chapter 1
damaged
dam•aged |ˈda-mij-ed |
to have been lost or harmed due to injury, treatment, or conditioning
You sit on the floor of the bathroom, looking at your hands and watching them shake. You can feel the cold against your skin because where you sit, bare and leaned against the side of the bathtub, is made of tile and the whitest of glass which have been recently cooled due to the wind and open windows. You shudder, running your hands up and down your arms, which are now riddled with goosebumps. Chills run through your body, but you don't wish for something to cover you. The cold is comforting, you see. It cuts through the rising heat of your emotions so you begin to think clearly again, but you refuse to move.
You reflect on your life as you lay there, the wind combing over your body in waves as it flutters in through the window. It's almost as if you can feel the hairs on your body stand up, trying in its futile effort to keep you warm. What's the point, you wonder, if I don't even know who I am?
Damaged. You let the word roll over your tongue as you think about who you are. Perhaps you are a damaged person. But you refuse to accept that title. You know damaged people. You know their type; the ones who deal with abusive parents or have been transferred from foster homes. The people with damaged souls have suffered traumatic injury and you refuse to allow yourself to be put in such a category if you haven't felt the same pain. To call yourself damaged would seem attention-seeking, similar to those who feign mental illness.
But what are you, if not a person who is trapped in their own body and unhappy in their own home? What can describe a person who fears rejection to the point of inability to function? A person who feels empty all the time even if everyone is around them? How can you possibly describe the feeling of wanting to feel something? To take in each breath and still not feel as though you are breathing; how does one describe that?
You stand up from the floor of the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror. With swollen eyes and a glistening red nose, you glare in disgust at yourself, then look away. How can you stand to look at yourself when you look like this? You lower your head and turn on the sink, allowing the cold water to splash over your warm skin. It clears your mind for a moment and you take a few deep breaths. Soon, it's as if you only sneezed instead of bawled your eyes out on the floor next to a bathtub. You wrap yourself in a towel and put your hand on the door handle. Taking one last glance at your appearance, you turn the handle and insert yourself back in the real world, where everything you just felt diminishes to nothing.
