Tanyon Griffith

Frozen Agony

“Stop! Stop stop stop!” I screamed pulling myself further up the unmade bed to clutch my stomach, barely registering the headboard slamming into the back of my head over the searing pain in my pelvis.

He sat back on his heels, the disappointment heavy on his handsome features as I fought back tears, refusing them to be the reason he hangs his head. Even so, his sigh ran cold in my bones though a warm blanket settled over my shaking body. 

“I’m going to the bathroom.” His voice was far away as I pulled my body closer beneath the blanket, as if I could melt into the cotton, as if disappearing into it would consume me and everything that went with it.

I hadn’t noticed the loud hum of the shower until it was gone and the bed lamp clicked on and off. I turned to watch the water dripping from his hair stain the sheets, my eyes at last fluttering open from their clench of agony. Clenching, as if the pain would go away as the monsters would in childhood, to hide under the covers as if they were a shield against the monsters. But the sheets are useless when the monster is already under them, burrowing into me.

He lay on his back atop the blanket, the streetlights peeking through the closed blinds illuminating his still damp skin. The beads of water traced lines down his cheek and neck, leaving behind glistening streams of moonlight.

I slowly hauled myself closer to the warmth of him, the security, the comfort, the lingering cologne of his silky shirt–my favorite shirt–filling my senses.

“Do you…” His voice, once of liquid honey, now sounded gravely in the dark. Yet I pulled my still bare body closer to its sound. “Do you still love me?”

I pulled back to look at his face. His eyes, I once described as water over a shallow reef, were still looking at the ceiling. His hands clasped together on his stomach.

Not around me.

“What?” I asked.

“Do you still love me?” he repeated.

Not looking at me.

“Of course I do,” I assured him, placing a kiss on his warm neck.

“Because… because it feels like you don’t.”  His voice broke at the words, matching the spreading crack in my heart.

I completely pulled away from him then, suddenly aware of how naked I was, how only a measly little blanket covered me with all the accusation in those words. Suddenly feeling… bare.

“And, baby, it hurts.” Water that was not from the shower glistened in his eyes. “I can’t deal with it anymore.”

“What?” I asked again, pulling the blanket with me as I sat up. The bed was suddenly so small and my clothes had to be miles away on the floor.

“I can’t go on like this.” 

“I don’t–” my voice stuttered in disbelief, “I don’t understand. I thought…”

I had thought he understood, believed me, believed the pain.

The scuff of my shoes on the pavement rang distantly. My jeans felt too tight around the waist, the sweater too thin against the cold bite of the March night air. I barely noticed the stabbing ache as I slid onto the icy leather of the driver’s seat. The heat of my breaths fogged in front of me, temporarily warming my face.

His hair had still been wet when I closed the door to his room, alone.

When I had walked down the stairwell of his apartment, alone.

And when I walked across the dark parking lot to my car.

Alone.

I stared at my bag in the passenger seat, the overnight clothes hanging out, my tooth brush in the water bottle pocket. The bristles were as white as the falling March snow outside, the frozen, crisp flakes piling on top of each other as they slowly painted the pavement white. 

The windshield was beginning to frost over when I, at last, pushed the cold metal of my key into the ignition. 

All noises of the engine, the tires, my sobs, were eaten up by the snow down the street and across the highway and up my driveway.

I think the water that ran down my too-still body in the shower was warm. It had to have been to soothe the pain that still throbbed between my hips. The pain that haunted my everyday life. The inconvenience that drove my hunger away for a week every month when a heating pad was strapped to my stomach. As if the pre- and post- torment wasn’t enough, the week of searing electric shocks would rain through my abdomen in what was the end or beginning of it all, I was never sure.

But this part, this part of womanhood…

The books had lied. The films, the other women, the doctors, they had all lied. And he…

I had thought someone would believe me unconditionally.

Maybe it was I who lied to myself about that.

❧

“You’re up early,” my roommate commented, combing her ivory fingers through her hair as she strolled into the bathroom.

“I have a doctor’s appointment,” I explained. The tiles of the bathroom seemed to bite into my skin harder than the water I splashed on my face, the icy fingers from the faucet raking down my arm before seeping into my rolled up sweater.

“I still can’t believe these don’t work for you,” she said, rattling the pack of oral birth control pills. “I feel great!”

I shrugged, rubbing moisturizer and sunscreen into my dry skin.

She picked up the cream, inspecting it. “Maybe you should drink more water, like the doctor says.”

