iLiza's eyes

If you’re sitting on the toilet in my bathroom, you’re looking at the door. There’s a silver doorknob that looks fairly polished, especially considering I’ve never cleaned it in over a year. It acts as a mirror. Tonight I glanced at it and noticed in its weird bends the square of my purple shirt, and floating above it, my head. When I saw it, my head looked mis-shapen. The smooth turns in the doorknob had made my neck and chin disappear, and my forehead and eyes bulged out like a drop of beige water hanging on the edge of a shower faucet, about to fall. It looked squeezed, pressured, like it was on the verge of exploding.

When I moved my head to the left, my face became recognizable again, but doubled onto itself, so I saw a blurry reflection of two of my faces growing from each other, like some weird alien in a children’s book.

And then when I moved my head to the right, and passed the position where it was an exploding bubble, the reflection just disappeared altogether, and I became a purple shirt without a head. Perhaps it had exploded.

I’ve had a hard week. I didn’t go out last weekend, I spoke to myself in Spanish for two days straight instead. Needed my friends on Tuesday to talk about how I got stood up on Monday but could only talk to them through email because I was stuck in the windowless basement of the library writing seven pages about bullshit in another language.

On Wednesday I had a panic attack. On Thursday I had one too. They were different than the ones I had last year. When I printed out my edited, completed, ready to be turned in Spanish paper on Wednesday, I was overcome with the feeling that I was forgetting something. Even at 5 when I turned in my paper, it felt like I hadn’t even started, and like I was completely failing to turn something in. I looked in my planner time and again. There was nothing.

On Thursday I slaved in front of an excel spreadsheet until my contacts got so dried out I couldn’t see, and then I went to the gym. I don’t remember running. But I did.

And then tonight, I’m here. And I had a bad week. I don’t remember much of what I did, but I know it was a bad week. I know I had a bad week because I haven’t finished a hard Sudoku since last Thursday, and my room is littered with half-done level 4s and 3s and Avanzados that I can’t bear to throw out because I know I know can solve them. I just can’t solve them this week. I must have had a bad week.

I know I’ve had a bad week because I drank a half gallon of milk in two days. I almost never buy milk, and I never drink milk plain. But I don’t have cereal right now, and I drank a half gallon of milk from the same cup that I kept washing between glasses and then filling up again and gulping down, and then washing and filling up again until my stomach hurt and I whined to my roommate. If I think that milk is going to make me feel better, I’ve had a bad week.

And then my head disappeared in a reflection in my bathroom. It popped, and I watched it, and then it disappeared. And I wonder, since when has stress bothered me? Since when can I not remember running for an hour, but I can make up fake deadlines to freak out about?

It’s been a bad week.

posted by iliza @ 10:39 PM