breathe

At two in the morning she lay soaking in the tub, a razor blade on the floor and a book resting on the bath's edge. She chose neither, nor herself. Instead she sat there curled up at first, dripping and impalpably nipped, then stretched out at end, not really crying but then not really not crying either. At last the frantic madness had subsided, and though her face remained marked, the water soothed, camouflaging her bitter defeat. But in her resistance a delicate thought escaped her breath and whispered with illuminating veracity the reasoning with which she had so diligently concealed in stubborn stagnation. Although her repeated failures obviated the infiniteness of her regenerated options, she couldn't help but feel an anti-climactic reluctance to accept a continuance. But now the absurdity of her circumstance stripped her shields bare, and the perhaps ironical conclusion seeped unimpeded into her every warmly opened pore. Yes, finally she understood that the force which so consistently inhibits her pursuit of death is in fact the same one which inhibits her from pursuing life: both the lock she flees from and the one she retreats to require the same key. Each instigation requires a selfishness she cannot bear to wield for her conditioned guilt immobilizes every flinch into futility or submission. So as her beloved escape becomes no more obtainable than that which she fears, the two passageways suddenly appear to be of the same creed. Only by comparing the opposing vastness and emptiness which lie behind each door does the choice become clear. With hesitation, she treads.