Hypothermia
My sadness
It is Winter’s Frost
Leaving me Autumn
Clutching dearly
My lost beloved
Days of warmth
****
I am no longer the same, I think to myself as I position my naked body underneath the shower head. My fingers grip the dial, and my body momentarily tightens up. With tense deliberation, I turn the dial in my fingers to the right. I continue one full rotation around until the dial refuses to move.
In the same moment my body is shocked by the suddenness of the cold water spraying over me from the shower head. An audible gasp escapes my lips and before I exhale it the water has already moved on from frigid to lukewarm. A redness begins growing on my skin; marking the water’s movement; tracing a winding path down my torso. The water’s rapid rise in temperature leaves my body screaming to be released from under the water. I force my muscles to remain rigid. The water begins to burn over the most sensitive parts of my body; a nearly unbearable discomfort. I bear it with my head just out of the water’s spray. My eyes close as I try fixating on the water winding down my neck; sliding down my chest until the trails feel worn warmly into my skin.
The cold burning sensation of my toes is a mocking reminder no matter what lengths I go to I cannot hide from winter’s knock on the door. It beckons, moving into my joints in waves of tightness as the chill shivers me to my bone.
My mind dissociates from the pain pouring with the stream of water and try as I might to remain in the physical realm, I am wrapped in a blanketed mixture of all my saddest emotions. An emotional hypothermia works over me, the sadness like cold; working it’s way deep into my bones until I can’t shake the tremors. As an angry bitterness elopes with my sadness, I flail in the final throes of insipid numbness.
I yearn to feel the water’s warmth inside my chest. To covet that worth as I douse it over my frozen soul.
Warmth was a feeling so long ago. I turn to lamenting, wondering if it will ever return. If I will every feel more than a dullness in the moments I am supposed to feel joy. My teeth cracking under a constant anxious grinding as I try to remember the last time I used them to smile or to eat. A prolonged dull ache refuses to vacate my stomach, and I cannot find myself moved to action; so I ignore the hunger and move on almost defiantly. Moving further into a fruitless search for warmth.
The sadness covers everything. I struggle less and less as it envelopes me, the freezing sadness quickly giving way to an apathetic Nothingness consuming my very being.
At least with sadness I can cry.
I am no longer the same, the thought returns to my head as I silently beg to escape. To feel release and freedom from the hollow feeling of emptiness replacing all my emotions. My worst fear becomes being bonded with my numbness so intrinsically it never leaves.
Has it already become who I am?
I’d give anything for one cathartic cry, allowing the sadness to wrack me into a crumpled mess of sobbing; nothing more than a toddler sucking in giant windfall gasps of air after a tantrum. I’d feel broken, but alive. Feeling something, anything- is better than the nothingness settled inside me.
Unsure whether it’s been minutes or hours, I take no notice of the dissipating heat. The water becomes a steady stream of lukewarm; flowing over my body, causing my muscles to begin tightening again as they cling to the last of warmth held in the water. A flicker of warmth, and the water is cold again but I am far beyond feeling it’s icy bite. I grasp for the dial with my frozen fingers and spin it, turning the water off. My body convulses as one final shiver shoots down my spine. I don’t feel the coldness.
But the warmth is gone.
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