22
I wake to the dream I’m in a world of broken glass. It’s everywhere: glittering slivers wafting in the air I breathe; jagged shards cobbled in the path I stand upon; serrated flakes that are tiled in glimmering fields, before rising into precariously stacked mountains; and a sky that might be a shattered mirror. I’m twenty-five and going through my second serious bout of depression, struggling to find functionality and purpose in a life that feels like it’s irreparably breaking. It’s not surprising to be here. Part of me, I think, abides here, and it’s a case of just how present I am. Now I am wholly here. Every step…
21
I wake to an exhaustion that tries to wrestle me back into sleep. Getting out of bed, I perform my morning stretches – the little I can do to get some motion into my neck and back without aggravating anything. I’m sure my body’s a minefield. Years of chronic pain, of anxiety, of obsessive introspection, has groomed my mind, and my sympathetic nervous system, to fixate on anything untoward, and then exaggerate whatever’s reported. While I’m lying on my belly, arms outstretched, and arcing my shoulders and upper torso back and forth twenty-four times, I feel if I just fall still, I’ll drop back into sleep. It’s a weird juxtaposition;…