Emetophobia

I sat useless across the room in a wooden desk chair, folding and unfolding my hands in my lap and breathing through my mouth for fear of smelling things that didn’t yet permeate the air.  You lay there in my line of vision sweating profusely under a floral hotel quilt.  I watched your hands, or really, the mounds they made under the blanket, seeing where they landed.  When they’d jerk toward your stomach, I’d stop breathing, bite my bottom lip and try to numb my sense of hearing without moving my stiffened hands.  You’d moan and I’d feel dizziness in a whole ocean’s worth of waves sweep over me. 

I tried to melt into the grain of the wood but the tighter my muscles clenched, the more aware I was that my body was still there in that hotel room, with you, right there on the edge of something awful.  I loved you back then, but the thought of touching your skin was the most repulsive thing I could have imagined.  Even now, I’m sick at the thought.

You assured me you wouldn’t be sick.  Come to bed, you said.  You’d drank too much, you’d be fine by morning.  I watched the lights of the New York City skyline twinkle and bounce.  I wanted to jump from the 8th story balcony, leaping over and clearing the flower boxes hanging on the iron.  It was that bad.

I sat in that chair for the whole night.  I watched your breathing even out, watched you toss left, turn right, making me break into a sweat myself.  I never shrank into the wood, I never moved an inch.

In the morning, you were fine, the way you said you’d be.  We waited for room service and you picked at wheat toast.  I asked for fresh sheets and slept, finally, while you smoked out on the balcony, flicking your ashes into the flower box and watching the city wake up.

[Emetophobia is something I live with every day.  Click here to learn more]