🎧 Listen to Sarah read this installment of Cured.
My sister’s car pulls into the bank lot, where I’m waiting. She parks and gets out first. My brother-in-law and nephew come around the car. The back door opens. My niece steps out and turns to help their sheepadoodle, Lady Augustine Fluffington, a.k.a. Augie, out of the car and lowers her to the ground. My niece and nephew have just turned eighteen and are here to put their bank accounts in their own names. I’m here to have my living will notarized. Augie is along for the ride.
Augie greets me, wagging and trickling pee on the sidewalk. No one has ever been as happy to see me in my entire life. Augie has black fur with patches of white on her chest and tail and perfect white sox on all four feet.
Technically, we aren’t dog people, but we all love her with reckless abandon. We had cats growing up. My brother-in-law, who’s allergic to much of the animal world, didn’t have pets. None of us has ever owned a puppy, so Augie generally gets her way. She mostly does what she wants, and when we say no, she keeps doing it until eventually she gets bored and moves on to something else.
My sister holds stacks of papers in her hands. She asks if I brought my ID. I didn’t bring my ID. I rarely carry my ID—a leftover from never leaving the house when I was sick. I offer to take Augie while they open my niece and nephew’s account. We can reschedule my appointment.
I hold Augie in my arms as her core family goes inside. She starts to whimper. She cries for them and licks my face to be sure I know she loves me, too.
Augie leads me to the park. Only a few dogs mull around, noses to the ground. I let her off the leash. “Go!” She dashes toward the other dogs.
I still haven’t talked to my family about the fact that I’ve healed from serious mental illness. They were told I could only manage my symptoms. Healing actually feels like a betrayal. Will they think I faked it all those years? Will they think I’m lying about my recovery?
This morning, I sat at my desk and wrote the feelings and sensations that wreck me at worst or trouble me at best:
● Hollowness
● Vibration in my chest for no reason
● Pit in my stomach
● Insomnia
● Hypochondria
● Dislocation, feeling like I’m not in body
● Panic attacks
● Needing to move
● Inability to stop moving
● Pessimism/negative thinking
● Self-hatred
● Hopelessness
● Inability to see the good
● Irritability
● Mood swings
● Negative self-talk
● Weighing myself
Before, these would have been symptoms; now, they just are.
Augie leaps across the grass, first alongside one dog and then behind another. Unfazed by the icy ground beneath her, she invites them to chase her, always keeping on the move, free but always with the other dogs in tow.
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