I was nobody.
I walked through each day in a fog. I tried to tell the doctor, but she didn't understand. And it doesn't sound so bad, does it, walking in a fog? Maybe a little cold, a little hard to see your way, but not so bad really?
And yet it is the worst thing. I was not just in a fog, I was dissolving in the fog. There were no walls between me and nonexistence any more.
Inside was dead. I no longer felt or thought or understood. I did as I was told, and if nobody told me anything I sat as if dead.
Sobbing save me...
help me...
somebody...
I dissolved into nothing, into less than nothing. I thought that it was all gone. And yet, in the depths of despair, in the moment when I thought I was losing my self...there I found some stirring of life.
Something - someone - I could not name. Emerging through the fog, speaking in a familiar voice - the face of a stranger inside me. I recognised her at once, this other self. Although she terrified me, I knew her as friend, as protector. She whispered to me, "hang on...for all of us, hang on."
I held on - her presence making me something more than nothing.
I held on.