The vision

(Present day)

I can’t take my eyes off my cactus, which proudly standing in the bathroom lit by candlelight with tiny spikes. It’s decorated with dark red flowers, I gave it to myself. I found him in a small flower shop, on the outskirts of town.  As soon as we settled into our new home, I wanted a plant that would enliven the white, cold walls. I was expecting a big green plant, something like a tree with big leaves, but those big, white, cold walls are still naked.

I can’t say that I love flowers or appreciate when people give them to me. Yes, plants can hurt when someone gives you it for apologies than flowers become the symbol of pain. I know that pain, it’s more painful than injury from the body. Cactus injured by barely visible needles, the body is permeated by unrestrained pain, which is not easy to eliminate without removing all the causes of pain. This plant, it makes me smile, how it can harm, it should be proud and not envious of all the beloved gels.

 Although,  sometimes I’m so jealous… I want to make the pain and be viable to protect myself from it. These cactus spikes are thinner than a needle, probably smaller than the hair on my scalp, which covers its bark in army units. When everybody knows that you can make pain, nobody dares to touch you.

It is not a bad plant; it was certainly created in vain in this creation of the universe. Perhaps it is a plant of the agony, but it’s just reality, life is full of deception and anger. It feeds on it, I know it.

But cactus, I see It. I feel it. And I want it.

 He is the only one surviving, the only one so strong. He could not survive in the grace of the world, it is too boring for him, love rots him down, and too much concern of it hurts and weakens him. It does not need a source of life. It may exist even intact, but it cannot be forgotten either. After months of drought, and perhaps even years, the desert creature, endured all in heat, in its lonely, forgotten earth, having received some heavenly grace, then it blooms with all its might. It’s just a perfect plant, perfect for me.

Do you see that beauty? Do you feel its power? Not everyone can see the dark beauty of agony, only those who look very carefully… Is this beauty bad? 

It so good…”-mmmm” Hot water, I need it more. Outside is so cold. Just thought of it makes me shiver.

 Yes, I like it when every time I feel warm, I couldn’t live without the sun and heat also. Unfortunately, I do not live in any Las Vegas or Cyprus, but in a small continent of the Baltic States, Lithuania. Rain in winter, rain in autumn, rain in spring, rain in summer so it always rain, rain, rain...

One good thing is that I live near the sea. That’s the most beautiful thing there, especially when the wind blows and makes to raise the water like it could touch the sky. I like to come to the beach and think there alone, well all the time I think, just can’t stop, sometimes I draw here as well. It’s inspiring me because there is a dark beauty of nature and also calm here as well. My city calls Klaipeda. Little Country, windy city, but it is very cozy. There don’t live too many people as well as not too small of them.

 Unfortunately all the time I feel coldness, so my surviving is to stay in the sauna as long as I can, I just like to endure the heat. I enjoy hot food that burns my tongue, just like the hot sun that heals my body.

 The sun is my best cure for healing the skin which my body is covered by little scaly scales. Yep, I have disease. Psoriasis is not a deadly disease, but it is very stressful and I had to live with that since my childhood, there was no other way out and there was no way to come to terms because it is incurable. It is possible to inhibit skin-damaged cells with various medications, but soon the scales reappear, especially when I feel stress or anger. Mut my mother did all that she could in my childhood, she is the nurse so she was keeping at home me for most. She was too protected but still couldn't protect me from bulling. This is why I didn’t always like to expose my body. Even against my husband. So the sun and the heat is my medicine for my body and my soul.I couldn’t wait for the summer to come. It looks like this autumn never going to end.

-,, Uhhh just one more minute and I come out” I was talking with myself, as I would do some sin. Sometimes it seemed that my mother was still near despite we stopped talking when I  get out from home when I was eighteen years old the law let me do this, if I wouldn't be afraid that my mother will hire the lawyer, then I would run away quicker. She wasn't happy that I fell in love with an older person, well technically with my teacher, but I wasn't his student, so it does not involve, by the way I never liked when you have to move quickly I"m also bad with maps, and one time when I tried to learn how to shoot I almost killed my future husband, it was a disaster and now my cheeks are burning with that remembrance. But quickly I was brought to the reality than accidentally one needle of cactus get into my finger. Soon I licked it with my tongue and the pain stopped.

