Air Conditioning

Ice Bath

When things are easy, they flow. Not like water over a riverbed, but like water from a tap without an aerator when it's shaped just right. Smooth, laminar flow. I feel happy. I feel calm.

When things are hard, they hurt. Like being plunged in ice water. Feeling limbs lock up, skin sting and burn from the cold. Shaking from the pain, the intensity of the frigid ice. It hurts. I want out, but my limbs won't listen. I'm locked, stuck in it.

When things are hard, it plunges me deep into that dark, cold headspace. I think thoughts I've thought I've gotten over, but I don't linger on them, because if I do I'm afraid I'll burst into tears, or worse. It feels like needles poking into me at the seams, trying to see how many holes it will take for me to split like a perforated page, for the hurt to spill into the world.

It's easy to say I don't like feeling that way. It's hard to fix it. Time is fleeting for me, and I'm almost constantly doing something (or so wore out that I can only tell myself over, and over, and over that I should be doing something, and shame on me for not). It's hard to struggle with this standing next to someone struggling through the same. I can talk about it, but I can't linger on it.

The problems I have are theoretically "fixable". But it would take devoting what little time I have left that isn't spent lecturing myself about how much I'm not doing. It would take giving up any and all ideas of relaxation, giving way to stress and frustration and giving up on trying to avoid it, trying to cope with it.

So I tread frigid water. And I think thoughts about things I wish I could forget about.

I think about my family, that wishes people like me didn't have rights and didn't exist, and that drown themselves in liquor, and I think about how they never really raised me, and I think about how I miss them, and how I hate them, and how I love them,

I think about school and how it's getting away from me, how much I hate that one bad professor can make me want to kill myself, how quantitative chemistry would be something I'm sure I'd enjoy if literally anyone else was my teacher, and how I'm going to have to teach myself and it's sink or swim and I'm sinking, and sinking means losing my scholarship, sinking means losing my place in my aid program, sinking means losing everything, A's in every other class this semester but fucking quant,

And I think about my house getting dirtier, I think about the snake not being fed properly even when I try to remind him, I think about my cat not getting a good amount of stimulation every day, I think about how there's laundry piling up, I think about the cardboard from Gael's scratch pad being all over the house, I think about how we don't own a broom, I think about how much I hate the state things are in but I don't have time or every or motivation to fix it,

I think about my body and the changes I'm going through, I think positively until I look in the mirror on a bad day and wish fall would blow its way in so I could drown in fabric without fucking dying in the heat, I think about how each time I refill my meds may be the last time I'll be able to, I think about the top surgery savings I may never get the chance to use,

I think about how it would be easier if I could work part time, but that means less savings in the bank and no health insurance, I think about the stupid ass policies at my job and how I'm on thin ice, I think about how fucked I'd be if I ever get fired,

I think about getting a therapist, but I don't know if it's covered under my insurance, I think about that tooth I just barely chipped and how I need to schedule a dentist appointment, I think about how sometimes it feels like my body is fighting me every day but I can't tell if it's in my head, I think about how I don't have any more sick days at work for at least six months,

I think about how 24/7 is not enough time to do all the things I need to do, and it's definitely not enough time to think of all the things I think about.

And on top of it all, every time I sing in the car, I think about you.

I know all of this is really just venting, and it's all some big sad sob story of depressed suicidal me (and I really did think I had gotten past those particular shitty feelings but alas, life has a way of fucking you over), but through it all, impossibly, I miss you.

Maybe I miss life before I was so overwhelmed, or maybe I miss when my feelings for you were the most complicated part of my life, or maybe it's neither here nor there.

But somehow, I still miss you.

Somehow I think about how I wish I could sing with you, sing for you, talk about the changes, send you music, listen to you talk about your found community,

Somehow I think about how I wish I could share the food I cook with you, and ask you what you think, what you'd change, what you like, learn the flavors you love most and squeeze them into everything I make,

Somehow I think about how I wish I could sit with you while we both do homework, tapping pencils quietly and maybe play music in the background,

Somehow I think about how in another world we're in the same school, in the same classes, in the same cohort, talking to the same people,

Somehow despite how much I have stuffed into my seams, my mind still finds a way to think about what could have been, and how much I miss you.

And I know I've said it before, and I know it hurts, it hurts me too,

But I just wish things didn't have to be this way. I wish they never had to happen like this. I wish it were different.

I failed you.

Thinking of that doesn't make the other thoughts any easier. Please don't think I blame you, either; it was all me, myself, and I.

I failed you.