I sighed through my nose. “I have been.”

“Whatever.” She sighed, setting down the bottle to brush her teeth. “The single life still sad?”

I did not deign to look at her as I said, “It’s been months.”

She just held her hands up in a mock defense. “You’re always so moody.”

I looked at myself in the mirror. The small dark circles under my eyes. My flat skin. The brittle hair that seemed to clump in larger and larger balls on the shower drain. My once vibrant blue eyes indeed were clouded with absentminded emotion that did not belong to me. Not truly.

Every article of clothing was overstimulating. Nothing would consistently fit right, so why bother looking for new clothes when they would only fit a third of the time? And if the clothes never fit, how could I expect emotions to as well? 

That face that stared back at me… did I even know her?

Who was she? What made her smile? What made her angry? 

And when did I stop knowing her? When did she become a stranger, a husk of a person just waiting for a breath of air to blow her away?

Was this the existential crisis that happened in your twenties? Was this normal? Or maybe this was just the late luteal phase talking.

“Are you making breakfast before you leave?” she asked, spitting the toothpaste into the sink and bursting my bubble of thought.

“I’m not hungry,” I informed her, focusing back on the forgotten mascara in my hand.

“Damn, I really wanted your gluten free pancakes,” she commented, strutting out of the bathroom.

I tucked a cold hand beneath my shirt, rubbing my fingers over the soft skin of my lower stomach, wondering how something that’s a part of me could cause so much agony.

You’ll be hungry later. I made a mental note to bring a protein bar with me, already contemplating if it would be embarrassing or a good thing to pass out in the doctor’s office. But I could already hear the words: You’re just dehydrated.

I sucked in a breath, giving myself one last inspection before turning off the bathroom light.

❧

There was no one else in the women’s hospital bathroom when I emerged from the stall. My hands gripped the edges of the sink like it was a lifeline, my chest rising and falling with each heavy breath in an attempt to pull myself together. 

Dried creek beds of salt marred my cheeks. The mascara I had carefully put on earlier was now clumped and smudged under my eyes like storm clouds.

Give the birth control three more months, Dr. Young had said. Make sure you are drinking enough water and try changing your diet.

I had tried to explain to her that the pill wasn’t working for me, that no over-the-counter pain meds even dented the pain.

Everyone has a different pain tolerance, she had said.

I stared down at my white iron grip on the porcelain sink, the same grip I had in the emergency waiting room months ago. Three hours of clenching the wooden chair so I did not scream. Three hours of memorizing the white tile floors as person after person walked in and walked out. Of sitting in that chair because they wouldn’t let me lie on the floor.

Then lying on that exam table, too tired to react anymore. Too tired to fight the doctors because the pain medication flowing through my IV wasn’t working. To just lie there through exam after exam only to be sent home with no answer. With no relief. With no care.

The grooves of that wooden chair on my palms had faded, but its mark on my memory would forever remain, the doubt of if the pain was real branded on my mind.

I washed away the dried tears and remaining makeup before beginning the long trek across the parking lot in the hot June air. It felt like ages with the waddle that came from any gynecologist visit to reach my car. A waddle that felt pointless now. And when the floor and driver’s seat felt a mile high, it took everything to not break down again.

❧

“Do you want some stuffing?” my grandmother asked, a large helping of it poised over my plate.

“No thanks, I can’t eat that,” I said, staring at my almost empty plate.

“It’s not that you can’t,” my mom began, “it’s that you are choosing not to.”

“I still don’t understand why you can’t have my stuffing,” my grandmother’s sweet voice rang in confusion.

“It has bread in it, Grandma. That bread has gluten,” I explained, already moving to the salad. “Did you put dressing on this?”

“I tossed it with my famous sweet strawberry dressing,” my mom boasted. “With my secret ingredient.”

Powdered sugar, that was the secret ingredient.

“Oh.” I looked again at the cabbage and turkey on my plate, my two least favorite foods at Thanksgiving. But I forced a small smile, thanking my mom before sitting at the table. Before holding hands and bowing my head in grace. Before dredging up the interest to the same questions and the same conversations. Before mustering the stamina to laugh with everyone else. Laugh when I did not see the point anymore.

❧

You’ve been quiet,” my aunt commented, handing me a plate to wash after dinner.

“I’m tired,” I said. 

“Ah,” she sighed, taking a place beside me at the sink. Her calloused hands scraped mine in the water as she reached for a plate. “At least you’ve had the week off to rest.”

