Stomach pains, vulnerability, headaches, inability to smoke, depression… peeing on a stick. Doctors, visits, wrong diagnosis, fury, collapse… peeing on a stick. Happiness, fear, pain, smoking, denial… peeing on a stick.
” I am better than this. I should have been better than this. This can’t be happening to me. Not to me, the girl who always advises other stupid girls about contraception, the girl who never sleeps around, the girl that quotes from books and not experience. This is a joke. Peeing on a stick is a joke! Is this stick with two bright pink lines on it suppose to decide my future? A simple stick will crash my hopes? Is this how parasites are born? No, this is not right, not me, not now, not this way!”
As thoughts invaded her brain, over-flooding her emotions, she let herself fall onto the giant bed behind her. Her room was blue, her favorite color, but now a witness to her desperation, becoming her biggest enemy. She decided that instance to forever hate blue and find another color for her soul. The thin stick, stained with the fluid of betrayal was in between her hands. She kept rolling it like bread dough, hoping, wishing for it to change results. She felt betrayed by her own body, with no fault of her own.
” Clara, listen to me, it’s going to be okay. Everything is going to be fine. We’re going to handle this, just like we’ve handled the worst before. It’s you and me, like always. Do you trust me?”
The voice kept talking in her head, but she could no longer listen to it. “Good things happen to bad people. Bad things happen to good people.”, her lips mumbled while ignoring the voice within. “I am no longer a child. I am a person with no choice but death in any form.”
She went into the bathroom searching for her mom’s toilet cleaning detergent. She knew that won’t do it, but she was prepared to try. Anything to kill the parasite. Anything to change destiny. Buried deep into the bathroom counter, the white bottle with a nice skull drawn on it, was smiling at her. She opened the tap and placed the bottle near her nostrils. Her bowels were struggling not to react to the smell and she knew that the creature was fighting for its life. Just as her lips were touching the bottle, she heard the front door opening and froze for a moment. In no more than five seconds everything was back in place and her mouth widened into a huge smile at the sight of her mother. She was going to delay it, but the decision had been made.
Two hours later she was alone in her bedroom again. She placed a clean towel on her bed and the stained stick on it… like a trophy. She left the house to find her feelings, to answer the unanswerable, to drown the parasite into sorrow. She left the house to wait… to wait for the one who allowed her to live to decide for her; to judge the trophy on her bed and release her from her conscience.
Desire, remorse, explanations, ration… peeing on a stick. Love, hate, confusion… peeing on a stick. Regret, time, enemies, rape… peeing on a stick.
