The clock would tick quietly, if there were a clock

The clock would tick quietly, if there were a clock. But there isn’t, so there’s just a buzzing sort of silence. An empty corkboard hangs on the wall. The light is bright, proclaiming some kind of triumphant discovery – but it’s late, the kind of hour that should be filled with a musty yellow. Nothing moves.

These, somehow, are the moments that fill the hallways of my memory. The bright ocean paintings and vibrant nights catch the eye, but it is the dust-covered frames filled with too-loud silence that catch my breath. I know that I am me in these pauses in between breaths.

This is nothing, the whole scene whispers. The nothingness is a relief from the loud proclamations of Something that clutter the day. Every moment wants to be A Moment, every figure huddled in an alley leaps up with a cry when a gaze brushes over them. The square is full of elbows and jostling, until it isn’t, and only a sheen of rain on the cobblestones is left.

This is aliveness. This breath, this moment, is no different from any other. This feeling of chest rising and the electric hum. Are you happy? Are you living a good life? My chest lifts and my ears ring with silence. Are you fulfilled? Have you lived up to your potential? The couch holds my indentation. I am cold. Does your life have meaning? Are you thriving? Have you achieved what you set out to do? The whiteness of the walls is different, if you really look – one is a little more grey than the other.

I cannot stay. The emptiness is too complete, and parts of me I cannot bear begin creeping out into the expanse. The humming becomes louder, insistent. My face twitches. It is the quietest showdown – me against silence, narrative against being, self defenses against the patient grey walls. The silence can wait far longer than I can. I close my journal and hang up the picture frame.

Mind Opiods

It's dark. The sun has set outside my little window. Visiting hours are over, and there's a stillness as my body takes up all the space there is inside that small room. There's no clock: the only passing of time is the rhythmic searing in my stomach.

I'm curled up, as small as I can go, arms clutching my knees and shoulder hunched into the hospital bed. Breathe in. It doesn't stop the thrumming, but it helps my mind hold onto something, to wrap the inevitability of time passing like a blanket around itself. Each second turns the moment just after a breath – where everything seems to stop and all that exists is a solidity of hurt that fills up your entire experience – into a wave: the hurt pulses and you are moving through time and there will be an end. Breathe out.

A nurse I've never seen before squeaks a cart into my room. Hi honey, I'm here to check your blood, she says, a confusing mixture of clinical, distant, and familiar, warm. I have no breaths to respond with, they are all taken up counting the seconds.

~~~

Later, the searing has burned through my throat. It escapes in moans that echo out into the hallway as my body twists itself in the sheets. A new nurse wheels a cart in. You don't look so good, he says, his voice cutting through the thick air. Out of 10, how much pain are you in? 6, maybe, I mutter, face scrunched. He eyes me suspiciously. It looks like a 9, he says. I sob.

He fumbles with my IV drip. Slowly, a coolness begins seeping up my arm. It radiates out like daylight over a senseless street brawl. The fighters slow, bewildered, blinking into the sunlight. I try to resist the honey moving through my veins, digging in my heels against the liquid happiness I know will be remembered by every cell in my body. It hasn't reached my heart yet. My limbs give in while my heart holds shields around my agency. Sometimes it is better not to know what something could feel like.

And then, suddenly, there is no pain. I have lost the fight. My breathing slows, a smile playing over my lips. I'm so happy, I whisper to myself. I sleep, for the first time.

~~~

My body begins to crave it. Another nurse comes to see me (she tells me I look beautiful, like her daughter back home). My cells perk up like magnets: happiness is coming, they murmur to each other. The nurse gives me pills. This will help, she says sympathetically. I act nonchalant: Mm, yes, thank you.

It's slower this time, like frosted golden syrup. A friend comes to visit, and I sit up, chatting enthusiastically for the first time in days. I'm not sure where this is coming from, I tell him. The pain is gone.

~~~

A doctor tells me I shouldn't be taking opioids. They're addictive, and I've had too many already. I nod mutely.

Darkness creeps into the room again. Someone is toying with my stomach lining with a pocket knife, drawing it out like an orchestra stretching over its final act. The nurse asks if I need something for the pain, and I do, but I shake my head. I need to make it through tonight on my own.

I make my own opioid. The stabbing comes, and I breathe relaxation into every muscle in my body. Thank you, body. We're okay. Stand down. I'm grateful for you. A micro-second of relief, like a cat purring and exposing its soft underbelly as it stretches, and then the searing of the pocket knife rips through. My eyes water against the burning need to escape, to run, to trip away from the fire inside. Breathe. Thank you, body. We're okay. Stand down. I'm grateful for you. Hours slip away, stretching and compressing into relief and agony.

Slowly, I am noticing the pain softening. The micro-seconds are becoming longer, the pocket knife less sharp. Delirious wonder bubbles up: How incredibly powerful are our minds? It is an ecstatic thread in a whirlwind of pain, to have mind and body so attuned that they merge together into one powerful consciousness that displaces the atoms around it. How much more is this consciousness capable of? There is a solidity to my movements, a rootedness stretching up from the earth's core. Dawn's light begins misting through the window, and there is nothing in this world I cannot breathe my way through.

~~~

The cars are too loud when I emerge, and the air is cool on my neck. I shuffle slowly towards the car, puffer jacket wrapped tightly around me and two people I love holding up my arms.

As I lower myself onto a familiar couch, looking out at the ocean, I am lighter than I have been in years. Searing pain has melted away layers of fear like butter. Mind and body are intertwined, and the entangled trunk stretching down into the earth is invincible. Looking in the eyes of raw, unfiltered pain, it was me, and my breath, and the searing. And as the searing faded, only my breath and I remained. I loved myself fiercely.