“Not really.” The plate clanked loudly on the drying rack with the family eating pie outside. My own hand was calloused from hours of scratching a pencil across paper, the hours spent failing to help the drowning grades that may as well be under the foggy sink water before me.

“Did you try Grandma’s pie? It’s especially good this year!”

“I haven’t.” My focus did not drift from the stack of soapy dishes.

“What! I thought it was your favorite!” she exclaimed, momentarily setting down the plate she was washing.

“It’s full of sugar, I can’t–” I sighed, the bubbles popping in the water. “I’m choosing not to have sugar.”

“Why not?” This time, she dropped the plate completely to face me.

“Since Dr. Young said it made the pain worse.” I continued to clean the plate in my hand, not looking at her.

“Well,” she huffed, turning back to the sink, “one piece couldn’t hurt.” 

❧

“Happy Holidays!” the mailman called after me as I pushed open the door. The piercing air stung the sliver of exposed skin above my coat collar, my hands gobbled up by the now-too-big sleeves. The clouds loomed overhead, the promise of snow a stiff blanket across the quiet college town, now seeming more like just a town when my drowning grades pulled me under as well, the years of trying to swim doing nothing for me in the end. 

I glanced back at the post office, hand on the car handle, in time to see the open sign flip off. My eyes drifted to the box poised on my boney hip labeled “fragile,” then to the grocery list on the passenger seat. My cold lips pursed together in consideration as I glanced towards the grocery store across the parking lot. 

A cloud of my hot air puffed in front of my mouth in a sigh before I slid into the driver’s seat, reaching for the spare scissors to open the box.

Sparkles littered down from the overly festive bow around the two bottles of red wine and extravagant corkscrew. There was a card tucked beneath all the red and silver tissue paper:

For you and your roommate.

Live it up a little!

-Mom

My eyes drifted over the words over and over. My mind searched to imagine a scene where I was “living it up.” Where I was living. But just the thought of it, the energy to imagine it, was too exhausting to form.

The phone buzzed then, the screen lighting up with the word “Healthcare”.

“Hello?” I said into the phone, one of the wine bottles still in my hand.

“Hi, may I speak with Cassandra?” the female voice chimed.

“This is she.” 

“Hello, I am calling from Dr. Young’s office regarding your ultrasound results from a few weeks ago. It looks like everything is normal.”

Normal.

Normal.

Normal.

The cold screen of the phone was still pressed to my face when she hung up. “Have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!” 

That little piece of metal and plastic was suddenly so heavy. 

The glossy wine bottle, too full for my hand to hold.

My body, too tired to set either of them down.

Ten years. Ten years I fought the doctors, the medical world, fought for them to believe, to understand, to know I was not lying.

The last year flooded before me: the tears as I left the boyfriend’s apartment; the tears in the doctor’s office bathroom; the tears that spilled onto my homework; and then the tears that eventually stopped coming because it was too much work anyway.

The corkscrew was in my hands, prying the first bottle open, my tongue not tasting the red liquid as it crashed down my throat.

I again waited for the tears, for the deviation, for the confusion. Waited for some sense of feeling. But it never came.

It can’t take everything to hold yourself together when you have nothing left to give.

Everything was mindless actions after that: the clank of the empty wine bottle in the trash; the click of the shoes on the store tiles; the ding of the credit card; the rattling of the pain meds in a plastic bag; the pop of the second wine bottle.

And then it was snowing, those soft, frozen flakes flitting down from the sky to cover the deserted parking lot. It covered any trace of parking lines, tire tracks, foot prints, and existence.

My existence. One that had become so far away I cannot remember what it felt like. What it felt like to breathe. 

A long time ago, I knew I had left myself, so long ago I could not remember if I left bread crumbs to follow home. If I had a home at all.

I no longer cared. 

I no longer cared about an answer or a cure or for someone to believe me because I stopped believing myself.

A small smile kissed my lips at the last gulp of wine, that blanket of pure ivory silencing everything until the world was as white as the multiple empty pill bottles on the car floor.

At last I could find bliss to relieve my soul from this suffering husk I no longer trusted.

At last those pain meds would give me relief. 

At last I could rest. 

I could be done.

 

---

Tanyon Griffith is a third-year student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, pursuing a dual degree in Physics and Astrophysics with a minor in Creative Writing. Her academic interests focus on black holes, light, and cosmology, but outside the classroom, she enjoys riding her horse, Lehia, competing in mounted archery, climbing, river rafting, and hiking.