In the early hours of Saturday morning, I woke up to the sound of fast running water and splashing.

My head was sleepy, and I arose from my bed feeling disorinentated and confused.

I stood at the top of the stairs and listened, discounting reasonable explanaions for the fast flowing gush of water eminating from below; it was not the washing machine, nor was it the dishwasher, it did not sound like rain.

I went downstairs and opened the door to the downstairs closet. I was greeted by a rush of water and the floor was flooded. I cried out for help and I was quickly joined by my wife.

A cable to a tap which had been tightened earlier in the week, had caused a breach in the connecting pipework which had suddenly given way.

I turned off the water supply, and we mopped up the water which had collected on a tiled floor.

The water, had seeped under the wall of the little closet into our living space and soddened wet through a carpet in a circular formation across a wide area of the floor.

I scrubbed on my hands and knees with numerous towels to soak up the excess water, before retiring back to bed with plans to make arrangements for a repair in the morning.

The incident was unsettling and at some level upsetting, but the damage could have been far worse, if I had not woken unexpectedly in the middle of the night, or if we had been away from home when the leak had occurred.

The aftermath on my emotional state, was one of reflection as I tried to think how the leakage of water under the wall onto the carpet was akin to the aftermath of one of my many crises. These crises seem to come and go with such frequency, but each time, they take time to “dry out” much like the damp carpet after each emotional episode.

My emotional state, is flimsy, and at times, unmanaged, and lacks reslience, which despite my efforts, I cannot seem to build and sustain.

I am flooded with a feeling of being overwhelmed, trapped, immovable, as if the water has seeped into my brain and left it there to float in a state of dizziness and uncertainty and anxiety until the levels gradually subside and withdraw.

This leak of water, showed to me in a metaphorical sense, that I need to try again to build in some control to my emotions, not to suppress them but to steer them to channels of positivity and constructivity and contentment, rather than being vulnerable to the sogginess, and dampness and quelchiness of a flood.

William Defoe