There are watermarks on the ceiling. This is what I am noticing. Brown stains. Bubbled paint. I close my eyes, open them again.

This room stinks. A pungent aroma of incense and stale skin is breaking in waves against my nose. I don’t want to be here. I hate being here. I didn’t choose to be here. But if there’s one thing life’s not about, it’s choice. I’ve learnt that now.

These watermarks fascinate me and allow me to take my mind away from where I am.

I am floating down a river on a lilo. I am on my back, drifting headfirst. I am staring upwards at the chirping birds and the oak trees that reach out from the bank across the water - their leaves scorched brown and dry from the summer sun. The clouds make shapes: there’s a monkey with a pool stick, there’s a fish with a top hat. In my nostrils is the smell of mud and hot plastic – hot plastic which is sticky to my skin as I manoeuvre my raft ever-so-gently around corners. The sun stings my skin and I dip my limbs in the water periodically to cool them.

Beyond the bank is a line of trees and beyond the trees is a road. From the road comes a siren but it’s gone as soon as it arrives.

This is my bliss. This. The sun, the birds, the water, the plastic. I answer to no one but the current.

I am the captain of my ship – deftly dodging floating obstacles.

‘I want you to visualise the depression’ a voice says and I am lying on my back on an examination bed staring at the watermarks on the ceiling. This is what I am noticing.

‘I want you to tell me what does it “feel” like,’ the voice asks.

‘I need description. I want you to objectify what you’re feeling’. 

A lady stands above me and asks me to follow her fingers with my eyes as they work circles above my face. I do it once and then I do it again counter clockwise. Then I do it with my eyes closed, her fingers touching the part of my skin where my eyes should be looking. I do it again counter clockwise. Each time the fingers move, I chant ‘I feel depressed. I feel depressed.’ I put the emphasis on the word ‘feel’ but I can hear my pronunciation change on each delivery. Before each chant I am required to take a deep breath. And in… And out…

‘I want you to say the first thing that comes to your mind. What does depression ‘look’ like? Is it a big black dog.’

‘No. It’s not a dog.’ I say.

‘Ok, that’s fine,’ she says. ‘What does it look like to you?’

‘It’s black.’

‘What’s black? The depression’s black? Black what? Like a black cloud?’ 

I am on the lilo again, except this time my childhood friend James floats alongside me. We are approaching the most exciting part of the river, where it narrows and makes way for a series of rapids. I am wearing board shorts with Hawaiian print. James is in Speedos. I have a yellow raft, and his is red. On the bank beyond the next bend our parents are drinking champagne from plastic glasses and laying salads and rolls out on a picnic table.

I roll onto my stomach and brace myself for the impending white water – grab hold of the sides of my raft. My plastic vessel takes me down and up again. It contorts and turns me sideways. My leg falls into the water but I regather as the raft spins back the other way. I check behind me and James has capsized – his raft floating upside down, his hand clutching its rope handle, his head bobbing up and down in the water beside it. He laughs. I laugh. Ahead, beyond the bend come the faint screams of our parents. ‘Oooh look! Here they come. Heeellooo boys.’ Followed by applause and the cheers and yells of one man are distinctly louder than the rest.

There are watermarks on the ceiling.

This is what I am noticing.

And I am wondering, was I as happy on that day as the memory of it makes me now.

‘Madison, I really need you to focus. We can only move as quickly as you allow,’ the voice again.

The lady appears above me again and directs me to place one hand above my forehead and the first four fingers of my other hand underneath my ass, right at the base of my tailbone.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are lying face down. 

‘I need you to give me something. Isn’t there any image that comes to your mind?’

I take a breath. In, out.

‘It looks like my father’.