the bathroom floor

Creature of habit. I crawl onto the tiles and with arms wrapped around knees tight, I sink into the familiar space. Solace. A space I have always found myself in when the waves are unmanageable. I beg for the door to stay shut, please don't come searching for me. I so badly want to disappear and stay hidden. Let it flow through, let it run its course. So little can be done anymore but to just move through it. It's a state of mind, I'm told. It can be controlled. And I have. Though it is a smart infectious little disease and it learns my coping mechanisms and transforms itself so it comes as something new the next time, is triggered by something unfamiliar and so I am back at the beginning. It's an incredibly frustrating battle. The voice tells me you don't believe me, that you think I'm making it up. Another trick it's learned. Gets me when I'm down, makes me think you are the enemy. How helpless I must seem - and what an infuriating position to take as someone as strong headed and willed as I. I hold steady in my stubborn disposition - wanting to apologize, wanting to be reassured that you don't think I'm crazy. That becomes harder to do as it wears away my strength. I feel crazy. And then, without warning, I am broken. I am "cantgetoutofbedordressmyselforeatgoodfood" depressed. I'll blame the rain today. It's dark and eerie and something bigger is happening, I can feel it. A shift of sorts, perhaps. Our mother is warning us, we cannot keep on the path we've so stubbornly kept. We will be the first to go. Another worry to add to the ever growing list of worries that keeps me from doing much of anything. So I do just enough of everything to make it seem like I am doing something, but instead I am sinking. Deep. Into the bathroom floor.