This short story is about pasta, panic attacks and PTSD. I wrote this on a Wednesday evening in early January, after a panic attack. I wrote this story while waiting for someone I was seeing at the time.
I was glad he turned up late, it gave me time to get over my dread and it gave me time to put this in words.
It's a shame that this was the last time we had sex.
This is a true story if there ever was one.
And as Anne F. has messaged me that she is in the shower with me, I guess you can jump in it too.
TW: suicide.
Before you start, I suggest you read it with this song in the background (also in my writing playlist)
Waterfall-rain-shower
Ты совсем устало,
Бьешься тише, глуше…
Знаешь, я читала,
Что бессмертны души.
А. Ахматова 1911 г.
In the deluded mental state of those who believe they are having a heart attack due to the sodium levels in their pasta, I swear I could not see anymore. I swear. I didn’t make it up. I don’t lie. I ran 5k today. Who runs 5k and lies? I don’t lie. Who runs 5k and dies? It doesn’t matter, death comes for marathon runners, bodybuilders and mountain climbers. It’s the sodium that’s going to kill me. My pasta is killing me. I am the first case of an Italian killed by pasta. That’s what I get for not being an actual Italian. I get killed by its national treasure. I swear I don’t lie.
I can’t clean. I grab a cup of water. I lie down. It’s not only in my eyes. It’s in my neck. But my neck doesn’t sound like my heart. And my neck and my heart don’t sound like my pulse. Who will I trust and who is lying? Certainly not me. Me that is a neck and heart and a pulse. I drink. I freeze. I can’t make order inside. I make order outside. I scroll. But I can’t scroll if I can’t see. Tricking my brain is not the answer. Let’s feed it. Let’s feed it like I feed myself some super-processed trash. WebMD. If you are like me, you get off on guessing how you are going to die. I break rule n. 1.
I don’t want to eat sugar anymore. Sugar will kill me. Eat salt. Today is the first day in 23 years that I haven’t eaten one spec of sugar. Today I ran 5k. A few days ago, Maz Kennedy had mentioned high blood pressure. It will kill everyone but her, she has low blood pressure. And me, I ran 5k today and they say that cardio helps.
I can’t see anything. But the one thing I can see is my heart pulsing in my chest. I used to be scared of what I had under my skin. I don’t like that the reason I am living in this fucked up claustrophobic prison is due to mysterious fleshy concoctions hidden inside me. I wish I were made out of glass, so at least I would know why I’m here and whether it’s all okay. As far as I know, I could be made out of jellybeans.
Or maybe of nothing at all.
Rule number 1 is the most sacred, one false move and unsettledness morphs its face into sheer terror. I entrust my soul to the online doctors. It all checks out: I’m a palpitating, blurry-sighted, head-aching dead woman walking, or rather frozen in bed at 3 La Belle Place, B1, Glasgow, UK.
I slipped, and now I’m falling.
And now I am nothing and hanging on to the last seconds of my life. And the jellybeans inside me will splatter the walls. One last second. And my eardrums will burst. One more second. And my hands will go numb. A second longer. And my face will grow still. Just one more. I will shit myself.
Just. One. More. Second.
Dying takes time, almost as much as it takes to live. I am scared of being here. Not in 3, La Belle Place, B1, Glasgow, UK. It had been a long time since I had realised that space wasn’t just 3, La Belle Place, B1 or Glasgow or the UK. Ever since I caught my mom overdosing on the bathroom floor, I realised that life wasn’t a good place to be. And in just a few more seconds it will be the last place where I will ever be. I’m coming mom.
★★★
GOD-DAMN-IT, I was brain swindled. Right under my goddamn nose.
Possessed by a self-sabotaging self-destructive trickster of a brain. Me, who is a neck a heart a pulse. And a brain. I am a brain with a name. They call me Piper. Luckily Piper knows, cause Giulia taught her, that she has more power than her organs, no matter which one fails her first. Piper can’t cure an aneurysm, deep vein thrombosis or a seizure. What she can do is keep on living until it’s over.
