It was a distorted world, a rippling shadowy land of ghostly sounds and blurred vision. It was also quite restful and if she could stay down there for half an hour to soothe her soul, she would do. Unfortunately she was going to run out of air. She held on, determined to make it to another minute. No such luck. A painful tug at her hair and her head snapped up into the cold air, gasping and spluttering over the rude reminder of her life outside of her dreamworld. She heard a strident voice in her ear and tried to focus.

'What the hell are you trying to do? Drown yourself?'

Quite possibly. But she didn't tell the owner of the voice that. The grip on her hair fell away and Bernie looked at her rescuer. She was not happy.

Bernie wiped water from her eyes and tried to act normal. Not that she knew what normal was at this point.

'Sorry' was all she could say. It was a pretty stupid thing to say. The other woman muttered and swam off, her stare unfriendly. Bernie felt like an idiot for not keeping it together in a public place. But recently, that was her daily struggle.

She came to the swimming pool almost every day to try and regain some normalcy in her life, keep active and block out all the thoughts crawling around her head, those wicked whispers attempting to smother her with overwhelming intentions. Sometimes people could catch her behaving strangely and then she'd try to flee.

She hauled herself out and went to the showers to try to drown in the shower instead. The sound of normal people around her blurred into a miasma. She might as well have been on the moon. She couldn't tell where the hot water started and where her tears ended.

She'd try tomorrow, she thought. She always told herself that she'd try tomorrow. But she knew she wouldn't be able to feel normal so soon. One day she would.

But not yet.