By Thursday, the assembly felt further away.
Not gone - Scarlett still felt a small clench in her stomach when she thought about it directly. It had moved from the front of her mind to somewhere slightly behind it, which was progress.
Friday was fine.
The weekend was mostly fine.
And then Monday arrived, and with it, for reasons Scarlett couldn’t entirely explain, the assembly came back.
Not as a sharp, hot thing like it had been on Wednesday afternoon. More like a grey, settled heaviness that sat on her chest when she woke up and made getting dressed feel harder than it should.
She sat at breakfast and didn’t eat much.
“You seem a bit flat,” her mum said.
“I’m fine,” said Scarlett, in a voice that didn’t quite convince either of them.
At school, she was quiet. Not visibly upset - just muted. Like someone had turned her volume down slightly.
Maisie noticed. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” Scarlett said again.
She wasn’t, particularly. She just didn’t have the words for what she was, which was something in between fine and not fine - a grey in-between place that didn’t have a name.
That evening she sat with Lenny and told him about the grey feeling.
“I thought I was getting over it,” she said. “And then it came back. Does that mean I’m not resilient after all?”
Lenny shook his head firmly.
“Recovery doesn’t go in a straight line,” he said. “It goes forward and back and sideways, and sometimes it doubles back on itself entirely before it goes forward again.”
“That sounds exhausting,” said Scarlett.
“It can be,” Lenny agreed. “The doubling back isn’t failure. It’s just the way feelings work. They need time to settle properly, not just time to go quiet for a few days.”
“How much time?”
“Different for different things,” said Lenny. “And different for different people. There’s no right speed.”
Scarlett pulled her knees up to her chest.
“I feel like I should be over it by now.”
Lenny looked at her steadily. “Says who?”
Scarlett opened her mouth. Then closed it again.
She wasn’t sure, actually.
Nobody had said it. It was just a feeling she’d somehow absorbed - that there was a correct amount of time to feel bad about something, and she’d probably exceeded it.
“I made it up,” she said slowly.
“You did,” said Lenny gently. “Most of the rules about how long we’re allowed to feel things - we make them up. And they’re usually much stricter than they need to be.”
Scarlett sat with that for a while.
The grey feeling didn’t disappear.
It loosened, slightly, around the edges.
Like it was allowed to be there now.
And somehow that made it easier to carry.
🫶 Dream big dreams.