The tap started, my stuttering heart steadily ramping into a more constant rhythm. I was wired awake. She dispensed the soap on her hands and stared at her reflection as she washed. She dried her hands with a towel hanging somewhere below my vision. Her attention was riveted onto my glossy surface. My heart thundered, my whole being rumbling as the thundering increased; the pounding escalated, seemingly without an upper limit. I drank it in. She smiled at herself-at me-turned away, and then left.

Despair climbed greedily, consuming me. My vision darkened as the hopelessness rushed in suddenly, filling the emptiness that had just, appeared within me. The heart fell out of its racing rhythm as the beats became more scattered-disjointed. My exhilaration quickly turning to panic as I was once again abandoned. I realised the darkness at the edges of my sight was quickly creeping, that the imagined cloud of strife that was overcoming me, The nihilism eating at me, was something more physical. The rumbling stuttered inside. So quickly was I again a victim of despair. Panic replaced the anguish-no that’s not right; My anxiousness simply exemplified my fear. My pounding heart still struck me. My world began to destabilise. I drew father and farther into my self as my darkening vision shook with the sporadic bursts of my quaking heart. I couldn’t explain why I felt this depth, why I was overwhelmed by these onrushing emotions, all I knew was how tilted the world felt when all I was was simply another surface. How wrong it was; how wrong it was when there was no one to look into me, none to reflect and no one to see.

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I was shaken by the power of what I felt, by how titanic these feelings loomed over me. But I couldn’t resist falling into them, couldn’t even begin to. The feelings consumed me and I let them. As the darkness devoured I was already yearning for the next bout of wakefulness, of the next jolt of exhilaration, the kick from the void. A stray thought struck me, one throwaway amidst all focused on the thrill, the intensity. What was wrong with me, am I supposed to be like this. A fleeting thought amongst many, one I happily ignored. I didn’t know what I really was, what being alive is. Yet, I had an inkling of purpose, and was gifted with the ability to massively feel. I couldn’t be wrong as much as I couldn’t be right, this is what I was, and therefore that was all I needed to be. And what I was needed the gaze riveted on me, needed the attention of that woman again.