SIBBS Newsletter Autumn 2022

SIBBS Newsletter, Autumn 2022 | www.tcf.org.uk 13 The walls are closing in, and the shiny vinyl floor is getting further away from your feet. Maybe if you just concentrate on a button on your clothes, and then look up again, you’ll see this was all just a bad dream. If you pretend it’s not happening, maybe it won’t be. It worked when you were a child, so why wouldn’t it work this time? In the corner of the room there’s a wheelchair with the words ‘departure lounge’ on the back. The irony of such words is lost in that moment. A doctor without a face walks in to say it might be ok. But then what feels like days later, more doctors walk in to say it won’t be ok. The ground is really falling now, like the moment the lift drops to the bottom floor in an action film. But it can’t be stopped like they do in the movies. Everything is in slow motion, like the moment you go flying over the handlebars of your new bike as a child, seeing yourself about to hit the curb as your arms go out to soften the blow. Grief is the same type of pain that you feel when you’ve been winded, a tightness in your chest that sends you into panic. It’s a karate chop to the gut. It feels like you’re watching a playback of your own life, like an out of body experience where you’re seeing yourself from a distance. That noise isn’t you, it can’t be. It doesn’t sound like you, but someone in this room is wailing. This is the room where everything changes, where you leave a part of yourself etched on the walls, where every single brick holds a memory. It has seen so much, this small, tired room. There is nothing outside of these four walls. by Georgia Coan