Notes from Down Under (an ongoing series): Betrayal

If there’s one thing that has gnawed at me this year, it’s this: betrayal. A small, sharp word that cuts deep, leaving debris in its wake. After it happened, I sank—not immediately, but slowly, like a ship taking on water. My doctor, alarmed at my inertia and my sudden lack of buoyancy, prescribed higher doses of medications, layering them on top of the ones I was already taking for other ailments. The goal was to help me function like a normal person.

Normal, of course, being relative. What no one tells you about functioning—about being artificially stitched back together by tiny pills—is that there are side effects. For me, they came quickly: ten kilos in five months, a new and unfamiliar heaviness that I now carry like luggage I never packed. My old clothes turned against me, every button and zipper conspiring to remind me of how far I’d fallen. Today, I stood in my bedroom, surrounded by jeans that no longer close, packing them into a bag destined for donation. As I folded the denim, it hit me. This, too, is a kind of loss. The kind that makes you cry—not the big, cinematic tears of grief but the smaller, meaner ones of frustration and exhaustion.

What makes it worse, what truly rankles, is the knowledge that while I’ve been here—struggling to shed my anger along with my kilos, bleeding money into medications and doctors’ appointments—the person who betrayed me has moved on, unencumbered and, it seems, without remorse. I have forgiven, or I’ve told myself I have, though sometimes the anger flares up anyway, hot and bright, and I hate myself for how small it makes me feel. Shallow, I think, and then correct myself: no, human.

And yet, through it all, I’ve kept moving. I’ve worked, written, met deadlines. I’ve surprised myself with my ability to create, hyper-focused and relentless, as though my mind is trying to outrun my body. In five months, I’ve achieved more than I thought possible—awards, recognition, tangible proof that I’m still here, still in the fight. And there’s comfort in that, just as there’s comfort in knowing that my friends and family have stayed close, like a safety net strung beneath me as I wobble toward some kind of healing.

This isn’t a story of triumph, at least not yet. But it’s something. A consolation, perhaps. A way of saying: look what I’ve endured, and look what I’ve managed to do anyway.