I felt it coming. I felt the dark cloud floating behind me, growing rapidly in size and beginning to close in around myself. It was an ever swirling vertex of soulless black and dark gray that sent every hair on my body shrieking up and for an utterly unbearably cold chill to run down to the base of my spine. It crackled and growled softly, not really audible enough to be distracting, but just loud enough to make myself flinch, to make me shake with sadness, enough to bring tears to my eyes. It growled of past disappointments, my uselessness in sports and certain classes, the fear that I no longer belong, that if I disappeared no one would know or remember, that I was completely unnecessary on this Darwin’s law of a world. It hissed about things I said that hurt people, how I’ve been hurt by other people’s comments. It reminded me of all the things I will never accomplish in my life, how if only I could do this maybe I would be useful.
I fought it. I left the group of friends I had been standing with and headed across the hall, seeking solitude as far away as possible from people. They can’t know I told myself. They would worry, they would want to help, but there is nothing they could do. There is no help for me. The cloud is too powerful to be blown away by the bright sunshine of my friends. It were simply the cumulonimbus cloud of sadness. Dark and threatening that couldn’t be penetrated until it decided to move itself. It was always what the cloud wanted.
I found myself walking down the hall and out the doors of the building. I instantly regretted walking outside due to the freezing temperatures, but it was too late. I couldn’t fight it anymore. The cloud swirled lightly around my arms, around my back and stomach, around my neck, and over my face making my vision blur. I felt myself start shaking from more than just the sub-zero temperatures, goose bumps dotting my arms and legs like little tattoos. My chest became heavy and hard with every new breath as I tried to take deeper ones like the therapist said, but the more I tried to calm down the more tense, upset, and lost I got. The cloud wrapped tight around my knees, making me not so gracefully fall against the brick wall. I slid slowly down onto the frozen cement and pulled my knees to my chest. I ducked my head down and tried to fight once more, but it was too late.
My breathing quickened and tears burned in my eyes. They started plummeting to the earth as I shook my head and felt a cry build up in the back of my throat like a piece of lump dry bread. I was shaking uncontrollably as I became submerged into the cloud. I no longer heard the gentle hum of the running cars in the parking lots, no longer heard the track team running, shouting, complaining about the cold, I didn’t even hear my left foot excessively tap to an unknown beat drifting around in my head. My chest became tighter as the first cry escaped my chapped lips. My tears followed the cries as I started making a puddle below me, probably in the process of becoming ice. My nose started stuffing up with snot as I cried and cried, no longer caring about anything else other than all the things I’ve done wrong. All the tests I have failed, all those questioned answered wrong in front of the class, the teachers I never really got along with. I thought of all the people who might have taken my sarcastic comments seriously, the freshman who I have pushed around to go at a quicker pace in the hallway, the people who had seen me at my very worst.
Then I was there. The small colorless space that was considered my room for more than two weeks. The constant noise of the machines I was hooked up to beeping and warning of all the problems that could occur if I don’t eat this, or breathe this way. The automatic hospital bed that re-adjusted itself every time you moved. The windows they almost always covered. The little toilet in the corner of the room which had no walls or doors for privacy, just a flimsy curtain that didn’t help at all. I moaned as the pain spread everywhere. I pushed for meds on my clicker, but it no longer had any pain medication left. I yelled for a nurse while trying to avoid crying all over myself. She had been prepared and was fixing up the tube when a sharp pain started circulating all over my stump. I flinched and bit hard into my lip trying to avoid screaming. The shaking worsened as every nerve in my body jumped in a panicked plea to find the rest of my leg, to find the part of me that was forever lost. I wasn’t biting my tongue anymore, I was screaming. I was screaming for it to stop, screaming for it to go away, screaming for my leg back, screaming for this everlasting nightmare to end. My chest was tighter than a hangman’s noose as it twisted into itself as I continued to wail. The pain was only getting sharper, deeper, longer lasting with every screeched sound that escaped my throat, but I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t care about living, about fighting through the pain in the hope that one day it wouldn’t be like this anymore. I was just worn to the bone from fighting.
That’s when the warmth came. The warmth that first clouded my brain, making my head inflate like a hot air balloon. I felt myself grow tired as I leaned back into the bed, allowing the sweet warmth of medication drag me into a painless existence. I felt it creep down my throat, my arms, my leg and a half, everywhere; calming every inch of my body until I couldn’t feel any of it anymore. Then the soft voice danced into my head.
“It’s going to be okay Haven, it’s going to be okay now.” The voice whispered.
I tried to nod, and I felt the pain fade as my crying softened.
“Is it going away?” the voice asked, concern drifting through every word they spoke. I nodded and waited for the darkness to finally come.
Then I was back. Back on the freezing cement outside my school. My fingers and toes felt numb, and the rest of my body was fighting to keep warm. My head was still tucked into my knees, but someone was sitting next to me, holding me to them as tried to talk to me.
“Haven, if you can sit up please do. We need to try and get you inside.” He said lightly. I knew the voice, but I was too gone to truly remember his name. I shook my head drastically, not wanting to go inside to face my peers in the condition I was in. He was rubbing my arms either to keep me warm or to reassure me, either one I was fine with. Staying in my curled form I leaned into him, my crying softening more as I broke from the cloud, escaping it’s clutches of sadness. I tried to mumble something out, but it was all gibberish, and he only shushed me.
“Don’t worry about it Haven, we’ll move when you’re ready.” He said.
I nodded solemnly, hoping that one day I would be truly ready.