THE PHASE

The phase is the one that everybody thought would play itself out, but instead, it became the phase that knew no end.

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What is it like to be the broken glass, the seathrough fragments that show the world little pieces of who you are, but not the story because it’s too complex to be understood? What is it like to be the broken glass that's in a million little pieces and never whole, just utterly unfixable? What's it like to have all of the love in the world and to hate yourself so entirely that somehow, it's the one thing in your life that makes the most sense to you? What's it like to be the girl who went off to school one day and never came back the same? It's like somebody reaching into your chest and ripping your heart out, dicing it up and sticking it back in - a bloody mess and a tortured vital organ that will never work again? It's brutal, malicious, unjustified, deceptive, and conniving. It will break you every time you feel that pain in your chest arising. It will break you every time you remember that you're not even close to being like the person next to you. It will break you every time that you remember you’ll never be the person you were again. It will break you as you fight just to gasp a breath of fresh air; there will always be a breath you cannot take, a moment for oxygen that cannot be conceived. The phase that never ends is the constant reminder that you're a failure of a human, unable to complete a basic necessity of life, being a destructive component of the lives of good people who deserve peace and harmony, and they don't because of you. It will make you feel burdensome at best and unfathomably, inexcusably disgusting at worst.

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Sometimes I forget about the phase that never ended, but it's easy to forget until the moment it's not.

And the moment it's not is the moment I find the phase swimming in the pools of tears in my family and loved ones' eyes.

I see their fear of leaving me to my own devices, handing me over to another professional who they know is, like them, at a loss. I see the big gaping hole placed in the heart of their life... or the broken heart, I should say. I provide them with these false glimmers of hope that the never-ending cycle is coming to a stop, but then, as always, the cycle repeats. And all of us feel hopeless again. It makes me sick to think about the face of relief I see when they think things are changing, because the face I see the moment things go south again kills me. It's immediate and immense fear and sorrow. It's a harrowing picture stamped into my brain. It's perhaps one of the most difficult experiences in the world to see somebody you love with all that you have crumble like the pastry of a piece of apple pie, and not just for any reason, but that reason being about you. The guilt is inexplicable.

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But the worst part about the phase, Dolls, is that once people stop expecting it to end, you become the 'lost cause' and being the one that never got better will haunt you like a bad nightmare on a night that was supposed to be perfect. It's the worst part because in a world full of believers, no one will believe in you.

The memory of what it was like to have a world full of people who see a future for you will remain as that - a memory.

Summertime will come, then fall, winter, and spring, over and over, and you'll remain as the phase that never ended, the broken girl, the tortured one, the unfixable conundrum with no answers around, left right and centre, always left, drowning, gasping for a breath of air that doesn't exist. Sadness isn't there, nor melancholy or blue, because numbness will replace it. The pain is one that's too severe to be felt, for even that would be too wicked in your world, the world where there is no phase to be found.

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I vow to be honest with you, Dolls, even despite the fear I feel sometimes in sharing just how depleted and lost I feel. So it is with honesty that I confess the pieces of me, a broken girl, and it is with courage that I confide in those who know the story of a broken girl a little too well.

Kisses,

COS x