"You know it only breaks my heart to see you standing in the dark alone, waiting there for me to come back..."
My whisper-soft voice cracked and I found myself shivering under the paper-thin blankets of the psych ward beds. Tears streaked down my cheeks, landing on the inch-thick pillow that my head rested on.
I may as well have slept on the floor, but who was I kidding, that wouldn't have been allowed.
Swallowing, I tried to continue singing.
"If it's coming over you like it's coming over me. I'm crashing like a tidal wave, it drags me out to sea. And I want to be with you and you want to be with me—"
With those last words, my voice wavered, then fell silent as the tears turned angry.
My father's face flashed before my eyes, "Anna, we think you're unsafe with yourself..."
My grandmother's tears when I refused to talk to her.
I shifted in my bed, my own vision blurry against the slit of light in the dark from the slightly ajar door. "They don't want me back," I mumbled to myself, my voice torn between convinced and unconvinced. "They took me here. They left me." My stomach clenched and I curled into a ball.
"I can only take so much. These tears are turning me to rust. I know you're waiting there for me to come back..."
But were they? Or were they celebrating amongst themselves, saying 'good riddance' and praising the fact that they might keep me longer if I didn't behave.
I could be trapped longer if they leave me here. I could be like Jayden. He was stuck for weeks because his parents refused to pick him up.
It was in that moment that it felt like my tears were beginning to choke me. My breaths came in ragged gasps and I gripped the hem of my blanket, tucking it under my chin. Tears blurred the barely-present light and the lines on the grey concrete wall became no more.
There was rustling as my roommate, Marissa, shifted across the room and I held my breath. And in that moment I found myself spiraling into my thoughts.
Marissa hugging me while I cried, her bone-thin figure pressing against mine. Her hands on my back as I pressed against her, clinging to her as if she were the only thing keeping me together.
"We're the only sane people here." Her voice echoed in my head, a snippet of what she'd actually said.
I thought of her mom, how she was going in for surgery and may not wake up should things go awry.
We'll get out. The thought came unbidden, but it wasn't unwelcome. Swallowing my tears, I drew in a fortifying breath. Rolling over, I watched Marissa's sleeping figure, trying to match her breathing. We'll get out of this if I have anything to say about it. And with a resolve that belied the amount of power I actually held, I found myself whispering into the dark, "I'm going to have a say about it."
My eyelids fluttered briefly, the slowly-drying salt from my tears sticking my eyelashes together. Shifting against my pillow, I let my eyes fall closed and slowly slipped into a tempestuous sleep.
***
Stranded, Plumb
Estimated Time of Memory: March 2022
Genre: Pop-ish
Potential Triggers: None
Favorite Lyric: "You know it only breaks my heart to see you standing in the dark alone, waiting there for me to come back..."