Straight to the shower, Giulia instructed. The shower is the first act of non-surrender. Sensory distraction is the first solution of the tool kit, and I am one fine god-damn handyman with 3 hellish years under my belt of this pipe-bursting, roof-leaking mess of a body. I quickly massage the vagus nerve, relieve the pressure. Count my breaths in groups of four. Memorise the colours of my bathroom one by one. I’ve listened to Outro - Urban Remix by Okna Tsaha Zam for the 47th time. It’s been 47 minutes. 2820 seconds and I’m still leaking.
Who did I betray? Said Mavka.
Yourself. Said old Lisovik.
You came down the mountainside through tortuous pathways.
5 months prior at theatre training I had played Lisovik, an old mushroom man from Лесі Українки's play Song of the Forest. In the actual play, he wasn’t a mushroom, I made him become one. We had spent 5 days imagining what it was like to be a plant. So I chose a mushroom. And then I asked myself if, vice versa, there were men in this world who were mushrooms. I was ready to find out.
In my pasta-induced existential crisis, I am suddenly not alone anymore. My experimental mushroom man was with me. I remember that during those days of theatre training, I had gone to the woods and recited Lisovik’s monologue to Valentina. She played Outro - Urban Remix by Okna Tsaha Zam for me.
You came down the mountainside through tortuous pathways.
My shower started to become crowded. Valentina, the mushroom man and myself, naked and pasta delirious. But my shower was not in 3, La Belle Place, B1, Glasgow, UK anymore. I was in Colle Beato, Brescia. A town of far more experienced handymen, engulfed by the mountains. In the summer, Valentina and I had wandered up the mountain, discussing something in between the religion of Islam and the imminent climate crisis apocalypse. I found a portal, she said. On the top of the bushy hill, there was a clearing. At its highest point, there was a woven circular frame of tree branches. It stood at least 10 feet tall and almost as equally as wide, with a deep vacuous centre. There is no such thing as a perfect circle in the natural world. I could see through it, and if Valentina had walked by it, I could have seen her. She dared me to enter. And so I did.
What I didn’t realise at the moment was that I would bring my shower, the mushroom man and Valentina with me too.
I stand on the other side, naked and delirious in my shower in the woods.
I pull out the remaining tool of the toolset as my last resort. Body scan, I pray.
May Allah assist you. Valentina holds my hand.
I lie down. Heavy splashes from the spout hit me on the belly and the lighter droplets from the outer circle of the shower head reach my eyes.
It begins.
I start with my feet. Always start with your feet Francesca Contini says. If you don’t start with the earth as the source of your power, you’ll never be able to sing. I go to Francesca once every two years for theatre training, not that I want to become an actor. I just need to be reminded now and then to begin with my feet and to learn how to sing again.
I breathe in. It starts travelling and I do too. Body scans, says Giulia, are a method to call pleasure upon yourself. While in pain, you can always choose to recall pleasure. You’ve experienced it and you know where it lives, so I knock. One breath in. One breath out. A bit harder, with the handle. One breath in. One breath out. I use all my knuckles. One breath in. One breath out. Both of my fists on the wood. One breath in. One breath out. I’m bleeding. It answers.
Finally, from my feet with one deep sigh at a time, eyes closed and filled with water, splashes on my belly: it travels. Through my ankles and my shins, to my thighs through my hips. It takes a deep dive into my belly button. It pulls me back. It sways and keeps tingling me like a wet foggy morning dew. It mixes with the light droplets on my face.
I open my eyes, and I can finally see. And not just my heart beating this time. Outro - Urban Remix by Okna Tsaha Zam plays for the 174th time. In front of me is a waterfall. 10440 seconds. I don’t even need to open my eyes to know where I am. And it’s not 3, La Belle Place, B1, Glasgow, UK and it isn’t the handyman town of Colle Beato, Brescia.
It doesn’t matter where I travel to, the earth always carries me back, like a sleeping babe to a cradle, to Sentiero delle Vasche, Valmadrera, pool n. 3. That’s why you always begin with your feet. Pool 1 and Pool 2 are too crowded. Families from the nearby villages come to bathe their elderly, while children slip and slide down the rocks. I’ve been walking alongside the waterway of the Inferno stream, up the mountain of Saint Thomas, every summer for the past 20 years. This is where Catholic Communists train their young.
