Today I Bathed With Guilt

Today I Bathed with Guilt

written by: Elaine W. Degro

 

Today I bathed with guilt…
He comforted me in the stills of the water.
Caressing my skin in ways that no one else has done.
Although his presence was not wanted I could not help myself to try and wash him away.
I lathered my body and tried to wash away guilt…
But he stayed.

You see he had seeped into my skin, like a tattoo.
He laid there so seemingly harmless but he had activated something far more detrimental than I could have ever anticipated…
Anxiety….

And inside my stomach grew this ball.
I could begin to see it to glow with my third eye.
It was vibrant orange, it was angry, It was awake.
And my stomach started to hurt and my breath started to labor.
I could no longer see straight but a haze above me in the bathtub.

I laid motionless as waves of guilt smothered me and a fireball grew rampant in my stomach.
The voices awoke and started to scream in my ear and I could do nothing but lay…motionless.
Lost in a sea of chaotic stillness.
A single tear escaped and I knew that would be the brink of world war III.

Another tear escaped, and the fiery ball grew angrier.
Things that had no sense started to flood my veins…
“You are no good…”
“No one…Loves…You.”
Tears started to escape faster now. No, they weren’t escaping they were committing suicide off my face.

My shriveled fingers tried to grasp the sides of the tub…
I tried to get up and run away but I couldn’t.
I couldn’t.
So the startled madness that was within me began to calm down as I began to accept their presence.

Today, I bathed with guilt. He is my only friend.
Anxiety lays dormant in my belly. I don’t like when he wakes up so I kept my mind blank.
I did not think for that would cause to feel, I did not feel for that would cause to worry, I did not worry for that would wake up the beast…
I laid in silence. Acceptance, of what I was. What I had become.

Feeling the corpses that fell from my eyes and onto my cheeks…
I wiped them away because they scared me.
I bathed with guilt today…