I woke up late today; I was stuck in bad dreams. My lip was bleeding. Nightmares can do that. My chest feels compressed like I am lifting 10kg dumbells like I imagine Dadi to feel with her bandaged chest or when mum broke her rib. My head feels like it is crowded with black ants that burst out of hills & scatter in a state of urgency, working against their only module, that of following each other. The world is reduced only to the ants & the weight. I am blinking less. I have no tolerance for spit noises, mention of food, slow laptops. When I turn my head, I can feel the bulk of ants fall haphazardly, helplessly around. Mim offers hugs. I can hear her swallow her spit. It makes the ants go nuts. My face feels hot.
I mindlessly browse the internet. ‘Black pencil skirt outfits’ Pinterest suggests, okay I say. Amazon is showing me neon lights shaped like the word ‘Love’. Goldie comes into my room, demands to lie on my feet. The big wound of a body feels the momentary relief that makes me want to cry. I recover. Ants come back. I buy a rubber stamp for bb. The things Dadi is hearing on Facebook suddenly shoot to the foreground. I think I should text D, P, or R asking for help. But I am scared of being thought of as a freak and a weak one at that.
I take an SOS pill that my therapist finally decided to give me. 20 for 3 months. I am rationing. Should I take half a pill to save more for later, or should I indulge and take a whole pill? How big of an SOS is this? I google SOS. SOS: a request for help, especially because of danger, extreme distress, emergency. Emergencies are tricky. ‘Pull the chain in case of emergency.’ Till last month, I believed that being late for the train was emergency enough. “But Geet in Jab We Met asks people to pull the chain!” It wasn’t till a room full of adults laughed at my naivety & sense of entitlement that I started to question the subjectivity of an emergency.
Google search emergency. Emergency – a situation that poses an immediate risk to health, life, property. I take a pill. I text A. I talk about the ants, the chest pain carried over from childhood, the worry about being judged. I pulled the chain.