I was stolen, in an instant, cool metal colliding with my crowded thoughts and then they just… stopped.
It was so loud, and I had learned to love the sound. It was like a street party. I was the Queen of my own chaotic playground. Walking down somewhere safe, somewhere that makes sense and letting my senses get lost in all the noises and the colours, because there’s nothing to be afraid of. It makes no sense to anybody else, but it is mine, my own little mind, and they… took it. They just strapped me down, reached in and took it.
One swing, and something snapped. One shunt against my spirit and suddenly, I was living the life of someone else. I was no longer found on that familiar street, I was walking through my body, my echoing bones and brain, desperately asking why it was all so quiet.
I could reach out and almost touch my thoughts, but then they’d scuttle away, and I’d open my eyes to see everyone staring so expectantly, like I had said something brilliant, but maybe I had just imagined that, because I’d always be banished back to the chair in my bedroom, with a simple cross stitch and a mug of lukewarm milk.
I’d wander every second I got. When I woke up. When I couldn’t sleep. When the nurse gingerly scrubbed my shoulders as if my condition was contagious. “I’m not sick Miss.” I would tell her. “I’m just a little bit lost Miss.”
I would wander through the mist. I’d just wander in the dark, looking for myself. I knew that I was in there, the way that I was before they wedged metal into my skull and stole my essence like the pirates from the storybooks my guilt ridden Grandmother would read to me.
I used to read her the words of Wilde, but those days were gone. That girl was gone. I just knew that I had to be in there, and I’d call to myself, sobbing as I stared down at my arms and how weak they had become now that I had been kidnapped from my own body.
It was always back to bed after that, with a lecture about “getting too excited”. I fell in love with sleeping, because it was the only time I could see her again. The real me. A confident swagger, volcanic temper and a mouth that could barely make it through one idea before tucking into the next. I miss the taste. It was so sweet, even if it made no sense to anyone but me.
Let me be a Queen again.
Sincerely, Jennifer x 