Catharsis - "My love will laugh with me before the morning comes."

In times of introspection, she turns to us and falls away from the world.

The fumes of black paint and cursorily applied primer still linger about the room, even after a full day has passed. Effy stands atop her bed with one hand on her hip, her feline sense of balance keeping her stable on the lumpy mattress.

With her other hand, she pulls out the metal tin to which we have been confined in exile while she has been busy living. Letting a different flame burn. Busy learning all that is Katie Fitch.

Reaching deep into the pocket of her jeans for her lighter, she looks up to survey her work. It´s hardly the Sistine fucking Chapel, but it will do. Coarse and uneven brushstrokes and stray paintbrush hairs texture the ceiling of Tony´s old room, her room now. Though the surface is uniform enough to suit her purpose.

It was something which her otherwise rather clueless new psych had suggested. Somewhere between: "You should exercise more Effy, mens sana in corpore sano, you know." and "What about joining a social club? Studies show that engaging with others or committing to a cause are some of the best ways to keep depression at bay."

On paper he was right, of course. But Elizabeth Stonem doesn´t exist ´on paper,´ she lives right off the page. And even someone with only the tiniest shred of understanding of this girl would have known that suggesting organised group activities or something as asinine as exercise to her was like pissing in the wind. Not only useless but ultimately you were bound to end up with piss on your face.

Only this new, more quixotic and mellow Effy did not throw spite and disdain back in the face of the unsuspecting public clinic minion. She has gained a tiny bit of control over her demons during the last few weeks and sees no sense in biting the hand that is trying to help her keep those demons in their cages. Although the powerful hand that truly holds the key to those cages does not belong to doctor Garcia.

The singe of flame from the lighter causes my tip to ignite and crackle slightly in the turpentine and chemical solvent-soaked air that clouds the room.

Effy knows what and who is to thank for this welcome reprieve in her hitherto fragile emotional state. And so, when the overweight and underpaid doctor had put out the suggestion of a mind map, Effy had taken it on like a challenge. Her choice of medium and scale was certainly not what he´d had in mind but, truth be told, she could hardly think of a more fitting canvas for her catharsis than her bedroom ceiling. Somewhere she could literally look up to, somewhere where the inner workings of her more lucid mind could be the first thing she saw in the morning and her last conscious thought at night. A bolstering reminder of how far she has already come and how far she still wants to go. She could actually visualise this as a proactive solution, helping to manage her budding recovery.

And Effy is not one to do things in halves. So she had stopped by the B&Q on her way home from the clinic for the supplies, swiped an unfinished bottle of vodka from Anthea's plentiful oppression-numbing stash and had quickly set herself to task daubing the ceiling black to the fitting sound of the Rolling Stones. A strong and steady sleep had taken her under the moment she dropped the paintbrush in the ashtray and she had woken up hours later, fully clothed and paint speckled.

Brushing at a fetching smudge of paint on her cheek, she takes a couple of deep, calm drags off me. Her version of fortifying fresh air. She contemplates where to start before reaching over to her bedside table for the chalk. When she rises back up to standing, she is ready to begin.

The words flow thick and fast. Messy scrawled ribbons of substance, searching for deeper meaning in order. Sporadically swigging at the top-shelf liquor, Effy wipes away any misplaced fragments with a damp cloth and shifts them to their rightful place one by one. She adds more, exhales another plume of smoke, ponders a moment before attacking the growing web of names and places and events and feelings from a different corner and with fresh insight. She adds basic sketches to illustrate her mind´s eye, draws sweeping lines to connect the stranded or sidelined splinters of thought.

Before long, the map has begun to creep down the face of the wall at the head of her bed, so complex is it that it cannot be contained within the limiting confines of the two-dimensional plane of the ceiling.

There is no ´right way up´ no instructions or interpretation guide, but Effy feels the deep catharsis of unburdening her mind onto a tangible platform as she spins around in all directions, filling in the spiralling mess of words and pictures.

As she draws another grateful drag, I find her wishing she had colour to add to the mix. Another layer of meaning and definition. But then again, this process is forcing her to channel and organise her thoughts more methodically, to find ways of expressing her cogitations, conscious or subliminal. Her instincts and desires, her likes and dislikes, raw emotions, measured thoughts and reckless experiences, her memories, her dreams and her fears have all found a place. A spot where Effy can park them and they will leave her be when she needs to breathe. But also a place she can return to scrutinise them when the need to self-examine strikes her.

Her right arm is beginning to cramp up but she sucks again from the bottle and the flow of ethanol in her blood dulls the sting long enough for her to shape the last few letters of a thought cloud above the left bedside table.

The unshed cinders have started to collect on my tip as she's been absently dragging at me through the corner of her mouth to feed the painting trance. A scattering of dead ash tumbles onto the bedspread and with that contact I'm granted a peek at the last week these sheets have seen. Six days of growing comfort in each other's presence. Six days of grazing touches, of whispered confessions and easy silences. Three nights of 'accidental' sleepovers and barely held back desires and another three of late night calls and texting, trying to bring two beds closer to each other through a flimsy wifi connection.

It takes me hardly a second to connect the blurred images of milky skin and crooked smiles with the girl whose name is scrawled tens of times across the fresh web on the ceiling. I don't need to have met her to link the figure who rolled Effy over in these sheets and lazily stroked her back in the afternoon breeze with the omnipresent name above our heads. Even as another smattering of ash tumbles onto the messy bedspread and I hear the echoes of names softly sighed into the pillows at sunrise as the dawning of consciousness reached them both.

But Effy's mind is going beyond the map above her head. As she adds the finishing touches to an intricate arrow, she is planning more than this. She is not merely mapping the past but projecting the future. Hidden within this mind-map is a blueprint to the perfect night out. The night she is looking forward to as if it were her first. A certain ball that must be perfect. A night that can´t fall short. She knows that if she can untangle some of the mess of clues above her into something resembling a plan, she can make it an evening to remember. One that Katie deserves as much for the many silent rescues as for not allowing Effy to rescue her. For letting Effy see that she is vulnerable and for trusting her not to take advantage of that vulnerability. And Effy is determined not to disappoint.

The final tokes she takes from me bolster her further. She skips deftly over to the windowsill without touching the ground and places the paintbrush on the sticky upturned lid balanced on the ledge. Inhaling one last puff of insight, she returns to the bed with equal grace where she flops onto her back to observe her work without craning her neck. She twists her stiff body one last time towards the nightstand to drop me into the empty vodka bottle where the remaining dregs of liquid snuff me out.

Through the stippled glass I have a fading view of my very human vessel as she falls asleep with her lungs full of me and her head full of black and white memories and new designs for the perfect communion.