It comes in silence.
No warning.
No declaration.
Just the steady march of chaos, slipping beneath my skin like a second pulse.
The night is thick with stillness, but inside me, something stirs.
A mutiny.
A bloodless coup led by invisible hands, pulling strings that were once mine.
They twist.
Tighten.
Tangle.
I writhe, a marionette in the hands of something ancient and merciless.
My limbs no longer answer to me — they jerk and pulse and thrash in protest of stillness.
There is no language for this unrest.
No prayer that tames it.
Only instinct — to pace, to thrash, to press fists into flesh as if I might dislodge the devil writhing within.
The bed becomes a battleground. Sheets cling like restraints.
My muscles beg for sleep,
but the war has no curfew.
There is only movement.
Movement or madness.
Tears come, not from grief, but from the sheer voltage of it all.
My face leaks from the overflow.
My mind, once sovereign, is now a besieged city — every thought a scream for retreat,
every breath a strategy,
every tremble a white flag I am forbidden to wave.
And then —
as if summoned by my own surrender —
a hand presses down.
A touch.
A counter-force.
Not enemy. Not saviour. Just pressure. Just presence.
Muscles cry out.
Not in agony. In release.
There — the dam breaks. The pressure spills.
A sob rips through me, uninvited and absolute.
Not sadness. Not catharsis. Just the sound of a body remembering itself.
The tears stream freely now.
I am too tired to question.
Too cracked open to care.
The war slows — not in defeat, but in exhaustion.
And then,
the truth arrives —
not with fanfare, but in a quiet, cruel whisper:
This is not grief.
Not madness.
Not some shadowy reckoning from my past.
This is withdrawal.
The unraveling of a chemical leash after twenty-six obedient years.
The scorched-earth response of a nervous system
stripped of its anaesthetic.
A war waged by my own biology — and I, the battlefield.
And if there is any mercy to be found, it is this:
I am alone.
No small child stands on the other side of the door, listening.
No loved one bears witness to the guttural sounds of my undoing.
The only saving grace is that I do not destroy anyone else as I burn.
I will get through this.
Amidst the stunning landscapes and natural beauty of my surroundings, the enemy is omnipresent — lurking in every quiet moment, every still breath, ever at the ready.
One day at a time. One step at a time.
Episodes of joy and growth are real — but they are punctuated by crippling defeat,
the kind that threatens to consume everything in its path.
“This too shall pass”
It begins as a whisper.
Then a mantra.
Then a chant on repeat in the ruins of my mind when the tide rises again.
Sleep is my greatest armour — and yet,
the traitor who deserts me more often than not in my hour of need.
The temptation to surrender…
to lie still and let the enemy reclaim the lamp
and swallow me whole —
is so real I can taste it.
But I can’t.
I know I can’t.
It will be my undoing.
Maybe not tonight.
But eventually.
And I’m not ready to disappear.
So, I take the pill.
One little blue reinforcement,
gifting me the will to fight another day.
Sleep.
It is not my weakness.
It is not my shame.
It is survival.
I am me.
And I remain this way.
But for now, I accept the help I did not want but deeply need.
Like Voldemort drinking the unicorn’s blood —
it is cursed, but it is life.
It nourishes me,
just enough to rise,
to gather my breath,
and begin again
when the enemy returns
with the morning.
Another day dawns,
and the battle — with all its physical drills and mental warfare — begins again.
One day, there will be no war.
But the battle?
The battle will always continue.
The difference, in time, will be me.
Because as I grow stronger,
this enemy will no longer lie in wait,
lurking just behind the curtain,
ready to strike with fatal force.
It will know its place.
Behind me.
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