N.A.

I knew it was back first thing yesterday. My unwelcome visitor had crept in during the night, absorbing all of its darkness, and presented it to me as a gift upon waking. It had been a month, two months, maybe. But I'd used up my allotted happiness just last week, at graduation. (Yay, I did it! I did it well! And I didn't die!) Foreboding overwhelmed me, because I no longer remembered how to deal with it. My It. My invisible, irritating It. My extenuating circumstances forms, the please select any disability you may have from the drop-down list, my I can’t go out tonight, sorry. Sorry.

The brain has a wonderful, terrible capacity for self-censorship, for erasure of its deepest hurts; I am astonished afresh every time at just how devastating, yet silent, each ordeal is. Today I did go out, albeit unshowered, jeans-and-T-shirt-clad in the blinding heat. I still made way for prams on the pavement, still smiled at the gurgling apple-cheeked babies. I was not bowed or bent, my head high as though the oppressive azure sky was not weighing me down. I didn’t frown, my lips a neutral balmed line, my gaze hidden beneath the implacable black of my sunglasses. I might even have looked tranquil, rather than dazed.

I am a master of deception. Or should that be mistress? Both- I rule and am ruled by it.

All I did today was go to the bank and buy fabric softener. Both super-responsible grown-up things that would have had to be done at some point anyway. Tick, tick. Then I was lost. I wandered aimlessly. Swarms of bare-legged French students filled the streets; German families took photos in chattering clusters; Korean tourists held iPads to the sky like sacrificial offerings. The safe havens of the library and the art galleries were closed due to industrial action. It was probably a sultry, wholesome day, resplendent with gem-coloured scoops of ice-cream and soft guitar melodies drifting dreamily around the square by the Abbey. Today I couldn’t see it that way. I couldn’t deal with laughter in my direction (of course it was aimed at me, it had to be, they’re watching me) or the sudden crunch of tyres against the curb. Everything, all these sharp little points of sound were grating away at my paper-thin skin, even covered up as it was; even my graduation-cropped hair was no longer a convenient mourning veil. Soon my defences would be completely worn through and there would be nowhere else to hide. Stupidly, inexplicably, I felt like crying every minute I was outside. Crying on a glowing golden day in the heart of a floral-scented city. I was not worthy of any of it.

Secrets are heavy. He doesn’t know them, because he is at work. I pretend I have eaten cereal for breakfast, like a normal person, not a hastily-scarfed bowl of instant mash which instantly (ha) leads to shame. He thinks this is just down to the weather, to disturbed sleep, to being a woman, time of the month, et cetera.

No, he doesn’t. He’s not an idiot. He is the one person who understands, as much as I could expect anyone to understand. Blessed with a cool and logical mind, unburdened by superfluous, random emotion, he understands the whole puzzle better than I do. I keep thinking I’ve found the right key, but then the tumblers click and the whole combination is lost.

I wonder now, in the shade and safety of the house, whose Dior sunglasses and bared midriffs serve only to detract from a shallow-buried sadness. I wonder who else, like me, is secretly screaming inside.