Coming back from the bottom

Coming back doesn’t look like recovery.

It looks like resuming tasks.

I don’t announce anything.

I don’t explain where I went.

I just start moving again — slow, automatic, efficient enough to pass.

People read that as stability.

It isn’t.

It’s maintenance.

There’s a version of me that handles the surface-level requirements:

the messages, the dishes, the appointments, the small talk.

She’s practiced. She knows the script.

She can operate even when the rest of me is still lagging behind.

It’s not a mask in the emotional sense.

It’s a mask in the functional sense —

a system that keeps the day from collapsing while the mind recalibrates.

I don’t resent it.

It’s just how the machinery works.

There’s a sequence to all of this.

Not predictable, but familiar enough that I can map it.

The drop.

The suspension.

The interruption.

The return.

The mask.

It repeats in different shapes, but the structure stays the same.

I’ve stopped pretending it’s random.

I can feel the early signs now — the way my thoughts start to flatten, the way the world loses depth, the way my body becomes something I observe instead of inhabit. None of it surprises me anymore.

Knowing the pattern doesn’t stop it.

It just means I don’t waste energy being confused.

This is the system.

This is the cycle.

This is the cost of having a mind that goes too deep, too fast, without warning.

But if there’s a pattern, there’s also a path out.

And I follow it every time, even when I don’t feel like I’m choosing it.

The descent is involuntary.

The return is not