Autopilot

I was performing alive. School run. Smile. Packed lunch. Smile. Bedtime story. Smile. Bedroom. Door closed. Nothing.

That was the routine. Not a life. A sequence. A list of actions performed in the correct order by a woman who had checked out of herself but still had children to feed and a face to present and a reputation for coping to maintain.

Nobody knew. That’s the bit I’m most ashamed of and most proud of in equal measure. Nobody knew I was drowning because I timed my breakdowns for after bedtime. I cried in the shower where the water covered the sound. I stared at ceilings between the hours of 11pm and 3am and at 7am I got up and I packed the lunches and I drove the car and I smiled at the school gate and I was fine.

Fine. That word again. The word that means I am dying and you are not asking the right questions but I forgive you because the right questions are hard and my smile is very convincing.

Depression doesn’t always look like sadness. Mine looked like efficiency. A clean house. Children fed and clothed and homework done and reading levels on track. From the outside I was managing. From the inside there was nobody home.

I couldn’t feel things. That was the worst part. Not the sadness. The flatness. Like someone had turned the volume down on everything. Food tasted like nothing. Music sounded like noise. My children’s laughter, which should have been the thing that pulled me back, reached me like sound through water. I could hear it. I couldn’t feel it.

He was still downstairs during this. Still in the house. Still making his comments and controlling the money and existing in a parallel reality where everything was my fault and his hands were clean.

And I was upstairs. On autopilot. Running the bare minimum code required to appear alive.

I don’t know how long it lasted. Months. Maybe longer. Time doesn’t work properly when you’re not inside it.

What pulled me out wasn’t therapy or courage or a revelation. It was rage. A small, hot, stubborn flame that lit itself one Tuesday for no reason at all and said: not this. Anything else but not this.

And I picked up the phone.

And I called Universal Credit.

And autopilot ended.