I Feel Myself Torrent Access

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.

I stopped going to work. Stopped answering texts. Sat on my apartment floor with the windows open, even though it was November, even though the neighbors stared. I let the cold in. I let the sound of traffic in. And I let it come. i feel myself torrent

It was a fact. Like gravity. Like rain. Like the river that would keep running long after I was gone, and the one that would keep running inside me until I wasn't. Not all at once

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. Every suppressed shout, every bite of swallowed anger,

A landscape. Carved new.