“it’s a little lonely in the desert”

antoine de saint-exupéry

i thought i knew this state and all of the ways in which it could impact me. i thought i knew a lot of things until recently. my mind has turned against me and almost all certainties have fallen away. i have been pared back to my bare bones. i find myself unmoored somewhere in a desolate no-man’s-land. space and time in this place are baggy, sagging, and nebulous: i cannot locate its boundaries, and gravity doesn’t operate in the traditional way. yet i am squeezed and cowed, bent over and forced to crawl on hands and knees. i wish to rise up, stand straight and step out of this arid, barren environment and to find myself back on the friendliness of familiar territory. to know the ground beneath my feet and to regain the comfort of calling it home. oh home, i miss you.

i need to trust this little pale orange teardrop-shaped piece of pharmacology to remake me whole. i put my life in its teardrop hands and pray to it every evening. help me, please. please be the one who knows what you are doing. weave your route through my broken synapses rewiring as you go. please do me this kindness. be the multicoloured blanket which wraps about my shattered frame to make me warm. show my cracked mind how to reform itself. tiny magic pill, work your magic. i have no other ideas. a system change, a step change, a meet me in the morning with a smile music box. i offer daily drawings to try to show that i am here. i made this thing, and then took a photograph of it as evidence. she must be here otherwise this picture would not, could not, exist. the drawings prove that these objects: furniture, framed paintings, plants, fabrics, are all still here. they don’t make their usual sense or displace air in the way they did, but persist in form and visibility nonetheless. ordinary times are absent for now. oh ordinary home, i miss you.