Building 11 “Rainstorm”

Blue lightening peals its way across the sky, bright and vibrant even with the nights of the city to dull and diffuse the light. It is December, and it is raining in a way that will likely be the final one of the season. I have talked to you about the importance of rain for me, how it suffuses every aspect of my life from my dreams to my waking fears.

My dad isn't home tonight, so I am enjoying the familiar rainwater cocktail on my own. It is a good storm, the sort that he and I would remember even in the face of all the other storms we have seen. But he is not home right now.

So this storm is for me.

This storm is for you.

I realized quite by accident today that I hadn't looked at my reflection in weeks. At first I imagined that I had to be mistaken, that at some point after getting out of the shower till the point I got ready for bed in the evening, that surely there would be a moment, a singular point where looking in the mirror was unavoidable.

But the truth, like the last rain of the season, is something I forgot I needed. I hadn't looked in the mirror for over a month because I had grown to feel sick by what I was seeing. It was easier to just ignore the fact that I could still see the streaks of ink against my scalp, that my face is dull and listless. That every smile feels painful.

I haven't smiled in so long. And do you know what? No one else noticed. I am sitting here on my front porch, watching a rainstorm, probably the best of the year, and yet I feel absolutely nothing for it. I feel empty inside and out, like a piece of my soul has left me. Like a part of me pulled away on Halloween, when I dressed up as my nightmares made real...

They are real.

Maybe they are out in the storm right now, waiting for me. Looking for me.

Maybe they feel the same way about lightening as I do. They cup their hands, gnarled and blackened joints, and drink deep of the rainwater and scoff at those who find the damp disagreeable, those who would look at a late season rain with scorn instead of elation.

I looked into the mirror tonight, before coming outside, and what I saw looking back at me didn't feel like me at all.

Or more to the point, it didn't feel the right way.

It didn't register as my reflection. I can look down at my hands as I write this, and I can know that it is my hands that are shaking from the cold, that it is my fingertips that put down these words.

But when I look into the camera of my phone, when I look into my face under the light of the porch, the one looking back at me is all wrong. The eyes are too dark, the angles too shallow. I look upon myself and I wonder just how much weight I have lost the last month. How many meals did I skip without knowing? Just how much did I avoid without realizing it?

Did someone notice? Did someone say something about how I looked? If they had, what had I said? Did I lie and tell them that there was nothing wrong? Did I try to tell the truth, to tell them about the fact that every night when I sleep it is filled with the sensation of wet cloth against my skin? Did I tell them that I was scared to be honest, because I wasn't sure, and still am not sure what is really happening to me?

Did I tell you?

I am looking back over the notes I have sent you, the letters we have shared, and I can see the sickness in my voice, the stilted way I started to digest information. I was reporting, not talking, and I couldn't even see that it wasn't okay.

I am sorry if I make you worry with this, if it leaves you wondering just who the hell you have been talking to for all this time. I have been talking to you more consistently than I did with Tracy. There are things you know that I didn't even talk to my mom about, that I wouldn't even under threat of death tell my Dad about.

Niomi, I am just trying so desperately to feel real again, to touch the rain and know that it is my body touching it instead of something else. I looked in the mirror, and what I saw didn't just lack an impact. It scared me, because I can remember the last time I looked like that. I can remember so clearly when it was that my eyes were that sunken and my skin was pale and my cheeks shallow...

It was the week after my mother was murdered.

It was raining like it is tonight, and like tonight, Dad wasn't home. It was the first night I had spent alone since I had gotten the news, and the fact that the funeral with the closed casket was three weeks before felt very distant.

My hands were shaking like they are now, my eyes swimming with tears that refused to leave my damn eyes. I knew I was hurting, that I needed to get it out to someone, to get it out somehow. I knew this, but I couldn't do anything about it. I looked at a text from Tracy that night. When I finished responding, I took my phone and turned off the screen.

What I saw looking back at me caused me to scream.

At first I thought I saw one of those hags, those things in shawls, standing over me. But I was the only one in the frame. I was the only face I could see, and the face I saw looking back at me, with sunken eyes and a distant, empty stare...that is the look I get when I know that something is terribly wrong. When food stopped being a thing weeks before.

I am at that point now, and I didn't even realize it.

What I see in the mirror looking back at me isn't real, isn't me.

It isn't really happening.

Are they waiting out there in the rain, looking for me?

Or am I just still feeling sick, defeated and empty even though I should by all accounts be happier than ever. And that's the thing! I don't think I am actually sad! I think I actually feel more recognized and put together than at any time in my life.

But I haven't been sleeping well, and I don't feel real anymore.

I don't feel real, and I miss my mom and dad.

Like I miss the rain.

The last of the season. It is the sort of rain that I will record a video of and watch over and over again in the hope of replicating the feeling.

Any feeling.

Any feeling at all.

I hope its just me.

I hope you are well.

I miss the smell of rain, and the taste of oil in puddles.