I WAS JUST TRYING TO BE FUNNY | ✓

▬ 55: swim

               As soon as we reach Summer, I shed my skirt and my t-shirt, and jump in. The water cradles me, a divine embrace from Allah Themself. Absolution.

I float on my back to watch the overcast. Though it looks stagnant to me, the clouds roll onward at some eighty kilometres per hour, a reminder that things are happening even if I can't see them right now, that soon it'll rain and all the seeds I've sown will sprout, that it won't be for nothing.

I'm far from okay, but I'm not not-okay either, which I think is good enough.

I'm here for this, I'm here to be soaked by water, for my bones to ache with the need to run into a thunderstorm even if it makes me ill, to watch the sunrise invigorate my soul with precious hues and turn every speck of floating dust into gold, to understand my life through Kathy McCarthy and Paula Cole, and to pray.

Miles has swum several metres away. Or maybe I've drifted from him. But when I speak at a volume lower than average, he hears me clearly. 'Can I tell you about it? The hospital?'

I don't know why but I want him to know, or maybe I simply want Summer to know and he happens to be here, a commensal presence I don't mind.

With a purl of water, Miles slides closer. His own whisper sails easily across the surface. 'Course.'

I wait for him to drift to a halt some two metres away before I start. 'It was hell.' It hasn't landed before I hurry to tack on, 'Not like on the telly though. They were tryin their best. They didn't harvest our organs or indoctrinate us into a cult or anythin... Hardly a holiday getaway, though.

'When I first went to the A&E, I had my stomach pumped and that alone was... so painful. It really hurts. So much more than you'd think.'

In the way that hearing the word "lice" immediately brings the false sensation of them crawling over your scalp, a miraged tube swells in my throat and I compromise my idyll floating to massage it.

Once no longer on my back, I can't stop my gaze from finding Miles, from dissecting the strain under his eyes and compression of his lips for signs I've gone too far, that I've finally repulsed him past the point of no return, and he'll flee at the soonest excuse.

He says nothing.

My eyes are flooded with tears again.

I exhale slowly, doing my best to steady my breathing and not collapse into sobs before I've said everything I need. 'And Edenfield... I dunno. I was so gone and full of meds that it's all jumbled which only makes the memories more hellish.'

I've never talked to anyone about my two-month stay, except for Dr Colas, who doesn't count because it's her job. Iya and Baba are out of the question, in case it makes them doubt their decision to admit me there, which, in the end, I know was the best option — as much as I hated it, as out of control and terrified it made and continues to make me, it saved my life. I don't want them to feel guilty about it.

'We weren't allowed anythin we could hurt ourselves with. No shoelaces or drawstrings in our clothes or jewellery, the sheets were practically paper, the windows wouldn't open even on the ground floor, the soaps and shampoos were locked in a cabinet so we couldn't eat them and we needed a nurse to give permission every time we wanted a wash.

'They don't call it suicide watch for no reason either. A nurse would come check on us every fifteen minutes when we were in our rooms. They watched us shower. They watched us eat. They watched us talk on the phone — no cells, you'd have to use the common one. Even when my parents visited, a nurse would watch the whole time. Honestly, it felt like prison.