Mountains are the ideal place to educate a budding left-wing Christian: to think like Marx and act like Jesus, you must take the harder path.
I was blessed by having 2 sets of parents. I think the first time I came; it was an accident. I was delivered in an inhospitable environment for my species. The ocean and I never quite got along. My lungs weren’t expansive enough to brave through the strong waves of the Florida coast. Luckily, the second time around, it was Fabio, Giuliana and the pre-globalised alpine region of Lombardy, that found me just two doors down in my American household.
Each day the mountains made my legs stronger, my breath deeper. My eyes, nose, ears, and feet more attuned. I could now listen. I was kinder. I would not pick flowers if they didn’t want to be picked; I would learn the names of every valley and every peak, so if they ever called, I could answer; I would stop and read the prayers scattered along the mountain paths, to learn to grieve when the time was right.
Fabio was the first corpse I had ever seen.
Death for some is a relaxing thought. For Valentina, it’s 72 virgins on the doorstep to heaven. For Maz, it’s a puff of weed. For Fabio, it’s what eventually killed him.
Fabio wrote poetry and Fabio taught me that just looking at birds soar through the sky was enough to cry for. It was the thing to cry for. For the flowers and for the peaks, for Giuliana’s face and the sound of his classical guitar at my parent’s wedding. And for the taxes and for the traffic, for bad cavities and for the 2008 economic crisis. Each day is like your very first. He taught me to treat my life like a religion.
Eventually, it’s your devotion that kills you. The thought of one day being surgically removed from my own existence is what brings me here now, delusional, and afraid. It’s what brought Fabio to his grave. I would have to let my own self and all my family, my friends, my house, my dog, my leftover dinner, my leftover lovers disappear in the blink of an eye. Maybe someone hastily opened their car door while I was cycling, or I casually choked on a piece of bread while home alone; or I ate pasta with a sodium level too high for my body to handle. I would be forced to say goodbye if I had the luxury to do so. Fabio didn’t have that luxury. He collapsed on the pavement on the 30th of November, with Giuliana just a few feet ahead. They had gone out walking, to calm himself down. He was scared of being alive. Losing the birds, and the peaks and Giuliana was far too much for his aortic valve to handle. He didn’t get the chance to say goodbye before closing his eyes forever.
Fabio would be proud of me. Not for my panic attack-induced state, my passively suicidal desires, or my fear of death. He would be proud of how I set out, armed with nothing but love for the brief scattered dream of our world.
The path that leads from Pool n2 to Pool n3 is slippery and steep. I have to hang on tight to get to the waterfall of Pool n3 and get relief from the heat. Not seeing Inferno stream ever again, or not knowing it even existed is why I’m running up the path through the mountain. I could die at any minute now. So I run faster over rocks and pebbles, passed trees, under bushes, under the sunlight of a seething July.
Devotion is cruel because it makes you blind.
At the waterfall, I turn around and I can see everything I’ve missed. I didn’t say hi to the families, nor greeted the trees. I stepped uncaringly over rocks and not for a second listened to the song of the breeze. Eventually, it’s your devotion that kills you. Renzo would have waited for me anyway.
We have been best friends for 12 years. He is standing eyes shut under the 17-foot mossy waterfall. His hair has grown so much since I saw him in Amsterdam 6 months ago.
Renzo left before anyone else did. Even before me. He used to live in the village bordering with mine and in the summertime, I would cycle down the hill to his house. His home was always filled with animals, vegetarian propaganda, and horses. His mother loved horses. There were horse-paintings, horse-cushions, horse-statuettes, horse-blankets, horse-teapots, horse-spoons. It’s been 23 years since she last was a horse handler. In the downstairs part of the house, there was a chaotically arranged garage with pieces of motorcycles scattered around the floor. Renzo enjoyed taking them apart and then building them back up again. That is until the day we tragically fell off his bike and slid on the blazing summer asphalt on a late July afternoon. I almost lost a nipple.
