Sometimes my recovery from mental illness/injury feels like I’m building a house of cards on a labyrinth of dominoes. At any point something can knock over a domino and if it in turn knocks too many more over the cards all come tumbling down. The dominoes are always under constant threat. Today it was the sudden fire truck. A siren and some blinky lights. It’s great being so delicate.

I feel like I should cry but I can’t seem to. I can’t focus. Nothing I try to ground with is getting to seamlessly conclude and it’s just adding to the maelstrom of feelings I can’t seem to shake. It would be disingenuous to say I don’t know why but it’s not any one reason specifically. It’s all of them at the same time.

Long ago I sat in a fire truck with a 12 year old girl whose family car had been in a severe accident. The family had just got back on the highway after a break and this girl had swapped seats with her mother who was now dead, mangled and trapped in the crushed back seat of the car. The rain was pouring and the flashing emergency lights and flares danced across the wet highway. I sat beside her in a fire truck wishing I was outside in the rain working on her dead mother instead. I knew what to do about that. I attempted some optimistic comments while fully knowing I was bullshitting this poor girl with fake hope.

What do you say to a child who’s watching her dead mother get extricated from the back seat of their destroyed car that she just minutes prior swapped her for? Everything is being done, yes. But it’s not going to do any good.

Fire trucks. These things just happen.

I know this will pass. I also know it will come back again too. I don’t know if that’s considered cynical or practical but it’s reality. I’m not seeking numbness anymore. I’m just fucking tired of complicated negative feelings being triggered and changing what begins as a calm controlled day. I know I can and will deal with those feelings but I’m still frustrated.