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mood |
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 apathetic |
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music |
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Marilyn Manson-Coma White |
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The first real spark of awareness this evening hits the instant my feet sink below the popping bubbles. Easing myself into water much too hot to enjoy right off, I let the tub engulf me and enjoy the sensation of being swallowed up in the scalding steam. I open the pages of the book to the realistic, carefully chosen words of Sylvia Plath and allow my mind to wander down the streets of New York City, to the fur show, to the office, to the Lady’s Day banquet. I am no one other than Esther Greenwood, heroine of her own insanity and a reassuringly solid character.
When the words become too much, when my eyes drift off the folded pages and that town from so many years ago can no longer hold my interest, I fold my body up, sink my face down through the water to tap my nose on the bottom of the tub. My head surfaces, pours out the water, sucks in the air and submerges once more. Over and over, I emerge from the slopping water, breathe out, breathe in, sink to the bottom.
Tired of this activity, I collapse back into the dwindling suds and begin to wander away through the recesses of my mind. Idly, my body uncurls and stretches out, knees up, back flat, feet turned in, hands drifting along by my sides, chest sunk down, face pointing to the hidden sky. Feeling exposed, I tuck my head down under the water, letting only my eyes, my nose and my mouth free to explore the steaming air.
At first, my senses are heightened by this calm state, with nothing else to occupy me but the deadened smells, the perfumed taste of soap and the twelve crooked slats that hold the floor up above me. But as these details become boring and thinking becomes too difficult, my sense slowly shut down, easing out the tension. With my ears submerged below the water, the only music pounding inside my skull is the unbroken beating of my heart, more rhythmical and enduring than any band alive. Someone walks past the door and their footsteps match, for an instant, the steady pulse in my ears; but they are soon offbeat and fading away and again, I can hear only my blood coursing through my body.
And even that rhythmic pounding starts to slow, becomes a dull thud just inside my eardrums. The pulsating beat pushes blackness into the corners of my eyes, I’m slowly blinded by the pumping of my heart. All tastes and smells have faded long ago and awareness seeps away.
The coarse sound of someone taking a piss right by my head jerks me back to consciousness and with silent amusement, I wait for them to finish with their business. When they have gone from the room, and I am floating freely once more outside my mind, I begin to see myself in a new way. Lying as I am, I think of how this is the position I would be in if I were dying, slashed across the wrists. And as I realize this, I look down at myself from above and I am, indeed, floating in a tub of pink liquid, the stain become darker as the red tendrils of blood seep through the thin water. The two substances slowly mix into one another, and I am freed within this pool of my own life. I don’t feel anything in my mind, only peacefulness, endless stretches of light, shifting between white and gray and black. From my suspended state, watching my body decay, I see another person enter, discover the girl floating in death. There is no face there, no emotion. They only lift my body up, rinse the bloody water from it, carry me away. When the plug is pulled and the redness drains away, the only thing left in the tub is a razor, it’s thin, fatal edge left to rust and crumble, forgotten by all who come and go. An inanimate memorial to the child who passed through life in that room. Until it too is nothing more than a damp heap of crumbled metal, gone along with the girl.
Without warning, the persistent, emotionless cries of an alarm clock reach out, grip every nerve in my body with their shrieking, twist through my spine, drag me forcibly back to bitter awareness. Awaking from my vivid death, I see that the red water has reverted to a murky white, see that my pale body is still buoyed up by shallow, involuntary breaths. I can only allow one sigh to follow me out of the room, and I step out, leaving my ghost floating in the tub, and even that hollow memory is dragged down, pulled apart by the receding water.
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tired
blank
anxious
enthralled
awake
blah
curious
cheerful
cold
accomplished