Renzo’s teachers used to call him unfocused, unruly, and immature. A lost cause of the Italian educational system. A future permanent resident of our desolate suburbia. The issue is that Renzo was too busy for school. In the afternoons he could be found driving fast up and down the highway that leads from Milan to the mountains. Whether by horse or by bike, my best friend was born to run free.
Renzo has always brought me where I needed to be. Even if it involved losing a nipple. He brought me to my first ever film casting, drove me to the Swiss Alps to cry over my teenage broken heart and he took me around the countryside to enforce breaks upon my long hours of study. He was always looking for quiet places.
Renzo was with me the day my mother overdosed on the bathroom floor. This was not a quiet place. Because of my screaming, this was the last day I ever sang a song.
He phoned the ambulance and took my mother to her bed. He sat quietly beside me. The day my mother overdosed was the first time I had ever seen fireflies. Renzo carried me to the car and drove me until there was nothing left to cry for. He drove up and down the highway, and up to the peaks. We parked the car at the site of the abandoned casino. The gardens surrounding the structure had morphed into an undisciplined forest. The day after my mother overdosed, I had a math test. I had hidden my mother’s condition from my friends, mostly because I believed her when she told me she wasn’t addicted. She was an addict and would continue to be for another 7 years. Her addiction disrupted my social life, my love life, and my will to live. But it didn’t interrupt my studies and Renzo knew how much I cared. Around the car from the forest came specs of flickering light. You’ll never be alone, he said. And indeed, I wasn’t. There were the peaks, the moon, the forest, the fireflies, and my best friend. He waited for me to fall asleep, lulled by the moon, the unruly forest and the fireflies flying around our quiet place. The day after I was sitting at my desk with Renzo waving goodbye from the school’s gate. Renzo was indeed too busy for school; his gaze went much farther than any desk could ever contain. Renzo taught me to look to for the fireflies and quiet places. To never settle for anything less than this. And what a blessing it has been to learn, by watching him run, by watching him be.
And if this is the last minute of my life, it’s okay. I’ll spend it with my best friend. We spent many days of each summer here, wandering around the countryside. So I’ll spend this one with him as well. As we always did and how we always will.
I can sink now. I can finally close my eyes and be at ease. For I am not alone. The mushroom man, Valentina, Fabio and Renzo can hold me, help me slowly slide in. For I never really was alone. I can die now, I’ll be able to because I spent the last second of my life busy being in love. And it’s all completely fine.
☁︎
This is how Piper cheated death.
I resurface exactly where I had left Renzo a few seconds before. We could go have pizza at mine, he says to me. I am quite hungry now, Okna Tsaha Zam is on its 376th round.
I take a few more plunges. You never know when you do something for the last time. Until you do, in between the waterfall’s intermitting splashes on my eyes, I see the mountain around me, the stream running past me and my best friend smiling. This was enough to live for. This is how you cheat death.
Jesus would be jealous. I don’t need no heavenly father, nor some celestial nepotism to do my dirty work. After all, life is the duty of the living, and I am too proud to take the easy way out. I already have my heavenly father looking over my shoulder. Fabio would hate this; he would never want to take the place of God. But it’s alright, he might have not made me into a Christian, but he turned life into my own religion.
Finally, after days of time-space travel around my head, I’m back. I can now feel the water of my shower press down on me, opening me up. My brain goes silent, and my body grows calm. All my dissonant pieces reassembled, in tune like an orchestra. My body the instruments, my heart the director. Giulia didn’t lie, I could recall pleasure, I know where it lives. In my body scan, I had reawakened the cellos, the basses, and the drums. I had visited every broken piece from my feet to my thumbs.
In my growing depth and calmness, I could feel myself open. The deep vacuous centre is not in the forest anymore. It’s 7 inches below my belly button. I can feel every curve of this tunnel that leads inside of me, slowly eroded by my waterfall-rain-shower. This is my portal. This is where pleasure lives.
I can feel myself growing deeper and deeper, moulding into winding caverns and caves. When the wind blows or the rainfall is heavy, caves can be heard moaning in the valleys and from the hills. I know you came because you heard my melody, even from forests far away. When a body’s melody is heard, the right ears will listen. And they will come.
