The Winter Project

12. Cleo

Cleo felt incredibly proud of herself as she and Isabel stood peering over the edge of the ferry at four in the morning as it left the south coast of England. The dim orange lights were becoming more and more faint as they disappeared into the distance, and Cleo was using this time to reflect on her accomplishments.

She had come so far since her initial diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder. When she was first diagnosed, Cleo's life had been a string of bad decisions, one after the next. When she was supposed to go out and meet friends, she would stay home and refuse to apologise for her decision. When she should have stayed home due to emotional and physical fatigue, she went out until the early hours of the morning. She took drugs and drank in the middle of the day whether she was home alone or in the company of others, any drug that was handed to her would do. She was erratic, neurotic and sometimes psychotic. She slept with strangers and fell in love with men that were so far from what she needed, it would only take her a few days to figure it out and block them from her life. She felt paranoid that people hated her and would find it difficult to maintain close friendships, blocking people out as soon as she sensed any sign that they would abandon her. She felt as if her last year of university was a dream, that turned into a nightmare as she made the choice to end her life. She had been sat in her university halls bedroom one evening in winter, focusing on trying to relieve herself of the pain. She was exhausted from living and had tried every possible solution, and was suddenly struck by the realisation that there was no answer. She should simply cease to be. Calmly, she had taken one tablet after the next until the bottle was empty and she felt nothing but a sense of joy. It took only several minutes for the panic to set in, forcing her out onto the street to ask anyone who would listen for help. She didn't regret her actions from that night, for the A&E department were the ones who referred her for support, and that was when she learned that she was simply a girl not with never-ending unexplainable pain, not with an unnamed incurable illness, but a girl with BPD.

She wasn't able to explain how, but she made it through those darker years of her life. Ever since she had started working full time and poured her heart and soul into her work, she had felt a weight lift off of her shoulders. She felt more calm and complete. Her routine of early morning starts, late nights in the office and heavy weekend drinking sessions had given her a sense of clarity in her mind that you can only achieve when you completely immerse yourself into a life so hectic that you simply don't have time to think about your emotional fragility. Of course, she still drank until she was sick and took drugs when the occasion struck, but she found that it was less and less common for her to get that feeling of being trapped down a dark hole, unable to climb out. The suffocating feeling of depression as it takes hold of you and tells you to give up; she was beginning to forget it.

She felt that she was now moving on to the next chapter of her life; spontaneous adventure with her best friend. She had successful taken on the corporate world and the management of her once unstable mental health, and she was now healthy enough to do something less rigid and time-consuming. Of course, the last four weeks had not been easy for either of them. Isabel had a total of six major meltdowns about quitting her job and the landlord finding out about their subletting. They had found a sweet couple that were willing to pay them even more rent than they actually paid their landlord, giving them some extra spending money each month as they travelled. They had sold or thrown out most of their belongings, stored the important things in a rented unit and packed the essentials into the van, which was also aboard the ferry carrying them to Calais.

When they arrived at the port and Isabel realised that she could not physically stay in the van for the entirety of their trip, she ended up having possibly the worst panic attack Cleo had ever seen. Luckily for Cleo, she had packed a travel-sized bottle of Southern Comfort that would see Isabel out of the van and onto the boat. There was no going back because they had nothing to go back to.

She wrapped her arms around Isabel as they stood on the deck, watching the coast of England disappear into the darkness, the lights fading away as the ferry carried them away from their past and towards their future. As she looked down at her shivering tear-stained friend, she knew that this was her last accomplishment to make. She would help Isabel to see the world, face her fears and bring back the spark in her personality that she had lost. She was so determined to help Isabel, for she did not respect anyone in the world more than her. Isabel's life story hurt Cleo deeply, and she was amazed at the resilience of the human spirit in the face of loss, anxiety and depression. She often thought of Isabel when she was feeling bad about her own life and it gave her a sense of peace knowing that people can in fact get through such horrifying situations. She also felt indebted to somebody who had talked her out of suicide, made her food, calmed her down and convinced her to make the right decision more times than she could count.

Just under two hours after boarding the ferry full of Southern Comfort, fear and adrenalin, they were back in the van and ready to take on whatever country they chose. Cleo drove unsteadily on the right side of the road whilst Isabel slept peacefully in the passenger seat. It was bitterly cold outside, but the sun had made itself known in the sky and was rising slowly as they drove. As she became more comfortable with the drive, Cleo inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the fresh morning air pouring in from the open window and wondering why she had ever been so cruel to herself as to think she did not deserve to live.