Nora Kinkaid Wants Her Life Back

Something To Make Sense Of

I'm hesitant to go to Boston because I don't trust myself to not want to see him. What purpose do I even have there? Not like I have a reason to go. Not like I have a reason to stay either. The only thing that feels wrong on my mood board is the Back Bay town houses. Everything else makes sense. God, I need a home to call my own. I need warmth and love and community. Why do I feel so alone? Spry where are you? I feel so alone in this and have nothing to offer myself in terms of solace at the moment.

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In the month I had this migraine one thing became crystal clear. The universe was torturing me. I would love to say that I've been overexaggerating this whole time but really I'm not. I spent twenty-three days straight in my apartment. I went outside three times and outside of that, I spent my days sleeping. I stopped going out. I couldn't work. I would wake up, go to the bathroom and have to sit on the lid of the toilet to brush my teeth. I didn't trust myself to stand up so I would lean on the door handle with one arm and the counter with the other hand and hoist myself up. I was always holding onto something. You learn to do that when you can't trust your legs.

When it was time to eat, I would keep my head low to avoid light and shuffle into the kitchen. I'd take out a bowl for oatmeal and deliberately put it on a dish towel. Then I'd put it in the microwave on a paper towel to dull the noise of the glass touching another surface. I'd exhale as much as I could as I waited for the coffee pot to finish brewing and ignored the buzzing in my ears. The earplugs dulled the sound of the microwave but it still felt like a tsunami. I had to stand there and wait so I could turn off the coffee pot and the microwave before they beeped. I couldn't go near the coffee pot light long enough to find out how to reprogram it to not beep. So I just hovered over the pot each morning and waited until I heard the gurgling stop. I'd do the same with the microwave.

I knew I only had a short window to remain standing. It was only a matter of time before my body would betray me again. So I'd eat as quickly as possible and sit up in bed sipping my coffee until inevitably I would feel sick again. I'd slide down under my covers and put my eye mask back on. I'd wait for the sounds to stop but they never did. I was attuned to things I would never think about. The fan of my laptop and the faint buzzing sound my cell phone charger made. The clink of a pipe being used inside the walls. The intricacies of an apartment run on sounds and I was so acutely aware of them I began to get paranoid.

I started to believe that someone would break in when I slept. One night, someone really did try to get in. I was on my couch with a direct line of sight to my front door. Someone walked right up to it and rattled the handle. I froze up. The handle rattled again and I said "Hello" and they scurried away. The girl next door was having a party so I just assumed they had tried to go into the wrong apartment. But I never heard her door open when they walked away. I still have no idea who they were or where they were going.

After that incident, I would leave the butcher knife out on my kitchen counter. I thought if I heard the door open I could jump up and grab it before the intruder got to me. I didn't trust myself to have the knife near me in the bedroom because my paranoia was too great. I didn't trust my body or my mind to let me know what was real and safe or made up and threatening. It only occurs to me now that leaving a butcher knife out on a counter in case of an intruder is really freaking stupid considering the intruder would need to pass through my kitchen to get to me in the bedroom. But I wasn't thinking about that. I was only thinking about my necessity for safety.

I started seeing shapes in corners of the apartment. Flashes of dark spots that moved away when I would turn to face them more fully. Some of them were migraine auras. I know that now. But others, ones I still see, are flashes of non-light beings. Those never went away. I also see them without an active migraine. I don't talk to them. I feel like it's important you know that. I don't address the non-light beings that surround me anymore. But I know they're there and they know I know. It's best to leave them be.