I Feel Myself Torrent !full! -

The words came out wrong. They always did. But for the first time, they felt true.

I screamed into a pillow until my throat bled. I wrote letters I’d never send, filled with words I’d never speak. I tore a photograph in half—not out of spite, but out of honesty. That person wasn't me anymore. That person had been standing still while the river rose around her knees, pretending she wasn't getting wet. i feel myself torrent

Not all at once. Not the merciful flood that sweeps you away clean. No, this was worse and better: a steady, stubborn torrent. Every suppressed shout, every bite of swallowed anger, every night I’d pressed my fists into my thighs to keep from screaming—they were all waking up. They wanted out. They wanted air. The words came out wrong

The hardest part wasn't the sadness. It was the rage. A hot, stupid, beautiful rage at every person who’d told me to calm down. At every teacher who’d said "too sensitive." At every version of myself who’d smiled and nodded and drowned a little more. I screamed into a pillow until my throat bled

My friend Lena called it a breakdown. My doctor called it "emotional dysregulation" and wrote a prescription for something that came in a teal bottle. But I knew better. This wasn’t breaking. This was melting. The dam I’d spent twenty years building—brick by polite brick, mortar made of "I'm fine" and "don't worry about it"—had cracked along a fault line I hadn't known existed.

The rain had stopped hours ago, but the air still clung to everything—clothes, hair, the insides of my lungs. I stood on the edge of the overpass, watching the river below churn brown and fast. Not watching, really. Feeling. Because somewhere beneath my ribs, something had begun to move. Not a flutter. A current.