I struggle with the button on my jeans. Jacket unzipped, bra unclasped, lying in an ungrateful heap on the rug. It pops open and the zipper catches and I awkwardly fumble my jeans to the floor, kicking at the material that catches on my left foot, remembering I haven't painted my toenails, I haven't shaved my legs...but then, who the hell cares anyway? I catch a glimpse of my face in the mirror, mascara pooling under my eyes. Fact: I'm ugly when I cry. My skin turns purple-yellow mottled, mascara smudges unflatteringly, my eyes turn red and I start to shake. I've never been a good crier. I'm shaking now, turning the water up hot, hotter, climbing into the sturdy-walled tub, naked, strong, hurting--is it pride that makes me lock the door? Or fear, that someone will laugh at my tears? It's too personal; I feel safer behind the locked door, a wooden barricade, trapping you out, trapping me in. The water roars over my gasping breaths, making me invisible. When the tub is full--silence. And I'm burying my face in the water, trying to drown my tears in the porcelain ocean, wanting this to be over, wanting this avalanche of emotion to sink and drown and leave me. Water is the symbol of rebirth--cliche, I think, so cliche of me. But I don't want to be reborn. I want to be erased, to go back to the beginning, before I was here, naked, suffocating. Before I was suddenly left frozen, crashed--beaten down into the arms of a green chair, drowning, gasping--watching my words die. It was uncomfortable, the way I'd been deposited, the way I'd fallen into the arms of the moss-colored chair. I lay, contorted, painfully, for fifty-two minutes. Fifty-two minutes of muteness, where the world withdrew itself and the words disappeared and I had no will. Hopelessness. Paralyzed. Until now, when I stumbled into the bathroom after fifty-two minutes and took my jeans off and climbed into the hot water and folded in on myself, hysterically and privately. The need is there--to reach out, to grab sympathy, to make someone listen to the hysteria that threatens to pour from my lips. But the things you would say: "Poor girl-- needs attention." Do I? Anything to help me breathe. But everywhere the doors are closed and the lights shut off. So I'll go it alone. Hold my breath and sink into submersion, sinking away from the air and the light that's not bright enough and all the words stuck in this room, locked in on myself and waiting. Waiting for something I need. Waiting for something I can't ask for, because I'm scared. Terrified of the opinions formed during a midnight phone call. I yank at the handle, turning the roaring water back on, letting it spout and steam and surge, and I feed my words into the sound, watching them sink slowly as I let my hands slip off the sides, sliding down into the warmth, noting the scratched white walls of the porcelain tub. I do not make a sound.
