cry silent tears, until I’m shaking and the room is spinning. My head hits the ground. It is a familiar pillow that provides no comfort. I lay curled up in a daze, half naked on the floor, a damp towel around me keeping me loosely
tethered to reality. My stomach moans, and yet the thought of
food makes me weak and nauseous. My fingers fumble with the fibres, the softness slightly reassuring but I still can’t focus. My cheeks are wet and numb; I have no feeling in my face and my toes are slowly turning blue, despite the warmth of my bedroom. My dead, empty eyes, coloured by dark shadows, stare into
a void. There are no thoughts running through my mind. I am empty. I’m a shell of a person
being pulled by the strings of everyday routine and the people around me until I am alone. But I
am always alone. The only voices I can hear are the echoes of my self-hatred, self-loathing and self-love arguing with each other, creating a static buzz to which I trudge on. I am not alive. I am merely existing.
There are half empty packets of pills hidden away in my bedside drawer. The glass surface is covered in smudged fingerprints and used tissues, from the
moments I forgot how to breathe in the middle of the night. But night blurs into
day and my hands instinctively reach for my throat as I gasp for air, and all I can feel are the streams of salty tears that roll down my cheeks, my lips and on to the floor. My nose drips and my ears ring. My face begins to tingle and I slide slowly off my bed, onto the floor
where I curl up for a short while. This is where I belong. The rough, harsh fibres of the carpet tickle the soles of my feet, and I brush my hands up and down my thighs until they start to turn red. It’s the only colour I know alongside the blues that swirl around me. My arms stretch out and with my hand I take a used tissue to my face and wipe. There is no particular method to removing the wetness from my face.
As long as it’s all gone. I put my hands on the rough carpet and push myself back onto my bed. I shake my head, take a deep breath and pop a pill in my mouth. It doesn’t take much to swallow it down.
Page 10
By Aniqah Rawat
difference between night and day. Sleep is a forgotten dream and I
Remembering How to Breathe
Days blur into one another. I can no longer tell the
