Unpretty

Unpretty - 20

It’s darkness everywhere. 

I feel it all around me that a sense of claustrophobia seeps in.

I feel it invade my body, mixing in with the air I breathe that I suffocate because of it.

In the midst of darkness I remember clearly what I’ve done and what has happened to me.

The cuts, the stitches and the blood..The agony.

Has no one gone to my apartment to help me? 

Whose number was it that I called, I could not remember.

Perhaps my plea was ignored, perhaps my call was deemed unimportant.

Perhaps I am better off dead. 

I wonder if anyone would ever go looking for me, would anyone notice.

I wonder what will happen to the body I have left behind.

I am dead. I am truly, really, absolutely dead.

Is this what death feels like? Only darkness and isolation, immobility and desperation.

Yes, I am better off dead.

But then a light creeps into the corner of my eyes; I hear shuffling of shoes against a floor.

Bright lights blind my eyes.

I strain my eyes and blink several times until my vision clears.

I stretch my arms wide and try to feel something, anything.

Then my hands rest on something soft, a blanket covering my body from the waist down.

A lady in white stands before my bed; touches something that I recognize as an IV drip and utters something inaudible to me.

My eyes move across the room I am in.

All white. A nurse. An IV drip.

I am in a hospital bed. I am alive. I made it.

The nurse says something to me about calling the doctor and exits the room.

I am truly, really, absolutely alive.

A jolt of happiness courses through me that I can’t help but smile.

The smile quickly vanishes as I remember my face. 

My hands reach to touch it, to feel it upon my hands so that I may envision what has happened to it. 

Was I successful?  Am I finally pretty now?

But my hands do not touch the skin on my face. 

I move my hands across my head and feel a cloth instead.

Just like in the beginning, my head is covered in bandages.

Just like in the beginning, I will wait until the bandages are taken off.

But deep within me is an urge to rip the bandages myself.

I wonder what has happened to my face.

Am I finally, after almost dying, already pretty?

Happy New Year! The last page will be up tomorrow. :)