You came on my birthday, the day of my biggest regret and deepest gratitude. Since I met you, it takes me longer to get up. I am more inclined to sleep and dream. I like that life matters a little less now. The world spinning, the climate collapsing, my heart beating, and my mortal existence passing me by, have been sweeter lately. What does your skin smell like?
The first time we had sex I found out how tall you actually were. Your feet would stick out from the edge of my bed. They had socks on. I found out that you could embrace me and with your hands crush me if you wanted to. Sometimes you did. I found out I wanted to be crushed, strangled and powerless. I already had you inside me. My orgasm was enough to strangle you.
I found out that sex is all about life and all about death. And since December I like that life has mattered just a bit more.
Now I lie in my shower and in just a few minutes you should be knocking on my door, thinking that this is where pleasure lives. So I grow deeper, more open. So make my body sing its song. Cause maybe, in a few seconds I might be gone forever.
Wide-legged and open-souled, I would submit. I would have you drown me. I would gently ease into the murky waters. I would let you smooth out my edges, file down my bones. Allow the water to dissolve me. So my canines couldn’t bite. I would allow myself to be taken, to get comfortable, at ease. Allow life into me, and all that comes with it. For you make dying so much easier. For it is submission to the flow of my own breath, that still allows me to be here, willingly.
I’d let you relax my tightly wound body, undue all my knots. I want to be pried open and unlocked. I want to know better who I am and all the shapes I can be.
I want to receive.
I want to see what my body can do to your mind. I want you to watch me weep and scream and kick my way through it. I want to fall asleep beside you, for you make dying so much harder.
So look at me, watch what you do to me,
what’s happening to me, inside of me.
See me clearly, undressed of all my daggers,
teeth filed down, surrendered.
Bear witness to my own disarming pleasure.
-Thank you
-Watch out darling, wrong food can make you have weird dreams.
I have been busy dreaming since the 26th of September 2020, the day I saw fireflies for the first time. At cafes and bars, I would sit inside my skin, under layers of myself, not really sure if I was ever there in the first place. I’ve missed out on friends’ love affairs, on my sister’s graduation, on my own daily and extraordinary successes.
I didn’t technically miss out on them. I was just busy dying.
⚝ ⚝
Giulia calls this dissociation. ⚝ ⚝
⚝ ⚝
——————————— ⚝ ⚝ ✩ ✩ ✩
⚝ ⚝
⚝ ⚝
⚝ ⚝
The day my mother overdosed my lifeline exploded like a comet, scattering shards of my consciousness all over the universe. This is how Piper achieved time-space travel at the age of 21. I would be able to leave my body while sitting comfortably at the dinner table. I would quietly slide out of myself, unnoticed.
I wasn’t travelling to quiet places. I was fighting my last battle with death while picking apart my meal in silence. I was on breathing machines in hospitals, splattered on the Milanese pavement, I was crushed by Putin’s missiles, I was choking on my pizza.
Dying is an easier place to be if every day is the 26th of September.
Or maybe it was just the food I was eating to give me bad dreams.
While dreaming, the borders of my existence would cave in on each other and memories would weave new patterns and materialise. I could see myself appearing in others and others in me. I was every dying soldier, every cancer patient, every scared child to come into this world. Dreaming made me kinder. Dissociation made me terrified.
This is my most painful curse and my most powerful tool:
There is no self separate from other.
I am a handyman, I am a mushroom man, I am a Catholic Communist, I am a devout lover. I am PTSD survivor, I am a friend, I am a writer and a runner. I am a dead woman living, I am a alive woman dying. But most of all I am a time traveler of my own mind.
I am every person I have ever loved.
But there is no more time for this. Maz has opened the door to our flat. I lift myself up and set my feet on the tiled floor of my bathroom in 3, La Belle Place, B1, Glasgow, UK. Maz Kennedy will kill me for not cleaning up. But I won’t die today. After all, I ran 5k.
10/01/24 - 06/02/24
Ps. Be kind to others. You never know what battles your flatmate might be facing in their bathroom, they might even be dueling with death.
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