The bathroom light hummed above me as I flipped the switch.
It flickered on and off, as it always did. The bulb inside the old glass lamp had needed replacing for weeks now. Maybe longer. The lamp itself hung slightly sideways from the ceiling, as if it too had grown tired of holding on.
I never fixed it, I just never felt like it.
"Bothered" isn't the right word. It wasn't that it didn't bother me.
I simply couldn't care enough to do anything about it.
Even if the lamp finally gave up and fell, even if the glass shattered and the bulb broke, I would have probably kept doing what I always did—only this time in the dark.
Brush my teeth in the dark.
Take a shower before work in the dark.
And when nature called — well, you've guessed it.
That too in the dark.
It sounds miserable and pathetic.
That is because it is that. I was in a truly pitiful place, and as such my life was exactly that. Misery.
The kind that doesn't make a scene, but watches in the background, making everything feel a little heavier and slower than it should. The kind you get used to without even noticing. The kind I took for granted for, abiding simply by its rule.
But the truth is, once a person stops expecting much from life, such rudimentary things become surprisingly insignificant.
After all, when existence itself feels like a mistake, worrying about a light bulb seemed a little excessive. It wasn't as though I hadn't tried to end things before. I had…in moments where I felt especially inconsolable.
But each time, a false sense of duty held me back. There were children waiting for me at school. Children who believed I was supposed to teach them something.
They depended on me.
That alone was enough to stop me, or so I believed.
Looking back on it now, it sounds almost ridiculous.
To think that my life continued only because I felt obligated to show up to work.
The truth was much simpler.
I was just a coward.
A hypocrite who spoke often about despair, yet could never quite follow through with it.
And yet, even after all those attempts, here I was.
This hypocrite.
Barely standing in the doorway, clutching the frame for support, wheezing as if I had just run for miles. Sweat dripped from every part of my body. My hands trembled.
The world around me was spinning, as the head ache from earlier started to worsen once more. It felt as though someone had thrown a flash grenade inside my skull.
I was sure of it.
I must have taken something again. Some pill, some powder, really just about anything that promised even a brief escape from this miserable place.
To succumb to the sensation.
To drive somewhere far away from the burden of being.
Hallucinations were not unfamiliar to me.
It wasn't the first time I had woken up like this either, certain that I had lost my mind.However, something about this felt different.
The first time where I don't remember taking anything.
Where I intentionally tried to give in to the illusion. This was…new.
Not the good kind. Not like waking up on a Sunday and realizing you don't actually have to go to work.
No.
This was the other kind.
The kind where something is wrong, and you know it.And this thought confirmed itself to me when my eyes fell to my chest, where now a burning sensation was radiating off.
The scar.
Heat began to spread from it, crawling slowly across my bare skin.
A small belly pushed outward, hanging low enough that the tips of my toes barely peeked out beneath it.
My nails looked as neglected as the rest of me. Yellowish. Split. The skin around them dry and cracked.
I looked up to the mirror.
The reflection showed a man bent slightly forward, looking older than he actually was. His shoulders were narrow from years of slouching, his posture tired.
It was the body of a man who had long since stopped trying.
My body.
Then almost as it was announcing itself with the unbearable heat that was stretching itself throughout my entire body, the pain struck.
It came from the scar. It started there and followed the trail the heat had left behind.
A sharp pulse that spread through my chest. Then my ribs and then finally my back.
Crack.
I froze.
The sound had come from the inside. And with that sound, almost instantly, the pain intensified—magnified tenfold along my spine. I bent down to my knees.
Whatever this was… whatever was happening to me… it was no longer something I could control.
It was in control.
"Aaah—!"
Another pulse followed.
Crack.
My back jerked upright suddenly, as if invisible hands had grabbed my spine upwards and forced it straight. I gasped, seemingly struggling for air. With every crack, the pain sharpened in a different part of my body.
This time it struck higher.
My upper spine.
"What is go—"
"ARGHH—!"
The words died halfway through my mouth. The feeling of my body shifting—no, reshaping itself from the inside—made it impossible to speak.
The pain kept spreading.
I don't remember exactly how it moved after that.
At some point the heat and the pain blended together until they were no longer separate things.
They became one.
And eventually my whole body fell under control.
My arms.
My legs.
Even my muscles tightened involuntarily, as if something beneath my skin were pulling them into place.
Another crack echoed through my body.
This time, the pressure came from my chest.
A metallic taste announced itself in my mouth just before I coughed — violent, wrenching.
When I looked down, drops of red splattered across the floor.
Blood.
I staggered toward the sink and grabbed its edge, as my knuckles started whitening.
The pressure inside my chest grew worse. It was no longer just pain. It felt like something was correcting me. Rearranging me.
And all I could do was watch, with first row seats.
My crooked back slowly cracking itself straight.
My shoulders pulled themselves back, as if someone was pulling them backwards. With it my chest inclined forward, and another crack.
This one was the last.
It didn't hurt. Rather, it felt liberating. Freeing.
For years, there had been a weight on my shoulders, growing heavier as time passed. My posture had curved with it, worsening ever so slightly each day until this moment.
They never felt this good.
While the cracking stopped, whatever was happening to me was far from over.
My stomach twisted violently.
I barely had time to turn before I vomited onto the floor. More blood. Every part of body shook uncontrollably as the pain surged again, stronger this time.
My legs buckled. Gave in.
I collapsed to my knees, clutching my chest as my heart erupted into a frantic, wild rhythm — pounding so hard I was certain it would tear through my ribs. It wasn't just pain. It was despair. Pure, crushing anxiety.
Am I having a seizure?
Then my vision blurred.
Through the haze, I lifted my head and looked toward the mirror. My reflection stared back. But something was wrong. Deeply wrong.
My face… moved.
Not the muscles beneath the skin—the face itself. The surface rippled, as if something just underneath was shifting, crawling, reshaping me from within. The skin wobbled slightly, distorting like an image seen through water.
Sweat clung to my skin, cold and slick. The air felt thick, hazy — like a fever dream I couldn't wake from. My heart stuttered, threatening to give out.
Then the pain surged again.
My vision went white.
I tried to stand, but my legs refused to listen. I staggered forward instead, reaching blindly for something to hold onto. My shoulder slammed into the mirror.
Glass shattered.
The sound spread through the small bathroom as cracks raced across my reflection, splitting my face into dozens of jagged pieces. Dozens of versions of me stared back from the broken shards on the ground — each fracture showing something that shouldn't be possible.
The world tilted.
The floor rushed upward.
And before everything faded to black, I realized one final thing.
The stiffness was gone. Or mostly gone. Or — I couldn't tell. Everything felt different now. Wrong different? Right different? I didn't know. I was completely clueless.
Hallucinogens.
I had to stop taking them. That much, at least, still made sense.