“When you cut a hole into my skull, do you hate what you see like I do?”

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“I have been in therapy and on medications since I was around seven or eight. I am currently still on medication and therapy. Since I was in it for so long I was thrown around a lot from therapist to therapist. I kept thinking, they don’t want to deal with my issues anymore. Once I reached my fourth therapist, I stopped telling them what was really going on. I thought they don’t want to waste their time with my issues. My mom always asked me why my therapist would complain I was withdrawn the whole session. My whole life therapists went back and forth about what they thought I had, I always had anxiety and depression. But they first thought I had bipolar disorder, then PTSD, and went back to bipolar – I have no faith anymore.”

“But your current one diagnosed it perfectly.”

“Interruption is irritating.”

“Okay.”, Pearce retreated.

She stays silent for a while before she looks up at her.

“I’m sorry, I’m getting too angry these days, just random outbursts you know. I know it is just the chemical imbalances in my head but you are free to think I’m being rude.”

“I gave up on thinking a long time back, please continue.”

“I have heard so much already though. When you are born, you’re assigned a name at birth – the one given to you by your parents. And for what? Not because that name suits you, they barely know you when you’re born. They just go with a cool or classic one to identify you. And label you. I have been labeled a thousand times over. Doctors and specialists labeled me as mentally ill. My friends and partners have showered me with labels. Emotionally Unstable. Manipulative. Attention Seeker. Warped sense of self. Unstable. That’s the end of your self identity, because now you live with the one you’ve been given.

Anyways, I’ll jump to what you wanted to know. The latest trigger episode happened last month, and that’s where Gary saw me.”

Pearce wanted to hear more of her prolonged soliloquy; she felt she needed to let everything out, and there weren’t many people she trusted. But she didn’t complain – she never did, and that’s what made her a listener so beautifully present that she seems to be absent.

“Emptiness. Chronic feelings of emptiness. Binging and purging could not fill that dark hole either. Feeling unfeeling – that’s how I describe it. Weird, isn’t it? So, you just lie there. Waiting for something – anything – to take you back to normal. Why can’t I be normal? What even is normal?

And that’s when the terrible idea of dating presented itself to me. I was so tired of feeling empty. And D seemed to be the most positive guy out there. So positive that it left an indelible mark on me.”

She took a break, a pretty long break, from her narration. But Pearce did not complain.

“Anyways you know that glass of orange juice – he loved orange. I used to collect the freshest of the lot for him. And he smelt like orange. The first thing he ever offered me was oranges. And the very last thing too. I am dreaded by oranges. I guess I forever will be.

I did not want hard drinks that day. But who the hell would have thought the only soft drink present was that damn orange juice?

I was anyway stressed from all that socializing when the glass presented itself to me.

The trigger was instantaneous and unpredictable and the immediacy of its intensity would catch me by complete surprise.

As my hands shaking…they started shaking…and I led a growl…I don’t remember who said what I remember growling in solitude…I know it was a party and not solitude but I only remember...growling in solitude. I had both auditory and visual hallucinations. I saw D and heard him. I really heard him. My stomach was paining so bad I had to run to the washroom and sit there all night. I fortunately had a blade…its important to people with no experience understand it was not a cry for help, I did it because it worked.

When I have lost control, when I have not managed the trigger, I feel like an animal. I could do anything for survival and protection. Survival and protection from the distorted sense of reality. So many racing thoughts. I’m angry. I’m dissociated. I could destroy the washroom.

Sounds are too loud, lights are too bright, people never seem to say what resonates with me for once.”

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