CACOPHONY | ✅

~05~

I hear someone approaching so I head into the bathroom and close the door.

I turn around and my eyes land on the person in the mirror.

A young girl around the age of 16 stares back at me. Her long dark hair has been tied into a loose braid and countless strands hang around her pale face.

Her bloodshot eyes are swollen from crying. The dark circles around her eyes seem to have drawn there with black paint.

I watch as she raises her hand up and begins gently scratching the little scar on the side of her neck. Once. Twice. And soon a drop of blood appears under her finger nail. A bright glistering red against her pale blotchy skin.

Something inside me wants her to scratch harder. To see more of that blood. More pain. Maybe seeing someone else's pain would melt the heart that my own pain froze.

I think she hears my thoughts and her fingers move faster. In seconds her hand gets frantic and i see her digging her nails into the slightly torn skin while blood starts to drip down her throat.

I look up in horror and meet her gaze in the mirror. And I think I pity her.

Not because she looks miserable.
But because I know she feels miserable. I see it in her eyes, then.

The pain.

The agony.

The misery.

And I know its going to destroy her and no one will ever find out.

Her eyebrows furrow and a corner of her mouth curls up in distatse.

Maybe, I look like her too.

Maybe, she thinks the same about me.

Maybe, I am as exposed to her as she is to me.

She is my reflection after all.

Yet I don't feel bad for her. I feel nothing.

And thats what makes it unbearable to stand and look at her any longer. I walk away quickly and turn the faucet to start the shower, and stand under the water with my clothes still on.

The water is cold at first but it starts to get warmer. I like how it feels against my skin. I close my eyes and feel the water cascading down my body. It gets hotter but i dont move. I stand there perfectly still as the now almost boiling water burns my skin.

For too long I felt like I was alone in a vast ocean of misery. Drowning while choking on my own tears. But now i miss drowning.

I wish i wouldnt have wished to be saved from drowning.

Because now, im still in the middle of that ocean. Still without you. And I still cant see the shore.

I feel like I'm floating. I feel like I'm a big block of ice aimlessly floating on the surface of water, that expects every incoming wave to be warm so that it can be melt. But the waves are not warm. They're cold. And with every wave new droplets freeze on me. Forming layer over layer over layer of ice on me.

I want to melt. I want this ice to break, this lattice to be torn apart drop by drop and dispersed into this ocean, so that I can lose myself and disappear. Forever.

So I stand under the burning shower. Hoping that the warmth travels deeper than my skin. Wishing that it melts the cold hard ice that is freezing me.

Just a little, if not all.

But I guess I'm not that lucky, or I wouldn't be here. Or would I?