Camera One: Picture a woman, maybe 65 years old. She has MS, gets around with a walker. The bathrooms in her very old house are the size of shoeboxes; very tough to get in and out of if you’re larger than a 12 year old boy or have a walker. She is and does. Now this woman, because she’s sick, (and because she’s sick, she feels much older than 65), she has to go to the bathroom frequently. Like a lot. And going to the bathroom is a very time-consuming activity; struggling to first get to the bathroom, then struggling to get inside the bathroom door with her walker. Then there’s the getting the pants down, or the dress up, or whatever while holding onto the walker so that she doesn’t fall. Eventually, after what may be almost an hour, she gets to plop her exhausted body onto the toilet, knowing that when she’s done, she will have to reverse the whole process to get out of the bathroom and back to her chair in the living room (which may as well be 100 miles and 2 weeks away). She will likely repeat this process three or four times before her day is done.
Camera Two: Picture a woman, maybe 37 years old, pacing around her kitchen, a loaded handgun on the table. She’s wearing nothing but a pair of men’s boxer shorts; likely her ex-lover’s. Ah, her ex-lover, he has broken her heart. She is devastated by the loss of him. She helped him move out; thought she was was the bigger one. Truly believed that it would help their relationship, if he had some independence, the chance to find his own way. He had moved in with her when he was only 25; from his Mom to her. Now he was restless; acting cold, detached. She thought she could rise above, help him. They looked at apartments together; her  always feeling that growing, gnawing anxiety in the pit of her stomach, the middle of her chest. But no, this would work. He would miss her so much; he would see what he had with her and he would want it back. She would help him; always help him. It seemed like the best thing. Until it wasn’t. Until Jennifer with her monstrous tits and stupid smile. She wasn’t even out of college yet. And she would drive his BMW, the same car that the woman drove almost every day when they were together. The woman would be getting morning coffee at Dunkin Donuts, and monster tits would pull in in the BMW. It wasn’t her car. And she would stupidly say hello to this woman, the one whose soul mate she was sleeping with, doing the things they used to do together in the bedroom and it made the woman sick to her stomach to think these things; the video tape rolling inside her burning brain. Ugh. She was driving his car. And she would say hello and the woman would want to jack her up onto the wall by her stupid neck and tell her…….it’s not your car…...he’s not your man. Instead she would just stare at her and hope that she might die on the spot, there in Dunkin Donuts while holding her medium regular extra fucking sweet.
Camera One: MS is a miserable thing, and this woman feels so alone, isolated even. Her children grown, her cheating husband long dead from a sudden heart attack. He lived long enough to get over all of his philandering ways, and just as he was becoming the husband she had always wanted, he dropped dead. So now she doesn’t remember his cheating and lying. She has forgotten his mean streak and sharp tongue that used to cut her to the quick at a moment's notice. She only remembers the love….”Oh, your Father and I were very much in love” she would say to her daughters. The younger one would always try to remind her... “Mom, he was a prick” she would say. But no, her mother wouldn't have it, she wouldn't hear it. They were in love, and he had been a wonderful man. So now she needs to get out of the bathroom, this sick and tired woman who is all alone in this big house. She is struggling to get out of the bathroom, knowing that in another few hours (if she can wait that long) she will need to get into this bathroom again. The doctor’s told her….drink lots of water, and she comes from that generation of people who believe every single thing that people in “authority” tell them. If the police, or the President, or the boss, or the doctor (or your cheating husband) says it, then it’s true. So she drinks copious amounts of water, maybe hoping it might cure her of this wasting disease she has acquired. This wasting  disease of the broken-hearted. And this makes the bathroom a place that she must visit often. And she’s sweating and tugging at her clothes, trying to get them back into place. The bathroom door is so narrow; she drags herself along with the walker; this life is hell for her. Sometimes she just wishes she would die in her sleep to end this misery; each day blurring into the next with the bathroom being her focus. Like a full time job; never a break from it; no time off. She makes it back to the living room drenched in sweat. Falling back into her chair, she drops into the restless sleep of exhaustion.
