The Day After

My time over the last decade has felt like a non-stop effort to put together a giant puzzle made with millions of pieces. Some pieces seeming like they should fit where I want to put them, and yet never quite settling, the image it reveals skewed - off somehow.

Working through it I untangle the mess of pieces and try again, the puzzle finally coming together – the image beautiful and clear.

As life grows and moves around me, the ground shifts and I watch as the pieces jiggle loose. But I’m there to catch them, shifting them gently back into place before they can slide too far out of their proper place.

Suddenly an earthquake hits… an event of such a strong magnitude that I can’t even react before the table is thrown violently and the pieces are scattered around the room, chunks of a picture that I can’t even remember. Desperately I search around me, looking for fragments… but it’s confusing and the room becomes dark, ad although I know that the puzzle still exists… I can’t find it anywhere. I don’t know who or what I am. I can’t decipher the patch of puzzle that I put together two decades ago, from the one that I most recently began to work on. It’s disconnected, jumbled, and senseless.

I’m Alice, thrown into wonderland. The lights are bright, but the world is hazy. Everything is nonsense, and nothing feels ‘right’.

Slowly the lights come back on and I grab a section of the puzzle. I throw it onto the table haphazardly and cling to that tiny portion of a picture, knowing that it is right, and it is real.

One by one I gather more of the pieces, the sections still scattered, loose pieces here, there, and everywhere.

As the collection grows on the table I can now see more of the picture, but once again it is jaded, messy, and skewed.

I want to put it all together, go back to where I was… just move forward one more step and forget about what happened..

But I can’t. As I try to put two small sections together, I notice that the corner of one piece is chipped, and another is bent. In my haste to try and understand the collapse, I have trampled pieces… sometimes entire sections becoming broken.

As my awareness builds I can see the damage. Things that I have done to change the picture that cannot be undone… they might be healed, mended, glued, taped, or fixed… but they will never be the same.

That thought alone sends a wave of shock down my spine and I can feel myself shaking, the entire puzzle table threatening to spill again… the thought of repairing what was broken overwhelming.

This is the hardest part of a mental breakdown.

The day after.

It's Today.

It's like starting from scratch while the world continues as though nothing happened... because to them, it didn't. Not in the same way, or the same form. They watched the earthquake as it hit... as though from a theatre, me an actor - causing emotions to rise and swell, fear and anxiety to take hold as they watch the scene play out, not knowing what I will do, or if I will even find the light to go on. Pieces flew from the stage, hitting the audience as they landed... effecting them in a ripple effect. The brokenness extending, damaging beyond my reach. I've fallen behind... lost time... lost days, and hours (and in the past, even weeks). I feel out of place, alone, isolated... lost in a world of time and difference and choices.

I know I will rebuild... I know I will return to where I was. I know that I will have to change some habits, build new ones, re-learn myself. I will have to apologize, and I will have to accept. I will have to make choices. But for now... it's quiet. It's understanding the destruction, the triggers, the path. It's becoming myself again... simply finding the pieces and not worrying about putting them all back together today. It's nothing, and it's everything. Once again, I'm no longer the same and I will have to relearn the new path that I have to take to recover.

This is where I'm at.

This is the journey.