I lie in bed. It is 12 PM and I am in bed. Bed describes it a bit too well. I am on an air mattress, swaddled up in blankets in such an uncomfortable way it’s no wonder I am in tears.
I can’t move. A few minutes ago, or more likely an hour, I plopped onto the made air mattress and wrapped whatever I could grab on top of myself. No order, untidy, completely unlike me. Who even is she?
I woke up this morning telling myself all the things I would accomplish throughout the day. I would get some writing done, I would go to yoga, I would go for a walk, I would go to the grocery store, I would book myself a massage because I’ll definitely deserve it after everything I do today.
I meditated, I drank water, I avoided looking at my phone, I smoked weed, I read a book. Then, I crashed. As quick as a dissolving dream, I lost any desire to do any of the things I tasked myself with upon waking.
I don’t know what it was and I couldn’t explain it to Isaias without crying.
This happens to me and I feel silly thinking I would be able to do anything else. This pit of misery is where I belong.
I drift in and out of sleep, I think. I hear Isaias wash the dishes to pass the time after I asked him for five minutes alone. I know it’s been over five minutes and I am simultaneously disappointed and relieved he has not come into the room. I don’t know what I want. The version of myself I thought I was earlier knows what she wants and what she feels. Stupid me, how could I think I was even close to being her?
My body presses on the bed as everything weighs on me. The air in the room feels as clogged as the air trapped within the mattress. The move. The cold. The loneliness. The unemployment. The war.
With every tiny movement, I groan at the same volume as one you make in the morning but without the satisfaction of a day’s first stretch. What is satisfaction but a lie, when underneath my regular emotions lies whatever this is, ready to come out when I least expect and possess my entire body making what I felt before seem incredibly fake?
I don’t want to be here but I don’t know where else I would go. I don’t deserve to go outside. I am obviously ungrateful of my life if I can just stop enjoying it in less than a second. Every cell in me wants to scream but my body feels as if it’s asleep; the kind of sleep you have after a long night of tequila and cigarettes. I decide breathing is exhausting.
Being alive is exhausting.
Isaias comes into the room. Yes. No. Why? Leave me alone. Please don’t go.
He positions himself behind me, easily bending to fit into me. I hate it. I want to tell him to leave me but nothing comes out. This is all dumb.
He says we should go outside. “No,” I manage to say, finding the extra bit of strength to squirm an inch away from him. The blankets don’t allow me to go any further. So does my loss of energy anyway.
He tells me I would feel better if I get some sun, that we can still do what I wanted to, that it will be fun, that we can take the bus. I know he’s right. “I’m too tired,” I say and I am also right.
We don’t get into big arguments or fights. I am able to explain to him my feelings without any harsh reaction or judgment. It’s healthy. He is a great partner and I do this to him. He is the victim of my erratic mood which goes from elated to angry to depressed with no logical reason. I don’t deserve him.
Somewhere inside of me, a voice peeps that there is no sense of logic in the matter of emotions. My brain analyzes it further, but there is a reason, right? I am here because I just moved to a different country, because I miss the life I had in Germany, because I miss my friends, because it’s gray and freezing outside today, because I have a deep-rooted fear of failure being a product of Asian parents and capitalistic society, because I am unemployed and I like it, because I pretend I’m an artist yet I have not created anything in the last six months, because I hate cars and I have to be in a car every fucking day and I feel the need to be polite when I get into someone else’s car because I have to get there somehow, because I didn’t get enough sleep last night, because I ate some junk food, because I hate the way I look and all my affirmations are delusional bullshit, because of the guilt I feel being American knowing the government’s hand in the world’s atrocities and not doing much of anything to make a difference. I lie and lie to myself.
…
“Well, I am going to stay here and annoy you until you decide to get up,” he says. He’s doing exactly that, but he annoys me all the time. I love him. I hate how he’s good at this. It’s all so dramatic. I am embarrassed but I’m already here.
I meditate every morning and I notice that it feels almost like this. The thoughts pass through my head, only lingering once I realize I am thinking. The difference is that the lingering thoughts in my daily meditations are usually future plans, thoughts that try to pull me out of the present. Whereas now, the thoughts that stay are ones that want to keep me here, glued into the stale present; sticky, dark, like melted rubber seeping into the earth - poisoning it.
“Should I unplug the air mattress?” he says jokingly. “No!” feels like a yell but comes out as a whisper.
There is no clock in the room but I hear the tick, tick of each waste of a second. In front of my eyes, a stuffed toy sheep. I cannot keep up with my thought process and fat tears glide down my cheeks. Before I know what I even feel, a stuffed penguin joins the sheep. Isaias adjusts their arms so they look like they are cuddling, like us. I hear myself crying. I miss my dog.
Isaias pulls me into him more and I feel the warmth of love seeping through the cracks of my soul. He is perfect. I am not perfect and that’s okay, he is still here.
I don’t know when it will happen but I am getting out of this bed. That girl I thought I was earlier is me. The girl I am now is me. I no longer lie.
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