Wine Bathing

All ten fingers were interlocked around my left ankle as I sat on the shower floor. I stared blankly at the marble tiles and they seemingly stared back. A blank stare, they offered. One of those "I don't know either" stares, comparable to the ones that my last therapist used to give me before I told her I'd no longer be seeing her. Stares from other people (or things) are the least of my worries though. What hurts the most is the way I've been staring at myself.

I've been evading mirrors for quite a while now. My reflection was hard to face. Quarantining for 2.5 months now had left my already-too-thick eyebrows unscrupulously unruly—a centerfold feature passed down laterally from my mother's father. A WWII veteran, if he had to pass anything along, I'd have preferred his moxie.

Moxie.

I kicked my feet forward and tilted my head backward into my bathwater. I sunk my head deeper and deeper until all but my nostrils were submerged. I felt weightless in the water, as though my flesh had disintegrated and my bones had somehow escaped my body. My backbone, however, had left quite some time before this.

My thoughts lingered away to my last therapy session.

“What comes to you in the dark?” Dr. Domar asked, leaning forward with her hand resting gently on the side of her neck.

She was a twigish older woman. Thin and wiry with short salt and pepper coils springing from her head, glasses pushed onto the tip of her nose.

“A lot.” I replied. “I haven’t done the work of unpacking it all yet.”

“What’s stopping you, Divinity?” calling me by my first name, reminiscent of the way my mother would.

“Life is in the way.”

“Talk to me about life. It’s been a while, tell me about the boy.”

The man, I thought to myself. My twenty-third birthday had passed months ago, and I found that one of the most frustrating facets of being an adult was constantly having to remind others that I was one.

“We broke up,” I said blankly. “He told me we lost the spark a while ago.”

“Well do you agree with that?”

“No. We never agreed on anything. No one ever agrees with me on anything.”

Dr. Domar raised an eyebrow and leaned into her seat with a sigh.

I couldn't agree because I understood that in reality, there was never a spark in the first place. I was too lifeless and defeated to offer any spark to anything. Admittedly, I knew this before seeing him, but I had been lonely for so long that I could not help myself.

I flinched whenever he touched me. I couldn't maintain conversations well, and after a while he saw past the interest I feigned whenever he called. I was undeservingly aloof and distant toward him, my own insecurities lying beneath the surface of this. I felt that I didn't deserve him. We don't talk about self-sabotage after depression enough—how one can seek to destroy and create chaos because harmony has felt too foreign. The love he offered felt suffocating, but I could not assert that I wanted to leave. He, however, made the decision to four months ago, after a nine-month stretch.

The failed relationship served as yet another thing I could not do right. Yet another reminder of how inept I had become, or how inept my imposter syndrome told me that I was. Around that same time, my grades had begun slipping. A liberal arts Grad student, my research grant was contingent upon the maintenance of a 3.5 gpa while I was toying just below that, at a 3.2.

My research advisor made me aware of this shortly before the pandemic forced everyone off campus, his revelation acting almost as a precursor to the impending doom that I now know was to come. Dr.Nebi crossed paths with me as I walked down the cobblestone promenade of the university that I regretted attending. When I lifted my head from counting each rustic stone my feet touched, I saw him coming from the opposite direction. We immediately met eyes, and without a formal greeting, he told me he needed to speak with me.

"I took a look at your grades earlier. Good, but not good enough" he told me.

"What do you mean?" I replied.

"Ah, so you haven't been checking your grades?" He said, with a closed-eyed head nod and slight smirk on his round face, a smirk that was not one of amusement, but somewhere along the lines of paternalistic frustration.

"I haven't had the time."

"No time for school? For success? How bad do you want this, ah?" he replied, still smirking as if my disregard were amusing.

I stood in silence and shuffled my binder from my left hand to my right. I had plenty of excuses, but none that I had the courage to muster. Here was my failure to assert, again.

"Listen, you only have another year left. You are nearing the finish line, my dear. Don't you believe you deserve to graduate?"

"Yes"

"I do too, so prove that. You can pull your grades up over the next nine weeks. Start with your midterms."

I nodded my head in response.

"Don't you believe in your intelligence? Your capabilities? Don't you have that faith in yourself?"

"Yes"

"I do too, so prove that. Remember, faith without work will always be in vain. I would expect you to know your scriptures, Divinity." he said, breaking away from the space that our conversation occupied and continuing on his way down the promenade.

It was after that conversation that I realized how far I had strayed from myself—from my goals, aspirations, and the things that really mattered. How engulfed I had become in my sadness, my pain, and all of the trauma that merely twenty-three years could hold. How I allowed distractions, such as sulking and men that I did not deserve, to make me lose myself in the process.

Another thing that I have lost recently was track of time. I had been floating in the bath for so long that the palms of my hands looked akin to my late grandfather's. I had been so immersed in my memories that I didn't notice the water turn cold or the hue of it changing.

I unleashed the drain and made sure to step carefully onto the bath mat. I wrapped up in a white towel and stepped out of the bathroom to my bedroom. I took my time moisturizing and brushing my hair, using a mindful touch with each stroke.

When I finished, I walked to my closet and put on my newest dress and heel set. I had a date tonight, with someone who actually deserved my love and attention.

Once dressed, I sat in front of my desk mirror and poured myself a glass of Merlot.

Tonight, I was meeting the divine.