portals and performance

I saw god in a bathtub overflow cover

Four years ago I was sitting in my bathtub with music turned up and the expensive candle lit, the one saved for an unspecified special occasion collecting dust. I had just gotten the call from my doctor that my second IVF egg retrieval didn’t produce any “good” embryos. And I was doing what my therapist had encouraged me to do; to feel the feelings rather than steamroll them with hopeful platitudes and silver linings. Of course I cried, but I was bored of crying. It felt like a performance routine at this point. Two years of trying and, what? Failing? What a weird, permanent, cruel way to talk about the organs in my body. I was sad of course, devastated even. But I’d rehearsed this part a time or two. But I’d never really let myself consider what a life without children might look like. This time I let myself go there. I let the scene keep going, envisioning a future that was too vast and empty to place imaginary goals. It was just empty.

I soaked until I was pruney and the water cold. I let the gasps between cries take up space and echo in my tiled bathroom rather than stifle them. I’d been embarrassed before because of how loud longing sounded coming out of my mouth even if it was just me who heard them. I always felt like I was on a stage. Even alone I was self-conscience of the earnestness of desires. The invisible audience felt too pitying. Exposed vulnerability, even alone in my own bathroom felt cringey.