Camera Two: The younger woman continues to pace the kitchen. She sits at the table and spins the gun around in circles like playing spin the bottle, except she’s the only player and the only kiss coming her way is a bullet searing through her tortured brain. She picks the gun up and holds it to her temple. She’s suffering, her guts feel like exploding with this pain that has no relief. How could he do this to her? How will she ever get over this; he said he loved her; she believed it could never end. Soul mates. Forever. Together. She puts the gun down and rises from the table, walks into the bedroom. She sees the bed where they used to sleep spooned up against each other; where they used to make explosive love, melting into each other, disappearing into each other as though they were one person. Is he doing that with the girl with the huge tits now? Does he feel that way with her? Can she possibly bring him to that place, that spiritual oneness that they shared. Oh...My...God. The pain is  unbearable. Yes, she’s been hurt before, but never like this. He was supposed to be “the one”. She’s out of her mind with grief, the empty space where his love used to be growing larger and darker, about to consume her; swallow her whole. She goes back to the table, picks up the gun. Holds it to her temple, puts it into her mouth and wraps her lips around the barrel. She’s sobbing uncontrollably. Just pull the trigger; PULL IT! It will be so fast, she knows she won’t even feel it. BANG! Lights out; pain over.
Camera One: The woman wakes up from her short sleep; this short respite from the drudgery of her life of back and forth to the bathroom. The doctor’s won’t just give her a catheter and bag. She’d like one, but they want her up and about, walking as much as possible. They know that if they catheterized her she would sit in her chair and rot from lack of desire to live.. She doesn’t want to live without him. She doesn't know how to live without him. The night he died, and she returned from the funeral home, she said to her daughter, her youngest daughter…”well, now when he doesn’t come home, at least I’ll know where he is”. She said that. And her daughter told her “Mom, maybe God is giving you the chance for a whole new life”. She was only 51 then. Still young; still pretty. She could have started over, had a second chance. But she couldn’t do it; couldn’t live without him. “We were so in love, your Father and I” she would say. And this was true for her; the way she had chosen to remember it. And it would make her daughter sick, because she saw it, she was there for it, and she knew that it wasn't true. So now the woman is awake, and she has to go to the bathroom again. And she just wants to cry, because this is what her life has come to. And she thinks….”he would never have stayed with me like this; he would never have loved me like this”. And she begins the long journey to the bathroom, again, the long miserable struggle, for the third time today, and it is only just past noon. She thinks what she wouldn’t give for a pair of legs that work, and eyes that see clearly, and to walk without the help of a walker. She remembers when she could do that; when she was young, her body strong and healthy. What she wouldn’t give…..Please God, just let me die in my sleep, she thinks.
Camera Two: She can’t take another minute of this suffering; her world has fallen apart. What's the point in living? She picks up the gun again, opens the chamber to make sure the bullets are there. No turning back. She can pull the trigger and be done. No chance for this to happen to her ever again. No more pain and suffering. She puts the gun against her temple, she puts it back on the table. She crawls onto the kitchen floor and sobs, rolling around, writhing in this heartbreak; sick of herself, sick of the pain, sick of it all. She gets up and grabs the phone. Someone…. someone has to help her, make this pain stop, someone has to answer the phone. She calls a friend; no answer. Fuck! She calls her Sister; no answer. It’s meant to be that she dies today; no one is out there to help her. HELP ME she screams inside her head. She gets off the floor and returns to the table, picks up the gun.. she puts it in her mouth again; one shot, take out the brainstem. Done. Over. Her finger squeezes the trigger just a little. Her hand is trembling. She puts the gun down; picks it up again. Into her mouth, another squeeze on the trigger. She's scared; FUCK! SOMEONE HAS TO HELP ME; PLEASE FUCKING HELP ME! She puts the gun down and grabs the phone, tears running down her face; snot running out of her nose. She doesn’t care anymore; who fucking cares???? She dials her Mother; her Mother answers the phone. She cries into the phone “Mom, please, please help me….I’ve got a loaded gun, Mom, in my mouth...she’s blathering, barely making sense….”a  loaded gun, Mom, I can’t take the pain, can’t take it anymore, please”......
Her Mother’s voice breaks through her tears, interrupts her begging and crying and says simply to her, to this young woman who is putting a gun to her head, sticking a gun in her mouth, her Mother, her poor, sick, sweet Mother says….”Can you please call me back, I’m in the bathroom”.
The woman looks at the phone, her crying stops. She suddenly feels calm. She hesitates, thinks for a minute, then says…”sure Mom, I’ll call you back”. She puts the phone down on the table. She stares at the gun; she looks back at the phone. She gets up from the table, taking the gun with her. She calmly walks into the bedroom and puts the gun back in the case under the chair. She stands silent in the middle of the room. She thinks she’ll just take a shower now, get dressed, and get on with her day.
Camera One: A Mother, miserable and suffering in the tiny bathroom, all alone in her old house, just trying to get through another miserable day, and as she pulls herself up from the toilet once again, sweating and struggling; she doesn’t even know, that in her struggle, in her misery, she has just saved her daughter’s life.
pixelskylines
snowghoul
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
titsay