I could stay here all evening in my hot bath and analyze my small but extraordinary plant in my mind, touching small needles with my fingers, and swiping through the delicate blooms as if checking the power and damage of this plant while enjoying hot water and music ... Konoba- On Our Knees' song was going in my soul as well as in my ears. It was refreshment, after a long drought, my strained muscles all over my body finally relaxed.

A small wrinkled forehead threw off tiny wrinkles and my face became calm, thus reclining and immersing my body deeper under the water. I was looking at my long, soft legs, on which a few more scales were still visible; those little scales reminded me of my childish dreams.  As a little girl, I dreamed of becoming a mermaid, gaining the power to smell underwater and be a part of the sea.

I closed my eyes, inhaled the air, and dipped underwater as long as I could to hold the air. I tried to keep a calm mind. My thoughts kept flying about the depths of the ocean, its greatness, its free space, and its freedom to move freely, I saw myself in it so light and obedient. I drown deeper and deeper, leaving that beautiful light. The rays which glowed from the surface of the water and that sun bunnies were dancing on top of the water.   The rising darkness under me stroked my delicate body, which turned my legs into stone. It became so painful and my body was so heavy. I began to feel ice-cold water, only mine hand was able to stretch helplessly upwards as if I knew I had to rise up, if not I’m going to die.

But it felt so good not to resist and just to relax. It’s just for one moment to stop fighting and give up for the coming darkness. It’s a huge force pulling into the toil because it’s too hard to resist and my body is so tired, so heavy at the same time. I feel sleepy. The traction and depth of the water are so powerful and so terrifyingly beautiful. Looks like a perfect place to end everything. But soon I was imbued with panic, I could no longer hold the air, for a moment I thought I wouldn't be able to dig, but I couldn't open my eyes, I couldn’t come back to reality. It seemed to me that I was already with my open eyes. How I can open my open eyes? What the fuck?

I gathered all my strength and pushed back with my feet, which, as if a stone or ice had covered them. It twisted me. I tried to reach the surface with all mine might. Then closed my eyes and try them open again. My body was permeated with a huge fright;

I was here now, in my bathroom! I didn’t wait for any second in that damn fucking bath. There I was, breathing hard and began to cough some water of my lungs.

-“Whata fu… oh my gods, my fucking gods, what was that?” I got up in a sudden motion from the bath, but that damn cold was burning my skin. It was so cold that my teeth began to chatter.  I took the towel on my naked body and fell on my knees.

-“Shhit… I fee..ell asleep? So damn coooold…shit, shit,shit..”

 My plentiful deep scared breathing slowly subsided with each inhalation; slowly I put mine one leg back in the warm water to warm it up. But now it burned. The temperature and my body were too different. How it’s impossible to get so cold…it’s nonsense.. Slowly my second leg felt hot water too. I was in shock.

"It was so real," I whispered for myself than shake my head. And my hand covered my face, with disbelief…

‘Just don’t get asleep, just don’t close your eyes, I repeated for myself in my mind, several times.

- “Yes, I totally went crazy, what a hell… After that stupid show, I will sleep for three days, this is just stress, and the mind can rule the body, it’s just fucking stress”.

(In deeply sighing)”Okay, enough swimming for today, before I drowned in my own bath…What the hell Maia, take yourself together. Jesus…”

I took coconut-scented body butter from a small cupboard and smeared my body with it. I have big hips but small boobs, which were hidden by my long, dark, hairs; water was still dripping off them. I looked at the mirror and I never was happy what I saw in it. Too big blue eyes, too-wide nose, too big mouth, too big ass, and finally the funniest were my little, little tits. For me everything was disproportionate. Also, I was short and skinny; some kids were bullying me because of that and of my pale face, and of my scaly scales. But when I was fifteen boys began to see me, and girls began to bully me more…then these boys were afraid to speak with me, they afraid that I’m not one of those cool girls and I will turn those boys to a bully’s victim as I was. Well for real I event didn't like those boys but wanted to be seen by them. My mother would say know that in my soul lives the devil. I sigh with remembering my mother again, it was a heavy sigh and my heavy childhood, sometimes I wonder what would say my father if he would be angry as my mother, maybe he left because knew what person she really is. Well, she is not bad but she is bossy and whatever...I just don't want to remember...Hmmm, it's interesting how she lives now, despite the fact that almost one year ago she hit in my face when I was in the coffee-shop.

Soon I heard as my bathroom doors opened. I couldn’t see from the mirror who was it, because it became misty from the hot water, but I knew who was behind me.