Noise.

 I was being tested. There was no other explanation to this. Absolutely none at all. One doesn't simply shoulder the world's gravest burdens one after another without a reason. Nope.

One recovery was paving my way into something else that needed my undivided attention, and that juts led to something else which was way past my coping abilities. What I needed was serenity. Oh what I would give for a sea of silence right now. I was halfway into a far fetched dream when I was shaken back to reality. There was something else that needed dealing. Of course there was.

The next couple of days were spent between piles of paperwork and countless cups of tea. I was going to lay off tea for the rest of my life after all this was done, I thought to myself as I lifted my fourteenth cup. Sigh.

A flashback to my pre-teen days when I would beg and plead to be allowed one sip of the tea Mumma poured for the 'grown ups' as they sat around the dining table discussing grown up things. 

And now here I was, guzzling it down like it were keeping me alive.

I had made a hundred phone calls by the day, but I couldn't recall the last conversation I had had.

My system got the food it needed but my memory couldn't backtrack the last meal I indulged in.

Spectacles were taken off and I did lie down for a couple of hours every night but a sound sleep was a distant dream.

When exasperation hit like I knew it would, I shut them all out. I cut them all off. I'd been holding it off, even suppressing it for weeks now because they needed me. The situation needed me.

But now? Now I was the needy. And I needed me to stop.

I dialed the first number I could think of and waited. I waited for her voice at the other end, I waited for the tears to finally brim my baggy eyes and to break. Oh how I had longed to just break.

For the first time since it had all started, I let it out. I let it go. I let myself go.

The walls that I had built ever so carefully were torn down brick by brick. I let my guard down and I gave up on the facades of strength and valor.

My fears, insecurities and my sorry plight were suddenly in focus. Raw, revealed and ruthless.

"When did we get here?" I asked her.

The last I remembered, we were sitting on the last bench of our classroom discussing boys in hushed tones. The biggest problems back then were them and lousy marks and it seemed like the end of the world.

What would I have given right now to just go back to those days when my perseverance was far from being tested.

It's like I'm in the middle of an ocean and I have the liberty of choosing a direction but I'm lost. There is so much to look forward to but I'd rather live my life in reverse. I'm foraging for silence to feed on, but in my head, there's just noise. Shrill, riotous, resounding and yet somehow deafening.

Just noise.