probably corporeal
Has anyone noticed it rains on Thursdays? I know this because Thursday is the day I absolve myself of responsibility. Thursday, now my favourite day of the week, is when I get to disappear.
Each Thursday, though, I am greeted by wet weather in all forms — thunderstorms, drizzles that last all day, even that freak sun shower last week. I love rain, always have, but I struggle with the hold it has over me. It dims my mood and clouds my mind, which makes me think: forget the terrors of the sun and the moon, apparently I can be downed by something as innocuous as water.
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Speaking of being downed, my body is threatening to quit. This is because I have finally figured out a trade I can live with, though: fatigue for sleep. Pain for rest.
I am convinced the lack of sleep has given my brain a case of the jitters, so these days I am easily distracted, often bored. At work, I am thoroughly, inconsolably, restless. Because I cannot nap, I daydream manically. I work furiously for 20 minutes, then need a break twice as long to rethink the work. I have never multi-tasked more than I do now.
To calm my nerves, I bolt out the door at the close of the work day. I have found that venturing further from home only means my head has to work harder to not give up, so I take detours that loop into accidental pain. Each day, I say to myself, triumph lies just one road ahead, soon with a fully hushed mind.
Only — only now there’s a twinge in my right shoulder, a throb with every step down my right shin. A recurring sciatic ache on my left, and sometimes the familiar pain of an old, sore, misused knee.
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The good news is I drop off to sleep more easily now. The bad news is I continue to wake during hours I shouldn’t.
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Also: I have developed the strangest tic. I didn’t even know I was doing until it started to rain one day and I was forced to race for shelter. And that’s when I realised I was catching raindrops with my outstretched hand.
It seems, when my body tires, I clench and unclench my fists, then shake them as if to check they’re still attached to me. I watch my palms turn from pink to white to pink again. I dig my fingernails into the flesh of my hand just to see how long it takes for the indentations to fade. What is this?? Am I checking to see if I’m still in my body? That I haven’t yet died? Maybe soon I will regress to a 5-year-old child, wanting to slice myself open just to see what’s inside.
It reminds me of this time, when I was 15, and developed this cursed habit of snapping a rubber band around my wrist. All day long, even in class: snap, snap, snap, snap. I bruised so many vessels all the way down my forearm without meaning to. I stopped as quickly as I started — because the marks on my arm scared me, because even then vanity won out — but not before a classmate saw and said, “Feels good, right?”
I didn’t know what she meant then. I can’t decide if I know now, but I have this sick, sinking suspicion: my body must know something my mind has yet to figure out.
