Torturous Nothing

A single snake, writhing inside me, making twists and painful turns, I was invaded by this parasite, a deadly danger to myself that I longed to be rid of. And then Myra was there and she grabbed the beast by its tail. She pulled and I felt the awful creature recoil - stiffen, as it was withdrawn slowly from my body. I reached awkwardly around my back, fingertips splayed, pressing, checking for a wound. But there was no hole. My skin was clean and unbroken, but I felt violated, unclean, and I woke up and the room was black and I felt no different.

I walked over to the window, parted the curtains and saw the first signs of morning. The world was still sleeping, except perhaps the birds or the weary, intolerant taxi drivers or some surgeons somewhere, fighting for the life of another. I wondered at the quiet of it all, at the dew reflecting the first promises of weak sunlight, the snap of a twig, a siren somewhere.  There were so many things happening all around me and I had no concept of them. Any number of incredible things could be occurring anywhere in the world. But I did not know them; I was in my room and the world was on the other side of a window pane in need of a clean.

I often had nightmares, so depraved they thrilled me in a most terrible way. I often questioned my own sanity. Insanity had always seemed such an absolute form of freedom. Analysis of my dreams may have perhaps revealed something terrible, something to worry about, or to pretend didn’t exist. But I did not believe in that, at least I don’t think I believed in it. I was quite young; I didn’t yet have a multitude of beliefs. Still, I do not have many unchanging principles. Then, I was certain of very few things; I was scared and alone in the night. Those around lay unconscious to me and my thoughts and how they might be prone to stab me in the night, making me dream of burrowing serpents and causing me to be caught up in the coldness of a dewy Thursday morning.

Sleep evaded me often, and I did not mind it, but I knew that this time there was a reason for it. Under the pretence of illness I had stayed in my room for over a week now, and I had seen nobody. I missed my friends. But only as they had been in early May, not as they were as I looked out across the neighbour’s garden, seeing a cat lurch for a bird and, graciously, miss. I did not want my friends as they were; much had changed and, though I had not easily admitted it, I didn’t like this change, this moving forward with no regard for the past, this secret longing to be shared between all of us, but at present tearing only me apart.

Not surprisingly, nobody had sought to contact me in this week of my silence. It may not have been a surprise, but that did not mean that it didn’t twinge me slightly with the feeling of loneliness, of un-importance and fading into a lower state of mattering. It seemed that I had built my self –worth upon my circle of friends. But now, even those who I had been closest to had drifted away for one reason or another, and they did not seem to want to return. This was a part of my youth that I had often anticipated; that people might move on and get older and more interesting. But I was left behind with a secret that I had to tell, even if it didn’t matter, which, coming from my mouth, might just be the case. No, of course it mattered; it was a slither of truth, and truth is tantamount when all you know is left devastated. I was confused because I did not know Myra anymore, and I was equally dismayed that I had not yet found the intuition to work her out.

The terrible things that I had read on Myra’s birthday were always at the forefront of my mind. And I didn’t know what to do about them. Sometimes, when I had occupied myself with other, menial tasks, like brushing my teeth or pulling on jeans, I might be allowed to be relieved of my burden. For a second; never for long. I would run a hot bath until it was almost overflowing and hold my head under, listening to my pulse pound in my ears, after a while, I would open my eyes and relish in how the water made them sting. The ceiling looked distorted and interesting in these underwater instances, but what was in my mind seemed to be, painfully, clearer than ever.

I suppose that I did become rather self-absorbed. I suppose that it was hard not to. I seemed to be hyper-sensitive to every twitch of my nervous system, every thought grew in my mind until it blocked all other senses and I became almost blind to everything around me; I could have been anywhere, with anyone, and I wouldn’t have noticed. Obliviously, I thought myself into oblivion. I found my mouth moving without realising it, and when I slept, I woke with bite marks on my skin. As things became increasingly unsettling, I revelled in the depravity of it all, the feeling of being lost and not caring, the feeling of being breaking and not seeking to be fixed.

On several occasions, I felt that I had broken, that I could simply sink no further, feel any emptier or find a way to fall deeper into disarray. The first time was at night, or early morning; I cannot be certain. It was a small thing, maybe something only in my mind, but it was the first time I remember feeling crazy. I dropped a glass; the sound of the silvery shards skidding across the floorboards was almost pleasurable. Then, inadvertently, I stepped on some glass; one of the larger pieces protruded from the sole of my foot. But I felt nothing. Numb. There was no pain. When I pulled it out, I winced; not because it hurt but because it should have hurt, almost like instinct. The second time, I had been submerged in the bath; it was becoming a habit. What was strange was that I hadn’t realised that I was underwater until my lungs indicated that they might be on the brink of bursting, so I bolted upright and gasped until the grey dots in front of my eyes evaporated and I saw the tiles clearly again. I tried to disregard the whole experience as the product of an absent mind. But I couldn’t. Sometimes I didn’t know what I was doing until I had done it, and I filled most of my time with doing nothing at all. I was functioning, but I had lost most of my senses and, in all the monotony, I was too preoccupied to contemplate any of this. Perhaps what was more disturbing than the glass or what happened in the bath, was the fact that I simply wasn’t aware of anything, or capable of anything; I was shutting down. And all the time I thought of the secret. And all the time I wanted to divulge it.

After so long of being in this cycle of feeling and doing nothing, my last shred of reason amounted to the realisation that I had to tell someone, before insanity became more than just a possibility.