Glass House

At first it starts as a hum. A tone. They call that tinnitus, but that’s not what this is. This is the drone of blackness. Emptiness. Void. It escalates, exponentially. Until the pitch is so clear and so loud it makes your entire being vibrate at its level.

When the first wave of stomach clenching, bowel pulsing sickness hits, that’s when you know. Sickness, sadness, darkness, like an oil drenched dragon perched on your shoulder, hissing obscenities into your ear. That’s when you start to really feel. Your body is the minion of your mind. When sorrow reigns, the body’s only natural response is to manifest that pain into physicality. Sickness.

You stumble forward, groping, grasping for the door frame, too hurried to hit the light switch just inches from your hand. Falling to your knees you crawl to the edge of the toilet and hold either side of the seat, like it was a life preserver- your last chance. The wave of despair hits again and your entire body is wracked from head to tow with a heave. Every ounce of matter in your stomach slides up your throat in a fiery acidic blaze. When it passes, you cough, hard. Sending spit, blood and stomach acid, into and around the white porcelain bowl. You collapse back and reach a damp hand to your sweaty forehead, slumped against the wall directly across from the toilet in the dark, sniffling and gasping at air in deep, thirsty gulps.

The world is spinning around you. The light from the hallway is just enough to etch the silhouette of the bathroom fixtures into your stare, and just enough to demonstrate your complete disorientation. All sense of balance and stability. Gone. As the dark shapes swirl into space before you.

How do they not know? How do they not see the agony in plain view on your face? Of course they don’t see THIS, but they must have some idea. Pain this intense can’t possibly be so invisible.

You fold yourself over and press your hot face against the cool bathroom tiles and grip the floor tightly. Fingers nails dig in deep, into the shag of the bathmat.

It’s not always like this. No, sometimes it’s cutting. The sliding of the blade across your skin; releasing the anguish, expelling the sadness. Yes, sometimes that makes the droning stop. Depends on where you are. The body is the minion of the mind. The mind knows where and what we can do to relieve itself. The appropriateness of the venue. We make the effort to hide what we know they won’t accept. It’s a shared delusion that makes things palatable for both parties. That you’re normal; that they’re happy. That the pain isn’t going to consume us one day…

But not today. The wave is subsiding, the dragon retreating. You drag yourself up into the sitting position as your breathing and your heart rate return to normal. The world rights itself.

Not today.