The Letter

Prologue

Prologue

The day of my mental breakdown was a Wednesday.

And when I say 'mental breakdown', I don't mean the kind that celebrities have when they check into luxury spa's and get medication and mud wraps. I'm talking about the other kind.

So back to my story...the Wednesday that irrevocably changed my life forever.

It was an average Wednesday. An unspectacular, uneventful, run- of- the- mill not Monday, not Tuesday but Wednesday.

So, no, there was nothing special about the day.

So why was I feeling like this? Like what exactly?

Well, that's the million-dollar question isn't it?

Because I couldn't quite put my finger it. The feeling wasn't fully formed yet, but it had gripped me nonetheless. Embedded itself like an arrow in my back or a virus in my blood stream—invisible, but deadly.

Something was wrong.

A mild pressure in my solar plexus. A slight heaviness in my head. A feeling of disconnectedness and being out of place. Everything around me screeched that I did not belong and I suddenly felt like an alien in my own home.

I rubbed the sticky sleep from my eyes and glanced around my room. The chair in the corner that mother had insisted on having reupholstered in toasted granola sunrise suede and the walls she had insisted I paint in mystical song of the grey dove, looked odd. (Side note; who the hell is coming up with the names for colors theses days, anyway?)

I climbed out of bed apprehensively, stalked over to my bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. My features were the same—large and distinct. Olive complexion, long black hair, that "signature" mole on my cheek that I'd always hated, and then there are my eyes... one dark brown, one light hazel.

But somehow everything looked different. I looked less like myself and more like someone else I didn't know. If that makes sense?

But of course it doesn't make sense. Because nothing about this so-called "normal" Wednesday was making any sense (hence growing suspicions of imminent mental breakdown)

Perhaps I was still asleep and dreaming. That was surely the only possible explanation for these feelings.

I pinched my cheek. Nothing.

Splashed water on my face. Nope.

I stood in the strange bathroom, looking at this strange person, in the strange mirror. Her name was Jane, plane Jane Smith. Dr. plane Jane Smith.

Well, that's my name now; it wasn't the name I was born with. But that had nothing to do with the way I was feeling, did it?

Kitchen. Now! Tea.

Some soothing chamomile infusion was surely the antidote that would rid me of this feeling.

I walked to the kitchen, turned on the kettle and waited. I felt out of place here too.

Tea—one bag.

Sugar—zero.

No milk in sight.

I stirred the liquid that I was pinning my hopes of normality on and sipped. It tasted bitter. Did it always taste like this?

The so-called soothing chamomile only seemed to intensify the feelings and gave rise to a humming anxiety, which crept slowly like a growing evening shadow.

What was going on with me? I could phone my friend Lilly. But what would I say? That I was in the grip of some kind of paralyzing existential crisis?

Help! I think I might have been transported into the Twilight Zone. (Wait, would Lilly even be my friend in that dimension?)

A statement like that might inspire people to call for the calm -toned nurses with their rainbow-filled injections.

What the hell was going on?

But nothing had changed really. I'd just graduated and had started my new job. But no surprises there. It certainly wouldn't be the thing shaking me to my very core. The job had been planned for, organized, and it was inevitable.

It was my 25th birthday in a few days, but birthdays came along every year. Again, nothing out of the ordinary.

Drive!

I needed a drive. That always cleared my head. I got dressed into someone else's clothes and brushed someone else's teeth for precisely two minutes - no excuse for bad dental hygiene, even in the face of a total nervous melt down.

I climbed into my car and started driving up and down the once familiar suburbs. Then I veered left, away from the small little houses and towards the city.

The mall. With shops and people and breakfast. That would surely make me feel normal again.

It was early, so most of the shops were closed and the mall looked like an empty school hall: depressing. Like it was waiting for kids to rush in, and without them was just a sad shell of what it had once been. A washed up carcass on an empty beach.

The pressure in my solar plexus was back.. The feelings only intensified, so I walked. I walked as fast as I could.

Past the banks, the hardware store and past the shop where I'd bought the exorbitantly overpriced scented candle that I had absolutely no use for (but I'm a people pleaser you see and the shop attendant had been so nice). I passed a coffee shop that had just opened its doors to a single solitary customer in need of their early morning fix.

And then..., I saw it.

I stood outside Flight and Travel Centre, looking up at the electronic display of all the holiday specials. And there it was. At the very top.

Greece.

A special.

Return ticket R 5, 765.

Almost sold out.

Buy now. Complementary beach bag and sun cream included. *Terms and Conditions apply.

And that's when the mists of confusion started to evaporate and the picture finally came into focus.

This was about my name, this was about my job and this was definitely, definitely about my birthday. This was about the day I was born and the circumstances under which I was born.

I slumped down against the wall and pulled out my credit card. I clutched it tightly and waited for someone to open the shop so I could buy the only thing that could furnish me with the answers I'd been seeking my entire life. 

*Please comment below. Has this prologue pulled you in?