mal: in etymology (which I’ve never been fond of until recently), mal is a word which comes from the latin word “malus”, which means “bad” or “evil”
Sometimes I have dreams while my eyes are very much awake. I don’t think what I do can be called daydreaming or put under the umbrella of it. What I do is most certainly something mal, not quite mal-adaptive though. Just mal. You get it.
I like to do this especially when I do not feel too good. I think of the worst possible thing that could happen to me and I make it just a little bit scarier. I picked at my face in the mirror. I looked at the thick hairs growing from my cheeks.
***
I laid down with my heating pad over my aching stomach, I called my boyfriend but he didn’t pick up immediately, so I shut my eyes again and got a few hours of sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night sweating all alone in my room that was in the house I like more than the one I really live in. My stomach ached. No, it seared. It was a sharp, stabbing pain. I did what I did the first time I got that type of hurt in fourth grade—I drank water. Water puts fires out, it should make my stomach feel much better. The water made it worse just like it did before. I threw back up the water and something else dark with streaks of chunky pale.
***
“Toothpaste?” I thought. “That’s strange,” I said to the mirror.
***
Now, I was still in bed covered with the weird black goo. I called my dad and got out the words, “Help me.” It’s always got to be my dad for some reason. As I hung up the phone someone slammed open my door. I was shaking, dripping with sweat. My body smelled metallic and bloody, my mouth tasted bitter. The left side of my abdomen was sharp with pain, the right side simply burned, my back ached. The things that happen inside of a body are scarier than the things that happen outside of them. I cannot see into my stomach, I cannot untangle my intestines, I cannot correct a burn or cut or scrape with an over the counter antibiotic because I’ve been injured in a dark place. I was run into the hospital, the same one where they let a boy die in the waiting room because they didn’t believe in his pain. I begged the hospital people, my dad begged them too; the nurses let us stay. I laid in a hospital bed with needles sticking out of my arm and hand. A jumble of clear fluids ran into the dark of my body. I sort of wanted to die. All I remembered was trying to bargain my way back into my dad’s car. I didn’t want a stranger taking me downtown. “He can drive just as fast,” I said, “The insurance…it won’t take you guys.” My phone rang again, I couldn’t pick it up, I felt bad because I knew who it was. My dad rode in the ambulance with me and the fifth time it rang I slid the phone to him and hinted as best as I could on what to do when he picked up. My eyes should have been saying, “Please stay calm, I know that’s all he needs.” My dad was very calm while he talked to the boy on the other end. I couldn’t hear what either of them said but in my head I knew that on the other side of the phone there was my boyfriend—husband, really—looking for his car keys and wallet in the dark. He was coming. He’d be there when I woke up. He’s always there when I need him. That’s when I started to cry. I cried while they took me away and dark went over my eyes.
In my head I saw the things that I did before I unwillingly tried to die a second time.
After the rain I walked barefoot outside, down the brick path, to the sidewalk that was just poured in front of our house. I looked at a fat snail who was curling up and squishing inside its shell. I poured salt on it. The snail frothed and I watched as more rain fell. The rain didn’t get rid of the frothing. It made the snail die faster instead. Pain is a terrible way to end life.
I went with Mary to a gift shop on my ninth birthday and made matching bracelets with her. I loved Mary and wanted her to love me back too and in that moment her face seemed like she did. We ran around the bins full of pink and yellow and silver charms trying to find ones that suited both of us best. I wore mine to school, she dropped hers in the trash.
I went to the orange room in a school I used to work in and gave back the big paper bag that overflowed with lemons that Melissa had brought me to give to my dad. She had a lemon tree with my dad’s favorite type of lemon—Meyer. They would rot in the two more weeks before he’d give up on a dream and come crawling back to the home he never wanted to make in the first place.
I stayed outside in the warm summer nights while I nervously waited for dad to come back home. The summer air is a gift I like to try and savor, like an eyelash ready to be wished on. It’s just one of those things that goes unnoticed until there is time to stop and remember what is there. Spiders had not found their way down from the attic and into my room while he was gone. I stayed out late into the night not doing much but driving around with whoever wanted to take me somewhere. I made pots of rice and cooked the leftovers in with scrambled eggs that were runny enough to make me sick. My mom and brother and me split a tray of sweet potatoes evenly every night. I never went to sleep hungry for something new to eat.
My cheek was pressed against my husband’s while we danced outside in the cold. My chest expanded against his. I got dizzy and sick, just like I did before. Our love has weight to it, our love demands that the other not deny themselves the pleasure of it.
***
I was all alone in my bathroom, looking into the mirror. I rubbed the left side of my abdomen just where it hurt. I couldn’t cry yet. There was nowhere for the tears to go. My dreams aren’t very productive when I am awake and especially when I am asleep. Nothing is ever wrong until something in my head says it’s so. I am sick to my stomach, literally. The bad only happens when my head refuses to let me do something to stop before it’s too late.
