Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

Special thanks to my proofreaders/editors: chasethebrony and Rainbowsoldier94

ABOUT TO CRASH

I clearly remember the day twenty years ago when the changeling Queen Chrysalis and her army invaded Canterlot. The most important wedding in centuries was almost tragically ruined. But against all odds, the wedding between Princess Cadance and Shining Armor continued and the invaders were banished off the land of Equestria.

We thought that everything was returning to normal in Equestria, and my friends and I all went back to our normal lives.

After performing the Sonic Rainboom at the wedding, Rainbow Dash returned home even more excited to continue her training for an upcoming Wonderbolts audition. She was training so hard every day, and we, as her friends, gave her all the support we could.

Our lives continued as usual, with everypony taking care of their own problems and of course, we always had our little get-togethers: a lunch, spa date, sleepovers and etc… and we were very anxious to see Rainbow’s performance at the audition.

Two weeks before the event, Rainbow had intensified her training to a whole new level. She started missing out get-togethers more frequently, but we understood that her great day was coming and she needed to train.

The day finally arrived, everypony was there to watch the open audition and everypony knew that Rainbow Dash would be the winner.

But something went wrong with her new trick. While performing a loop, she lost control of her wings and hit the floor. It wasn’t the biggest of her mistakes but the problem is that after she committed it, she got too nervous and failed to perform her “grand finale”. She couldn’t perform the Sonic Rainboom as she had planned and nearly hit one of the judges.

It was clear that she had lost the only chance to realize her lifelong dream.

All of Ponyville was in a gloomy mood for weeks. No one wanted to mention that the pegasus considered to be the best flyer in Equestria had failed in the audition but at the same time, everypony felt bad for her because they knew how much it meant to her.

She only got some bruises from her crash, but the biggest wound was in her heart. She wasn’t showing it to us, but she was deeply depressed. We knew it, but we decided to not to speak of the subject lest we wound her even more.

Eventually everything went back to normal… or so we thought.

Two months after her failure, Rainbow started to be evasive. She uncharacteristically began to neglect her work on the weather patrol. Though it was most unusual, she began to grow distant from her friends.

She began filling every moment of her free time with a real acrobatics at the expense of everything else in her life. Eventually, she was fired from her work due to her constant absence. We tried to talk to her but she always said that she was too busy to talk, or some other excuse. We couldn’t understand why she got so fixated all of a sudden… well actually, we knew why but we refused to believe that it was from the tragic audition. We had promised to each other to never talk about it and we all kept our promises.

I quickly understood that she had become obsessive; her determination to be the best had turned into a disease. Of course, sooner or later she ran out of money so we had to help our friend in any way that we could.

We never managed to make her stop from more than minutes to talk to us. Twilight even tried making a “trap” to make Rainbow talk to us about what was bothering her so much, but in the end they just became fruitless attempts.

One day, her determination made her suffer more than mentally. After all her training, she hadn’t improved anything. On the contrary, training without rest can only cause harm to one’s body and that is exactly what happened. When that day finally came, she managed to shatter both wings while trying to perform a Sonic Rainboom.

She was carried to the hospital for an emergency surgery; the possibility of being never able to fly again was immense. After hours of tension in the waiting room the doctor finally came up and gave the prognosis.  Rainbow may never be able to fly again. We were completely shocked; he also told us that even if she managed to fly again, she wouldn’t be able to fly as fast as she was used to.

When Rainbow woke up, we were there by her side. The doctor showed up and told her what she could expect from her recovery and in that moment her world fell completely apart. I never forgot the expression of pain and sorrow on her face.

We tried our best to cheer her up, but we couldn't make any difference at all. For two months we visited her in the hospital, no exceptions; and every day she cried in our hooves.

After two ominous months, Rainbow’s behavior was getting worse; she was cycling between extreme fits of rage, sadness and rare happiness. We knew that it was a clear case of bipolar disorder; the doctors started treating her with antidepressants and other kinds of medicines.

I had never been so worried about her. She saved my life after all, and I felt that I had to return the favor to her somehow; everypony had their lives to take care so eventually they had to reduce their visits to once a week, but I struggled to keep going there every day. I needed to show her that she wasn’t alone in her fight.

It was impossible to know if the medicines would work due to the thousands of different cases of the bipolar disorder, but to our happiness it seemed like it was working. She still had some bad episodes in her behavior but she was learning to control herself well.

Then one day, she was finally released from the hospital. She still had to take the medicines for an undetermined amount of time, but at least she was well enough to be able to take care of herself. The first thing that she did when got out of the hospital was to try to take flight. She tried several times until she managed to hover a few hooves off the ground but her wings were still weak from the bed rest and the healing.

I asked Rainbow if she would like to stay at my home until she recovered, and thankfully she agreed. I couldn’t have been happier to be helping her out.