blue wallflower

by Mica

Task 8: find the dark

Wake up in the middle of the night to go to the toilet. Between the hours of 1am and 4am will suffice.

Do not turn on the light. Your eyes will not adjust to the bright light.

Stumble over to the bathroom. You are very groggy, but you have to use the bathroom. You cannot hold it in.

Remember to wash your hands. See the faint silhouette of yourself in the barely illuminated sink mirror. Now fall asleep while standing up. Enter a dream. Watch the silhouette melt. Watch it reform into the shape of a big tree. You are in the shape in a tree. You have become the tree. Your clothes are bark. Your torso completely ossified. You are frozen. Rooted. Trapped. You cannot break free.

Wake up on the bathroom floor. Your head hurts.

Stand up. Wash your face. Wake up. Wake up. Turn on the cold tap. It’s cold. But not cold enough.

Wake up. Even if you don’t want to wake up. Wake up to save your life. Wake up to save the life you yourself said isn’t worth saving.

Doubt yourself. Run two laps around the house. Even better, crawl so that your knees abrade against the carpet. Do not turn on the light.

Find the light. Find the light.

Do not find the light. You will never find the light, so do not try.

Find the dark. You have to try to find the dark. For some reason, being alive is somehow still the default when being alive is the most painful.

You do not have to try to live for you to live. But you must try to die before you will die.

Crawl to your desk. In the darkness, list all of your successes on half of an index card. Write as fast as you can. You can omit as many successes as you want. It can even be totally illegible. You already disregard all your successes and augment your failures. So why bother to remind yourself of them?

Take a picture of the list and send it to me.

Author's Note:

Comments

[Pete100]

You do not have to try to live for you to live. But you must try to die before you will die.

What?