“So, how are you feeling?”
“Right now or how have I been feeling lately?”
“Yeah… right now, or in general, whatever you want to tell me about.”
What do I tell her? That I am not good? That I am suffering? That sometimes even the act of describing how I feel feels like another kind of illness?
I could say, “I’m tired,” but that’s not it. Sleep doesn’t fix this kind of tired.
I could say, “I’m managing.” Managing means functioning well enough to not raise alarms, but not well enough to feel alive. Managing means I can answer messages, go to appointments, smile at the right moments all while quietly falling apart where no one can see.
“I am okay. I guess.” I finally give an answer. Okay… okay has no truth to it. No lies either. What is okay anyway? I guess it’s the silence between chaos and confession, a word people use when they’ve run out of ways to be honest.
“Okay? From your email, I feel like you are far from being okay.”
I look down at my hands. They always betray me first. Restless, fidgeting, never knowing where to belong. I want to say, You’re right, but something in me resists agreement.
“I don’t know. The past few weeks have been pretty bad for me. I haven’t gotten good sleep, or gone out. I missed all my lectures. I just… stare at the wall and lose track of time.”
She writes something down. I always wonder what she writes. Does she write paranoidly delusional or the patient look stable. Maybe she writes nothing at all, just draws little boxes to contain the things I can’t. She then looks up. “Why didn’t you leave your home? Were you scared?”
“Not scared particularly,” I say. “I just didn’t feel like doing it.”
“And what about the thoughts of your friends harming you or trying to poison you?”
I hesitate. The question lands like a needle. “Yeah,” I say finally. “I still believe they are after me. I haven’t eaten the food given by them. I threw them out.”
I can hear myself saying it and it sounds absurd but also absolutely true. That’s the paradox of it: reason and certainty fighting for the same seat.
“Why do you think they would harm you?”
“I don’t know. I just feel like it. Everyone has been trying to distance themselves from me. They’ve been ignoring me.”
There’s a pause, not judgmental, just careful. “And what about the thoughts of self-harm?” That question always arrives like a checkpoint. I know she has to ask it. Still, it slices the air.
I take a deep breath. “I do have such thoughts. This one in particular — I’ve been contemplating it. You know how silk, when burned slowly, releases hydrogen cyanide? I thought… if I could trap that and inhale it, it would be such an interesting way to go.” I look at her, steady. “But I’m not going to act on that.”
She doesn’t flinch. “What about the voices?”
“I’m not having loud voices,” I say. “But today, while sitting in the waiting hall, I heard them again. Like a radio between stations. Faint, crackling.”
“What were they saying?”
“I don’t know. Too faint to comprehend.”
She leans back slightly, exhales. “Okay,” she says softly. “I believe you’re not doing well, and I think you should consider being admitted to the clinic or at least enroll as a day-care patient.”
“I don’t have time,” I say quickly. “I’ve already taken up too much in the university. I have to write my thesis and everything.”
“But you said you’re hardly even going to the university.”
“I’ll start going from this week,” I promise, as if saying it could make it true.
“Okay then,” she says. “We have to do something with the medication. Are you okay with that?”
“Yeah.”
“How have you been taking your meds?”
“Abilify in the morning, Amisulprid in the morning and evening.”
“And have you been taking them regularly?”
I look down. “No. I’ve been skipping them quite a few times.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to feel like myself. With the meds, everything’s just… same. I don’t feel joy or happiness. Everything is grey.”
“Do you know which medicine is causing that feeling?”
“No.” I almost say all of them but stop myself. She’d take it clinically; I mean it existentially.
She nods slowly. “We have to give the meds a full try. You have to take them regularly before we can decide where to go next with your treatment.”
I stay quiet for a moment, tracing the grain of her desk with my eyes. Then I say, “My grades have fallen like crazy. Last semester I got a 1.0, but this semester I got 3.7. I barely passed. My mind goes blank too often now. It’s like I forget what I was thinking. When I try to explain something to someone, the thought just disappears mid-sentence.”
She sighs, almost tenderly. “That’s an indication that you’re ill. And it will be very tough for you in the future. You must focus on your health. If you try to do everything… study, thesis, recovery… it’ll be too much.”
Her words make sense. They also make me feel smaller. And what does she mean that everything will get tougher in the future? Like life already isn’t tough enough for me. And what does she mean by Ill? The word still feels foreign, like a label someone else pinned on me when I wasn’t looking.
I also tell her about my website. How I’ve been writing, quietly, trying to make sense of everything.
“That’s good,” she says. “Writing can help.”
I nod, though what I want to tell her is that writing isn’t therapy, it’s survival. It’s how I prove I still exist somewhere.
She looks for a date and writes down the next date of appointment for me. It’s in December. Things are so slow here in Germany. I wish I could meet her a bit early. The paper slides across the desk, white and final.
Before I leave, she says, “Take care of yourself, okay?”
That sentence always sounds simple, almost casual. But it’s heavy when you think about it. Take care of yourself, as if “yourself” were something you could carry in your hands.
I nod. “I’ll try.”
