BSoD

I had been ill ever since arriving in Honolulu.

First, I was overwhelmed with sadness and fatigue. I'd crossed an ocean to be here, leaving my best friend at home and my brand new boyfriend at the airport. I'd spent two staggered flights mostly awake--unusual, for my hypersomniac self--either outright sobbing or drinking free alcohol and staring out the window at the clouds, thick and tangible below like cotton batting, or maybe like bread dough crusty with way too much flour, or a rolling white forest creased with river valleys and deepening canyons that poured into abyssal blue reservoirs.

Then, I was overwhelmed by the noise. I had no idea how loud Honolulu was going to be. The noises of traffic rolling by our leaky apartment never ceased; motorcycles and souped-up engines and ear-destroying loud music blasting past at all times, tearing right through the windows we had to keep open in order to keep the apartment ventilated and a tolerable temperature. Construction noises buzzing and rumbling and shrieking into the sky. And sirens... so many sirens...

Mama took me out grocery shopping after I landed, and we took the bus to Don Quixote, and the sounds of the buses' air brakes pierced my core and rattled every one of my bones. She was talking to me, trying to draw me out of my pained silence, but her stream of words barely registered. I was doing everything I could to keep it together, to keep a neutral expression, to focus on finding groceries in the cacophony. This was not what I was expecting, and I did not prepare myself for it. I'm not sure I could have, even if I had tried.

The sensory overload instantly spiked my anxiety levels. I worried about everything. I was filled with the idea that this entire venture was a mistake. This venture, this journey, this plan I'd been making for a year, carefully crafting a vision for how I could achieve a healthy future: a mistake. It took me several days to realize that my racing heart, my shaking hands, were caused first by the noise, and that the racing thoughts and fears and worries and anxieties, the wondering if my friends back in Colorado had already forgotten me, were spurred by my physiological condition, rather than the other way around.

I shut down. I didn't expect it to be like this, and I completely shut down.

But that is not where my story ends.