As the warm water is running down my shoulders over my body like a warm hug everything seems fine. The gentle warmth dispensed by the shower head is one of the little things that make life so worth to live. Or in my case: the little thing. I can let my thoughts float and feel safe. I once read that a warm shower can, in some situations literally be a substitute for a hug and god knows I need a lot of those. My eyes drift and get stuck on my fingers who have started to wrinkle. The soaking in water tells the blood vessels to shrink leading to my realization that I am probably clean. Even if not, it doesn’t really matter. I raise to my feet and the world around me becomes a black mist, too thick to see through. My body hates sudden movements but has forgiven me and brought light back. Literally speaking.
I grab a towel which feels hard and rough bringing me back to the real life. Slow draggy steps lead me through the floor not paying any attention to the letters on the dresser to my right. I managed to get them when I came back from buying food but haven’t had the energy to open them since. Now they lie there. Quiet, threatening, emitting an aura of passive aggressiveness. Or not. They could be nice letters. As long as I don’t open them they are nothing to worry about and the end of the world at once - Schrödingers letters.
After passing through the door to my left I enter my living room with a couch to my right. It is no shower but it grants me comfort so I lay down and cover myself in blankets, my thoughts once again wandering. “What started this?” “Why do I feel like this?” “Is this depression?” I imagine a laughter in my head. I haven’t figured out why but there seems to be a voice coming out every now and then. The laugh sounds fake, forced.
“Aww are you depressed? And why would you think that? Because you have done nothing of value for… how long now? Are you going to diagnose yourself and acquire the same status as a 15-year-old girl being upset because she got a c? There is no difference, you have no right to diagnose yourself, let alone the competence. Has it ever crossed your mind that you are not depressed, just lazy. You are not the victim here.”
“You’re probably right” is the only answer I can come up with. I don’t have the energy to argue with myself. I close my eyes and try to dream myself far away as I often do when everything else seems pointless. To a world in my head were everything is fine. It’s not a shower but in the end, nothing is.
The dwelling discomfort in my stomach grows to a piercing pain and wakes me. Hunger. I am not surprised so I get up and grab a bowl, milk and cereal. I don’t have high hopes for my meal but it should trick my body into thinking I obey his wishes. But I don’t negotiate with terrorists. Spoon for spoon I eat the mixture of oats, raisins, nuts and something else I have not identified yet. Slowly but surely the pain and, for a bit, even the discomfort vanishes. Merely minutes afterwards the pain comes back. Eating the same thing for an extended period of time is not enough and everything I have so generously given is dismissed. A look at the phone informs me that it is 4pm. Too early to go to bed. Couch it is. My hands are shaky and I feel cold from the malnutrition I assume. Or lack of movement, fresh air, water or any number of the above. These are conscious decisions. I don’t want to live anymore, but I wasn’t going to make it that easy for myself. For someone who is probably about to break the heart of people who might still care about him that was too good. This is the way I choose to go. Slowly and aware every step of the way. Deep down I’m hoping that any day now something happens. A text from someone who read what I posted online and would like to meet me. An e-mail from my mother telling me she loves me and would like to come visit. A letter from someone who’s attention I attracted. Hell, fucking Hagrid could kick down my door and tell me I’m a wizard for all I care. All I am looking for is a sign. Deep down. But I know that I don’t give them a chance. I haven’t left the house in a while. I only answer as short as possible if at all.
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What if one of those letters I so diligently ignored was a sign? A smile lifts the corner of my mouth followed by a tired laugh “silly”. I get up and walk over to the dresser with the letters.
A letter from my gym, which I haven’t quit yet. Guilt creeps up but is quickly swallowed by not-giving-a-fuckery. Another letter looks a bit more important something official. Could be work. Back on the dresser and the other one goes in the bin.
4:20pm. Nice. Still too early to go to bed though. I turn on a YouTube video as background noise and let my phone drift down my hand on the carpet. A little bit of excitement fills my heart as I think about the visit to IKEA with my parents. I grab as many of the fluff as I can and enjoy the feeling while drifting away.
I drift in and out of sleep for what feels like hours before I allow myself to check the time. 6pm. “Close enough”. My arm grasps the backrest of the couch and helps me lift myself up. Following my evening routine I brush my teeth, wash my face and hands take 2 sleeping pills and get to bed. I love to sleep but the doctor warned my that taking too many pills could be dangerous so I only allow myself two when I go to bed in the evening. No matter how bad I feel, my dreams always have a chance to let me forget and let me live. The longer I lay there the more I realize that my thoughts make less and less sense. It’s time.
In my dream I wander through the halls of my high school. Nobody acknowledges me so I just follow the path that seems right. Like the way to your classroom you have walked a thousand times. Basically muscle memory. As I enter the room 205 I realize that nobody is in there, except for a tall girl on the blackboard. She is thin and her black hair goes down straight to her shoulder boards. This is my dream and I am aware which gives me the confidence to talk to her. But I don’t. She seems like she is in a trance, completely absorbed by her redundant activity and I just sit there and watch and wait for something to happen. Not entirely sure what but this seems like an excessive build up for a mediocre story. I decide to invest the time and try to read what she is writing but it is too small.
I get closer when she turns around with a smile that seemed so genuine and her green eyes beamed with kindness. “This is one of those love stories” I think to myself “I hate those. It hurts so much to get up and realize that she is gone for ever. I’m no stranger to love”. “I’m Alex, nice to meet you” she says. I play along. Sometimes the good times are worth the pain “Chris, it’s a pleasure. What are you doing?” – “oh, I don’t really know. It is a dream people just do things otherwise the environment would be incredibly stale wouldn’t it?” “You are aware that this is a dream. How does it feel?” – “It’s not too bad actually. And I have a feeling it’s going to be a good dream as well.”
The rest went like a collage from a romance movie. We went swimming in the school pool, walked through the dorms and met strangers and shared something to smoke. We even got tattoos and I lived my dream to the fullest. But as the pills stopped working I realized that our time together was destined to end. She wasn’t even a real person. “I think we are getting to the end” A deep sadness threatened to overwhelm me. Every time. “I don’t want to be alone again. I don’t want to die I want to live this life!”. In the time it took to say those two sentences I went from trying to hold my tear back to full on mental-breakdown crying. She came closer and took me into her arms allowing my head to rest on her shoulder. Her warmth might not be real but I didn’t care. Then she said “you don’t have to. Your dreams are a fabric of your imagination. So am I. Remember me. Take me with you.” The gears were turning. That made sense. I loosened the hug and looked at her trying to take in as much information as possible and to bury it so deep in my mind I will never forget. Even if that will take up the space of the Pythagorean theorem. “green eyes; long, black hair; gentle smile and a tattoo of a crying boy on her forearm” again and again. Like a mantra that would save my life I repeated her characteristics. She will stay. In me. For me.
I woke up and opened my eyes. My torso almost moved itself to give me a better look of the room. I focused, recalled everything I could and imagined her. There she was. Sitting at the bottom of my bed, smiling and for the first time in a long while, I smiled back.