It Took Us 6 Months
6 months, several suicide attempts, and one emergency room hospitalization later.
Six fucking months out of my life, out of ours lives.
Six months of flashbacks and meetings with therapists and psychiatrists and professors and having people explain to us very very patiently and slowly that our diagnoses would affect us for the rest of our lives and to please, define success in your own terms and consider taking reduced credit loads and meeting with professors and, explaining to them the nature of the diagnosis and the accommodations needed and, wide eyed stares because they’re only supposed to encounter this stuff in Hallmark movies not in their everyday lives and
It took us six months. Six months of unearthing memories, trauma, unpacking exactly what was done to us. Six months of realizing what the nitty gritty details of a diagnosis meant. Realizing just how bad the odds for our survival, for our functioning, for us being alive were. Six months of coming to terms with complication upon complication upon complication because you do not survive a lifetime of trauma and miraculously heal, you survive a lifetime of trauma and bear the scars of it for the rest of your life.
Six months of talking to each other, and to friends, and watching who we thought we were unravel and get put back together again and then torn down the next night and the process repeats.
It took us six months of climbing up inch by inch by inch, clawing our way back to a sense of normalcy.
Six months to realize, to internalize, to admit that yes, we are still that little girl, sad and scared and clutching her stuffed animal as dad yells at mom and begging, wishing, praying for it to come to live, to have somebody, to not be alone.
And to realize and admit, that we are not alone.
Six months.
Six exhausting months.
Six amazing, terrible, awful, fabulous, months.
Six fucking months.
Six.
Months.
Six months.
It took us six months to get back to stability.
