The Day After

It’s the day after my nineteenth.

You’d expect a birthday party clean-up, or belated plans with busy friends; Maybe you’re expecting a sad college student finishing their paper due the day before. I pictured my birthday and the day after to be something like that too.

So why was I laying frozen, staring at fluorescent lights, with dingy floral curtains surrounding me?

There was a faint beep echoing down the hall, almost like a heart monitor — but that didn’t make much sense. I was in training just a minute ago.

Before that, all I could remember was getting ready for the day. I remember swallowing down the urge to prick myself with my nameplate pin, just like how I resisted the urge to stand outside in the storm the day before. It always stormed on my birthday.

I think I remember greeting a senior or two before entering the barracks, then it was line up time but I got stuck with the wrong group and almost missed roll call. I remember the pretty lieutenant ticking off a demerit for my unstarched handkerchief, I remember the other one’s booming voice in the quad when we were practicing drills.

Then, I was sitting on the sidelines. huh?

I think I remember someone from the support team handing me a glass of water. Dominique? Dominic? Then, it was lieutenants and generals ogling at my frozen state. It was almost as if it was their first time seeing someone so unresponsive.

Oh. right.

Suddenly, my hands were shaking.

I couldn’t breathe so they made me take deep breaths.

I couldn’t move so they tried making me squeeze their hands.

I couldn’t speak so they stopped talking to me.

I couldn’t cry, I couldn’t say anything, I couldn’t do anything.

I think I remember telling a girl of my condition, she said she was going to tell the seniors lingering about. I remember the scary lieutenant softening her voice, she said she’d accompany me in the ambulance — I was being rushed to the ER?

I remember the nurses looking apathetically when the ambulance door opened. I remember a specific one, a tinge of judgement in her eyes when I couldn’t speak up nor move past an inch, and I remember her being ready to hand my case to the ER doctor. The senior high clinic was better, I thought. At least they pretended to care.

The doctor was no mental health professional either. She wrote it off as a panic attack. Then, there were a few slivers of genuine worry in the lieutenant’s eyes whenever I’d twitch or try to actually answer the doctor’s basic questions. I almost felt bad watching her rest on the flimsy chair and desk.

I didn’t know when or how I fell asleep, but I do remember waking up to the sound of crashing rain. I sat up straight, startled. I asked for the time, afraid of my father’s fury. I almost bolted to the restroom to vomit, but her kind eyes grounded me.

She called my roommate, she couldn’t come, then my sister, there was no service, and finally my father who told the doctor the wrong things but I couldn’t find it in myself to correct them.

Now, a few hours after the incident, and I don’t even think I’ve recovered at all. It was almost as if my mask melted in the heat of the morning sun only to come back up at the chilly rainy afternoon. I can move, I can talk, but the frozen feeling lingers in my chest. It’s almost as if I never actually left.

It’s almost as if I’m back to the same day, last year — or was it 5 years ago — eyes frozen to the screen as I wrote something mindlessly in a document I’ve long forgotten the use for. Maybe it was a project, maybe it was a diary entry.

Same aching chest, same shaking hands.

Same red lines, same sinking realization of time passing by me.

Maybe next year would be different.