Dark Pause
I’m stretched out across the bed diagonally. I never meant to land here but somehow did. I’m too tired to move. The sheets are a little twisted. Too warm in places. Not warm enough in others. I haven’t changed them in days. I don’t remember how many. The room is dark. Not pitch black, but the kind of gloom that seeps into your skin and makes everything feel slower, heavier. The blinds are mostly closed, but they’re old and broken. A few of the slats have come loose from the strings and hang at odd angles, like crooked teeth in a tired mouth.
I believe in the light. I really do. I believe in the ritual of letting in as much of it as I can.
But today the blinds stayed down. They stayed broken. The windows are shut tight. The hum of the air conditioner fills the silence with a low, mechanical sound. Just enough to drown out the real world. I turned it on the minute the fever started. Couldn’t take the wet, pressing heat that settles in this city when the river starts to sweat. The air gets thick and slow. It smells like pavement. And when your skin is already burning from the inside, it feels like the world is closing in on you.
“The air gets thick and slow. It smells like pavement. And when your skin is already burning from the inside, it feels like the world is closing in on you.”
So yes, the room is dark. And I don’t like the dark. It makes everything worse. It makes my thoughts louder. My chest is tighter. I don’t trust the dark. It’s where the sad things grow. And I guess that’s what this is. Sadness. Or sickness. Or both. I don’t know anymore.
He said last year I ran away on this day. I don’t know if he meant it to hurt me. Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it just slipped out, the way people say things when they’ve been holding them too long. But I remember. I remember not being able to breathe in the house, not being able to sit at the table with the memories, the expectations, and the ghosts. I remember getting into the car at night with no plan except to keep driving west. To stop existing in the shape I’d been forced into. I remember the terror that lived in my body, the way it made me frantic, reckless. The way it made me want to disappear completely. I never really found what I was looking for—space, air, quiet, God—but I found enough distance to come home again without completely falling apart.
I remember walking for hours, maybe aimlessly, maybe trying to find something: space, air, quiet, God. I never really found any of it, but I found enough distance to come home again without completely falling apart.
This year I haven’t left the bed. I’m curled up like a question mark. The fever has taken hold. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe it’s not even real. Maybe I just told myself I was sick so I could disappear again. I took the test. The pink line appeared slowly, as if it were unsure. Faint. Barely there. But it was there. Proof. The kind people understand. The kind that makes them patient, makes them show up with soup and concern. COVID they can see. COVID they can relate to. But the other sickness—the one that makes me want to get in the car again, the one that turns me into a frantic woman running from dangers that no longer exist outside my own mind—that one they don’t have a test for. That one makes people uncomfortable. Makes them pull away.
I’ve done that before. I’ve gotten sick just when things were about to unravel. My body shuts down before I even know I need it to. It’s like some part of me knows I can’t handle one more thing and decides to pull the emergency brake. A fever is easier to explain than a mood disorder. A virus is easier to name than the turbulent past that lives in my nervous system, the automatic responses I can’t seem to reign in no matter how hard I try. So I lie here, sweating through the sheets, unsure if I’m avoiding the world or if the world is avoiding me.
Maybe both.
“ Maybe it’s not even real. Maybe I just told myself I was sick so I could disappear again. ”
I want to get up. I want to lift the blinds and let the light in. I want to believe that it will make a difference. I want to believe that if I do the small things, everything else will come back into focus. But today I can’t. I just can’t.
So I lie here in the dim, broken light. Listening to the air conditioner whir. Counting the slats that still hang in place. Wondering if I’ll see the sun again tomorrow. Wondering if I’ll ever feel like myself again. Wondering if I even know who that is.
Maybe I’m not running away this time. Maybe I’m just trying to rest. Maybe the bed is better than the car. Maybe staying is its own kind of survival.
