Pink rashes

Drugs work.

Six months of drugs, and I'm no longer unhappy: I'm no longer in any kind of pain. I no longer pine for The Boy, or for love, or think about him in any way other than with distaste at my own weakness. I no longer hate myself, or agree that I am 'poison'; I no longer care what others think about me, or feel the need to claw for some kind of reassurance that I am worth loving. I don't cringe when I look in the mirror anymore, and I don't cry at parties; I don't sob in the shower, and I don't run to the toilets in the middle of class for any other reason than to go to the toilet. I don't wish I was smaller, or darker, or more American, or owner of a different shaped nose; I don't imagine what life would be like if I could be louder, or quieter, or much cleverer, or much less so. I don't look at the past and wish I could change it, and I don't look at the future I wanted and still wish I could have it. I don't play scenes over and over again in my head, as if I could ever change them. For the first time in my life I have started to believe that losing me is a loss, and that just because someone doesn't know doesn't make it any less true: it just makes them more stupid than they were for losing me in the first place.

And, while I'm still instinctively raw - while I still automatically shy away from any kind of romance or intimacy - it's in a scabbing, healed over kind of way: not in a fresh wound kind of way. And it's with the knowledge - a new strength that runs through the middle of me like the steel pin in a broken bone - that none of the past will ever happen again. Because I'm no longer a person who will let it.

The drugs work, but now it's time to stop. I don't need them anymore, and I don't want them anymore. I don't want to feel hard, and resilient, and distant. I don't want to feel impervious to everything around me: untouchable and unreachable. I don't want to feel calm, and serene, when I've never been calm and serene. I don't want to feel incapable of love, even if I'm also incapable of pain, and I don't like the smile I've started to believe is my own: a placid, peaceful smile, that doesn't reach my eyes. I don't like the fact that my own laughter surprises me, and I hate the fact that my writing has become so empty, and so emotionless, and so devoid of beauty, because I can't feel anything at all, and so when I write that's all that comes out: nothing.

I'm scared. I'm scared of going back to where I was: to the place where everything hurt, and I thought about him all of the time, and I hated myself all of the time. I'm scared of waking up in the morning and crying, and going to bed at night and crying, and walking around in the middle of the day and crying. But I'm far, far more scared of never crying again. And of never hurting again. And I'm terrified of drugging myself so far and so deeply that I forget who I was in the first place.

It's time to start feeling again: the good, and the bad. It's time to wake up in the morning and not know exactly how I'll feel at every minute of the day; to hear and see from the inside, instead of constantly on the edge. I want to get excited again, or upset if I have to. I want the pink rash on my neck that turns up when I'm embarrassed or shy or nervous or anxious - a rash I haven't seen in six months - because it means that I'm reacting to the world again, and letting it in. I want to feel as if things are real again, instead of running past me like a film I'm always, always watching. And I want to be inspired again, so that when I speak there's something to say.

I've had the rest I so desperately needed: the six months of sleep and nothingness, away from the hurt and emotion that wore me out. I'm finally ready to wake up again.

The drugs work.

And that is exactly why I don't need them anymore.