regurgitation

Half crouching, she trudges towards the blinding radiance, visible through the slightly open door. She gravitates towards it, slightly nudging the entrance open with her shoulders. She finds herself transported into another dimension, a space so faultless, its walls and floor as white as death.

"When you start to unwind, you aren’t really unwinding. A couple of hours later, it’s the world that’s winding," a great prophet used to say. The world is indeed winding right now.

She positions her head a couple of inches away from the white marble orifice on the left corner of the room. It is spotless, disinfected and sanitary. She does not mind if her lips almost touch it. Nor does she take notice of it her drunken haze. It’s not really a problem.

Your cellular phone is a hundred times dirtier than this, an ad goes. The toilet is not dirty. It is the most perfect place to let everything go.

Gasping for air, she feels her stomach churn wildly, joshing together the remnants of last night. Seven Vodka-Red bull shots, six bottles of beer, eight more tequila body shots and a bowl of chicken noodle soup - the perfect menu for an unrestrained and abandoned evening with several friends.

She begins to retch, that abhorrent reflex usually coming right before spewing. It is an ugly feeling – to feel the vomitus up the esophagus, ready to be disgorged, but blocked by the esophageal sphincter. She can almost smell, taste, hear and feel that hideous rush of acidic blob. Straining, she holds her long hair back, lest it fall into the toilet. She struggle hard, but nothing comes out.

The toilet bowl is barren. Empty and waiting to be used.

Her right hand shoots up to the sink beside the toilet. She grabs a toothbrush and thrusts it into her mouth, poking her throat, reaching as far as she can. Nauseated and out of breath, she forces herself to regurgitate, straining her throat muscles and flexing her diaphragm to help. It is a painful process.

Vomit starts to flow freely from her stomach; it rushes through her esophagus, exits her mouth and splashes into the toilet. The sound of sick resonating throughout the enclosed space.

Some call it doing the Technicolor yawn.

To her it is just another event to cap another exhausting night out. Her vomit is a mess of all sorts, slightly orange from the alcohol with poorly digested noodle strands. It reeks of desolation. It marks the end of a horrible and depressing struggle. It begins yet a more melancholic one.

She stands up, gargles with running water, and slowly trudges out of the immaculate bathroom. Plopping on the bed, she does not bother to change or take off the trappings of her desperate reality.

Ah, the subsequent effects of a hard night out. It is four in the morning, and she slowly drifts into liquored sleep, sad, filthy and sober. What was forgotten is now remembered.

—

Is bodily penance the price to pay for temporary happiness? When problems are lost momentarily under the dark moon lit skies, when the body is numb, when happiness is unadulterated and existence is forgotten..