And these people aren’t talking about them like they belong in a cutlery drawer. They’re counting them. Using them. Saving them.

I click on the hashtag #spoonielife, and the other chatter dissolves.

#spoonielife

Search by hashtag to find your people.

You are now viewing the chatroom #spoonielife.

barefacebear: bad pain day today >_< #spoonielife

>0_0: @barefacebear I’m with you

>spoonie-girl: @barefacebear This was me last week, but now I’m baking cookies. CAKE IS WAITING.

>barefacebear: @spoonie-girl this is keeping me going rn

My fingers are shaking.

I’ve read about other people counting spoons when I’ve been researching online, but the posts always felt impossibly far from me. Other people with Illnesses like mine were like the Loch Ness monster – something you read about, but never really see. Because how could I, when I’m bound to my bed and they’re bound to theirs?

I click on the names of each of the people I see talking and read their profiles. Listed on each of their accounts are hashtags about spoons, or diagnoses I’ve had before, too, or thoughts I’ve had that have never quite surfaced.

I reach out my fingers.

Are there any live streams about us? #spoonielife

I barely have to wait a moment.

>barefacebear: @Alice well volunteered.

>8jackson8: @Alice nope!

>0_0: @Alice please make this happen.

I’m breathing too heavily, so I snap my laptop shut and stare around at my walls.

These people. These people are in the in-between with me. They count spoons. They drift.

And – like me – they exist.

81

Alice and Rowan

I’m just dozing off when I hear the doorbell go downstairs. I shake the sleep from my eyes and listen.

Mum, walking towards the door. Her hand on the door handle. The creak of the hinges.

‘Rowan! Finally come for your review session, have you?’

‘Um, yeah, sorry about – Is it okay if –?’

‘I’m only kidding. Come in, come in. She’s been looking forward to seeing you.’

I die a little bit as I hear the shuffle of him taking off his shoes and I try to tidy my fringe and wipe my face without a mirror.

‘So I’ll just go up, shall I?’

‘You know where it is,’ Mum says.

And then footsteps. His footsteps. Coming up to my room. And even though I know that he must have been here before to paint the walls, him being in my room feels big.

The footsteps stop. There’s a pause. A breath.

She’s in there.

Behind that door.

And I don’t know what I’m going to see.

What

D A M A G E

she did

just to help me.

I knock quietly.

‘Come in!’