I sit in a tub of too hot water watching my skin turn red under the bubbles. I could turn the temperature down but the energy required to lift my arm from the water is more than it would take to simply boil.
So I boil.
Lost in thoughts that are as scattered as the scars they remember as the Nivea Coconut and Almond Milk body wash cleanses what only I can see. So much has changed since the trauma ball bouncing through my brain actually took place.
My body. This body. This adult body with curves and tattoos and lines that weren’t there when I was 16 and he was breathing. He’s never touched this body and he never will. He’s never beaten and violated this body and he never will. It’s just my memory that he consumes from his grave.
And then there is her. Out there somewhere probably smiling and laughing. Probably telling fake stories of the daughter she hasn’t spoken to in two years and knows nothing about beyond her own disappointment. The tears I’ve cried for her have never really been for her. They were for the version of her that I wanted but never received.
A mother. A mother who loved me.
Why didn’t I have that?
My red scorched skin covered in bubbles that smell of a tropical vacation reminds me of how easily I can ignore pain. I did it most of my life. Trauma after trauma, dance after dance, broken bone after broken bone, nightmares while I was awake creating insomnia, it’s all built to one thing.
A book.
A book I want to write and need to write and believe that if I write it maybe then the story won’t belong to me anymore.
A book I procrastinate like so many other things that I know I need to do. I sit here and the blank screen mocks me. The cursor blinks on emptiness and I cry.
I don’t want to go back to that place but if I don’t I will never escape this place.
This place.
This place where I sit in silence with the television playing a show I’m not paying attention to and won’t remember in an hour. Where I’m alone because I want to be alone because I’m a writer with nothing to say.
This place where I live but it doesn’t feel like mine.
Sometimes it smells like garbage. Sometimes it smells like confectionary sugar and pancakes.
It only smells good when you’re here.
I know that neither scent is real. Much like the white spider that just crawled across my bed before disappearing — it’s all just figments of the seizures in my sensory cortex.
One of the things filed in the unpaid co-pays that I don’t want to pay for the -ologists who didn’t know.
Test after test, month after month, pill after pill, all for the amazing result of
I
Don’t
Know.
How are you feeling since the painful invasive procedure that only told you it’s fine if you want to eat gluten?
Exactly the same. Awful. Can’t eat. Wake up sick. Never-ending nightmare.
Okay. Come back in a year.
Awesome.
I don’t feel that I should pay for that. I’m not even sorry when they call. This is what I wasted my therapy session on this week. I whined and complained and sometimes giggled about the bills I refuse to pay for answers no one seems to have and the pain no one takes away.
I want my life back. I want my body back. I am trapped inside of sickness haunted by my past and I am useless to you.
You who didn’t sign up for this.
You who works day and night and takes care of the animals I had to have and reminds me to eat and cleans up after me and brings me the packages that never stop coming.
You who doesn’t complain about me spending money that I do not have on things that I do not need as I attempt to fill a void that I can not name out loud.
I hear your stress in every step you take beyond the door that I hide behind. I see it in your face and hear it in your silence as you bring things to me then leave again. I want to say something. Thank you? It doesn’t feel like enough. So I hide the fact that I cry all day when you’re busy. I try to let you think the darkness is passing. I try to hide that the medication isn’t working. I don’t bring you into my nightmare because I have become yours.
I hate that I’m so miserable.
I hate that I can’t snap out of it.
I hate that after all we’ve done and all we’ve lost and all we’ve been through, you’re still standing and I can’t move.
I hate that I shop while you drown in our bills and I know that I shouldn’t but I don’t know how to stop.
I hate that for all of your hard work and stress and no time off — all you have to show for it is whatever is left of me.
Mostly, I hate me.
There’s the thought of a someday when things might be better. When it won’t all be so hard and maybe everything won’t hurt. When you get a break and I take over. When I’m not a burden.
That thought seeps under the bubbles and dissipates in the tropical-scented steam of the too-hot water.
I wipe my tears and stand to grab my towel. Throw on fresh clothes and walk past your open office door without looking up.
I want to talk to you but it just makes things worse because I want to tell you things will get better. But I don’t want to lie to you and I don’t know that it’s not a lie. I go to the darkness where I hide among the stacks of things I shouldn’t have bought. And I whisper so I know you won’t hear me.
I’m so sorry.