Like clockwork

It wasn't all totally nonsense though. I could still recognize fear and puzzlement, especially in the faces of the strangers that came to see me everyday in the morning after breakfast, like clockwork. They came in their lab coats and their clipboards full of notes, scribbling while observing me as surely as how one observes a monkey in a cage. Some had kind looks, some blank and some with eyes darting, unsure as to how to maintain eye contact while I peered into the depths of their souls. It was just as much of a two way street as any other regular interactions in the Outside world. Just that in this scenario neither one of us knew how to pretend to be.

The Attending had hid his ID badge behind his tie and I decided that I shan't bring that up with him for by him doing that I knew that he already knew ID badges was my crux issue. It seemed to me that we were going to play a game of chicken about my unrelenting paranoia of badge-wearing hospital employees not being who they were. But as the questions unfolded, my smugness slowly dissipated as I struggled to answer what I think they wanted me to answer, just as I have always did even on the Outside. I was getting all the answers incorrect and I see them, one by one, shaking their heads and pens writhing furiously. This must be how drowning feels like for it was all going wrong, as how everything had before that had me landing in this strange and unsettling place. It was my turn to dart my eyes around desperately, hoping for some clue in the expressions of my captor's lab-coat-entourage. I slowly realized this was another failed day because my chest tightened with a familiar hurt as my breath stuck itself in my throat, festering into a lump bigger and bigger, surely enough to suffocate me. It was pointless. My persona cracked and split even further, like a line running down a wall of old paint that was ready to flake off into dust any second.

The Attending shook his head with finality and like a virus it spread to the others in the group. Pity filled the faces of each person I looked upon, all impervious to my imploring desperation. Judgement never felt as stinging as it did on the Outside as I pleaded fruitlessly while they left, one by one out of my door.

The best years of their lives

2010 was the year she was supposed to turn 25. Being twentysomething was supposed to be the epitome of a person's youth; the best years of their lives. The years with the most potential and where the future was the brightest, especially with the recent accomplishment of a proper degree from a proper university. She was living in a city which lived in movies and where movies were made. The vast pacific ocean just a 10 minutes drive away west and east was a town where boys could hold hands with boys on the streets without whispers or stares and a girl could fall in love with another girl. An actual possibility of a desired future unfolded itself upon her, letting her know that this was a city where an anomaly was allowed to dream about normal things normal people take for granted. This was a city where the dead stars on the walk of fame and the dead stars from light years away up above whisper the promise of rewards should the price of hard work, perseverance and good attitude be paid. She took heed but was wary of their whispering for anything that can't be said aloud will always have something to hide. She thought she knew the truth of the illusions painted by her desired industry - especially the one illusion that the years of being twentysomething was when life will fall into place.

She thought she knew the truth was that although life will fall into place, it just will not do so in the expedited timeframe as painted.

Instead the truth, her truth, was that her life would fall into pieces.