted for! Communing with the people! Soon there’ll be no sadness here! Right?

Grace and I would hold hands sometimes as we walked and Grace would beam light over all the people and their tiny lives. And if I had known she was going to abandon me, I’d have taken a picture of us, walking under the lanterns, our hands laced, and I would have wallpapered it onto my skin for warmth.

I’d ask Bridgit, but I’m scared of what she might say. Elizabeth, I’m sorry to tell you, but you’re still a basket case. You’re still forgetting to take your meds; you haven’t returned to school; you still haven’t discovered your life’s purpose. I suspect we’ll be working together until you’re ninety. And I’ll still be wearing these fucking excellent scarves while you’ll still be forgetting to wash.

Why do you keep trying, Biz? Why do you even exist? Wouldn’t it be easier to just not?

All of us can be altered in a blink. Fire reduces you to nothing. Dad’s body in an urn on the bookshelf. Water erodes rocks. Cliffs crumble. You are not real, Biz— It’s true. Perhaps I am actually the fire? Or the sea? Perhaps I am every leaping molecule. The fire pops, showering sparks. “Whoa!” says Jasper. He reaches across my body instinctively. A wave crashes. And I flip back in—a slow somersault into my body. My belly is warm. My mouth is full of sweet and salt. My skin is here, my body, my bones. Take it for now; take it in, Biz. Hold it, this trembling, borrowed time.

everythings. I think of all of us, passing each other like turtles, heaving our pasts on our backs.

(I’m a normal girl, Jasper! Really. Look at me, messaging and walking on beaches and pretending not to miss my dad so much I burn.) I haven’t told Jasper about Dad turning hazy and disappearing. Or about floating out of my body, or the blankness that slides in. I haven’t said how slippery things can seem.

and we are happy—if you took a photograph of us, you’d see it is true—and maybe that’s a miracle for the both of us.

suddenly I feel so alone it’s like the universe has yawned open and sucked me in, rolling me like a moth in spider silk. I’m cocooned by nothing, and there’s no path out.

It is hard to accept. Death is a hard sell. You need years and years and years and years and years to get used to it.

Dad is a shiver in the air. Dad is see-through. Dad’s voice is a hum. “I am so sorry I couldn’t do it for longer, sweetheart. I am so sorry I didn’t stay. I wish I could explain it—if there was a way—but maybe there isn’t a way or a why. If I could, I’d show you, I wish—” Dad leans forward. He picks up my hand, his hand/my hand; we are figments, fragments. Dad is a measurement of love.

The first time, the first time— the first time he saw me. The first time he kissed the top of my head. The first time I fell asleep in his arms. The first time I walked towards him. Arms stretched out. The first time I said his name. The first time he said mine. “Biz.” Laughter, toddle feet, sand and sun through leaves. “Biz.” Ice cream on chins, rainbow lorikeets. “I love you,” says Dad. He’s faint now. He’s talked for hours. He’s laid my stonework down. It’s hard to see him; he’s fading out. Biz, he says. I love you.

The new medication means I don’t hear the photos anymore. I mean, I could, if I wanted. I could keep listening, if I wanted. I could listen harder, but I am trying to let the pictures be quiet so other sounds can come in. The medicine means I should be able to think more clearly. Or is that less clearly? I am not sure. Anyway, it’s supposed to make me better. I am waiting to be better. At least, better than I have been, better than before. It’s a waiting game; I am a waiter, would you like fries with that, haha.

If I text him, what will he say? “Sorry, I’m busy?” or, “While you were gone, I realized you were too crazy to deal with, so from now on I will only be friends with people who don’t talk to their dead dads?” or, only silence?

Why’d it happen? Maybe I’d hit a tipping point, of moments sitting in chairs looking into the eyes of people who were paid to care about me. Perhaps it was because of the medication. Or, perhaps Dad laid enough stone down for me to speak.

I’m going to float again. I know it will happen. This moment will pass. Another one will come. Hard will come—grief and dark and worry and loss. Again. Again. Sooner. Later. There’s a chance I’ll float out of it for the rest of my life.

Is everything okay? That’s impossible to say. It’s okay now. It’s okay now— But Mum’s leaking. She’s in tears in the dusky light, squeezing my hand. “It’s too much to ask of a human,” Mum says. “Don’t you think, Biz?” I don’t know what she means, and I know exactly, so I say, “Yeah.” “I mean, to love someone who lives outside your body, whose life you can’t control. You can’t hold anything still. You can’t be sure anything will be okay. You can’t stop the sky from falling.”

“Life does kind of suck,” I say. And it’s true. Life is impossible, chaotic. It’s a maze of sorrow and sunlight; it can’t be mapped. Mum leans against me. “Yeah, it kind of does,” she says. “Yeah.” “Not always,” she adds. “Sometimes.” “Definitely always sometimes, it sucks,” I say. Mum laughs. She looks over the tangle of yard—twisty trees, scrambled grass, shadows shifting. She takes in a breath. “The thing is, Biz, it’s also the best thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “All of it, this, you, the twins, here, now, Dad, me. Really. It’s the best thing I have ever done.” She rests her head on my shoulder. I lean my head on her head. We watch the changing light. It keeps moving, it gets deeper, it won’t stop changing. Life is terrible and beautiful, isn’t it? It’s the best/worst at the exact same time, all possibilities at once.

Jasper’s hopping off his motorbike, he’s taking off his helmet, he sees me standing on the veranda, he’s grinning, he’s a miracle. And the twins run out and say, “Jasper!” They’re jumping up and down, two wild, bouncing beans. Mum’s at the door too, saying, “Jasper!” And Jasper’s flying up the path like a comet. His grin is like the universe beginning and like atoms splitting and Mum—who’s seen love and felt love and been broken and mended by it—sees my face, and gives my arm a squeeze. “Yeah,” she says, and her voice breaks a bit. And when Jasper and I hug, hard, and he spins me and doesn’t let go, the twins leap and scream and Mum can’t help but laugh because she knows. How it is. To be in this place, in this moment, under this sun, for as long as you can be, for as long as you get. For as long as you can stay to see what might happen next.

I have lived with mental illness my whole life. I carry with me complex PTSD, anxiety disorder, dissociative disorder, and clinical depression. I walk with these things, but they don’t define me. I live with, and beyond them. I do my best to speak out and seek help when I need it. To my family, friends, health care providers, and lovely strangers who have sat with me when I’ve fallen, who have walked beside me when I’ve begun the climb back to health, who have loved me through all the terrible, wonderful, and everything-in-between moments of my life and given me hope: I am more grateful to you than I can begin to describe. I am so very glad to still be here. Every day, I do my best to see the colors. I take note. I breathe them in.