#rusty fears

The weight inside me becomes a little easier to bear, for a while. But it's been with me for too long now for these brief breaks to make as much difference as I would like.

I was so little when I first felt it was there. I do still remember lying in my bed on a school night, barely in first or second grade, and noting that my most recent nerves had never faded—that they had been lingering since a couple of days before, idly, for no reason at all. I remember accepting, with that sort of calm, thoughtful concern which can only come from a child's mind, only stem from being used to having one's worldview rearranged almost daily, that that's what it was going to be like now.

There is an unbroken chain of tension between me as I was then and me as I am now—tired and taut and sunken into my couch's embrace.

My rest should be coming to an end, though. There are things which need to be done; I can't just not do them.

It is this simple knowledge that makes me move automatically, unceremoniously—without any real willingness, but without much thinking, either. I brace myself on my elbow and lift my torso to get up.

Nearly right away, a pull at my back like a spring recoiling halts the motion. My other elbow shoots out looking for purchase before I can think, and so I don't fall all the way back down. In the surprised, suspended stillness, the sensation of what has happened seeps into my brain.

My chest has moved up from the couch; my back has not. By the time I even register the pull, most of the skin on my back is already loose, separated from me by a pocket of air, clinging to the couch more strongly than to me. It strains at the edges, trying to hold on.

My neck begins to ache from holding up my head, slowly but stubbornly, as I do nothing—not because the choice isn't obvious, though. No matter how unpleasant it is, I know what I'll be doing.

I cannot really stay here like this forever, can I.

Finally, I dig my elbows harder into the couch and lift myself up. With a quiet, wet rip, my skin tears like a cuticle pulled too far; my flesh parts, and slides down my back, and falls away.

There is no blood. There is simply a clean, soft, wet cut of my skin and muscle, spanning from the small of my back to the nape of my neck. At the very top, there's even some of my hair.

I'm not sure what I feel sitting up and looking at the left-behind scrap of me. All I can really tell is that it's something uncomfortable. But I couldn't just not get up ever again.

My spine feels cold after that; like parts of it are sticking out, with my body clutching at whatever spots are still attached to keep me in one piece. If I get up wrong or stand too straight, the vertebrae tremble and strain against the muscle. The weight of me presses down on them, threatening to push them out of my body and snap me in half. So I spend most of my days sitting or lying down, pushing myself into backrests and cushions. Sometimes I settle on my stomach instead and pick at the stiff, drying edges of the wound. And in peace and quiet, I try to wait out the fear that if I stand up, I will collapse into a soft, warm pulp of my own viscera.

All the while, my skin is still on the couch, right where I left it to lie. I don't really consider taking it, and…

And doing what, anyway? Throwing it away? Or folding it carefully, neatly, and hiding it somewhere to gather dust?

No. It is a part of me, and it belongs where I can be close.

The next time I come to the couch to rest, maybe a day later, I simply lie on that soft blanket of skin. It is still warm, and under the odour of flesh and gathering dust, it smells like me. If I turn over and slide to my back, I can feel it would still fit me. And when I get up, hours later, thread-thin strings of plasma stretch between my oozing back and the sticky flap of skin, only to break like gossamer.

I don't look like there's less of me—but the piece of flesh on my couch did use to be me, so I suppose there must be.

And yet—I keep existing just fine. The worn-out thought only makes the weight inside me densify. As it slowly thickens and shrinks, my organs sag into the newly-freed room until everything inside me feels just a little too loose. Part of my diaphragm pushes up against nothing but air, and my trachea strains, barely noticeably, under my lungs' weight.

It's not long before I am stiff with anxiety; with how wrong it feels to still be able to function. The simple idea of the future containing me in this incomplete, wounded shape held together by tension derails my mind like a fallacy I cannot untangle. With useless, empty dread, I think of tomorrow—a mirror hung opposite another, opposite today—and the day after that, and the one after that, and the one after that; of an infinity consisting only of the distance between the current and the next day.

Inconceivable or not, tomorrow will be there, I know that. There is no other way. Whatever freedom or relief the fact may bring, though, is lost on me. In the face of it, all I really feel is overwhelmed.

In just a couple of days, the skin on my couch grows cold and clammy like raw, lymph-slick muscle under a popped blister. Dust mixes with the coat of drying plasma, covering my flesh in drab clots. The sweet bodily odour claws into my nostrils and clogs my lungs when I wrap myself in it, tightly as if I was swaddling a baby. Something like grief begins to sink in, slowly clutching my throat. I pull the edge of my skin right up to my nose and wonder, despite everything, if I might ever get back what is a part of me.

But it remains cold, and tries to slip out of my embrace when I hold it closer. When I finally get up, I leave it in its usual place, smoothening it with a small, careful motion that must make it look like I'm doing nothing less ordinary than making my bed.

Some part of my everyday life has closed in on me yet again, with that slab lying there. Another hollow, purposeless layer of myself has been plastered to some outermost border of my life.

Where else would I keep it? There is only so much room at my disposal. And it's the only way I know how to soothe the feeling of it growing more and more unsalvageable with each passing day; of me being more and more painfully without it.

Still, it's a short time—too short, hopelessly short—before it begins to shrink and dry. Its edges remind me of the furrows and ridges which sculpt my nails whenever I pick at them too much.

I can't tuck myself in with it anymore, but I can still lie on top of it. Not on my back, though. It doesn't fit me like it did when it was fresh, and the grief of being unable to make myself hold all of me is not something I want to linger on.

No, I lie on my stomach instead. I press my cheek and palms to the flesh; I breathe it in; I let its taste imprint on the corner of my mouth. Sometimes, if I fall too deep in thought, I find myself absentmindedly picking at its edges instead of my tired cuticles, and there are crumbs of dry tissue between my teeth.

It's so difficult to let go, even if I wanted to. By now, there is barely anything more to the thought than quiet, resigned anticipation.

I only get to be with this part of me a couple more times after that.

Eventually, when I come to lie down yet again, the room feels just a little narrower, and there is no loose skin on the couch. There is only an outline on the cushions, slightly rougher, drier to the touch; a barely noticeable difference in colour where the newest piece of me hasn't yet gone a washed-out, pale grey.

By now you can hardly tell, when you look at it, where the slab of my flesh has grown into all the previous ones.

By now you can hardly tell, when you look at me, which part of my body is missing.

As always, I wish it could last for a bit longer. But I am tired, and I need to lie down again.