She loved bathing. It was not about being clean, but the chance of escaping the crowd and lifting her head towards the shower head as she let her tears run down unnoticed. She felt that as the water flowed down her face, it was washing all the hurt and pain within her that she cried out from her eyes. That was also why she liked rainy days, as she often thought that rain was the cleansing tool for all life’s worries and troubles.
But she soon realized that bathing did not help much, for when she leaved the shower, there would still be a heaviness in her heart. The tears could not take it away from her, and the water could not wash it away. What she felt like doing during those moments was to drown that heaviness. She felt that if she managed to drown it, she wouldn’t be carrying that burden with her everyday. But on those days, of which she attempts to drown her pain, she never had the ability to finish it. Just as she felt it all slowly slipping away, she would quickly pull herself up, gasping for air. She scolded herself for being a coward just as she would climb out of the bathtub. Yet silently, she wondered if she was really willing to let it all go.
She realized that in order for her pain to leave her, she had to take her life together, and she wasn’t just drowning her emotions but the very breath she had. Could she actually pull it off the next round?
The days in school were always a motivation for her to head to the bathroom. She was taunted, teased and bullied in school that she felt like she was living in a world where she was the only human, and everyone else were cold blooded dementors. There was never a happy moment, and even if there was, it was a moment the dementors would steal away from her. Honestly, she would have preferred being in Azkaban than in school. At least there, she could just let the dementors lay their icy lips on hers and do her a favor. Yes, the thought was very welcoming.
A few days after her 14th birthday, a girl named Olive Hornby, who never got teased for her ridiculous name, gathered a crowd of giggly girls and started teasing her. It was typical of Olive to do so, as it had became her daily routine for the past four years since they were acquainted. So, on that day, the taunting just had to happen.
“Four eyes!” Olive shouted at her, just as their period at Herbology ended.
Not even bothering to respond, she walked out of the classroom and was heading towards the dormitory. But her lack of response sent the group tailing after her.
“Hey, you deaf now? Pimples growing in your ears?” Olive continued.
“Gross,” she muttered to herself.
“That would be a new record for the oddest place to have a pimple,” Olive said out loud as her friends laughed.
“Leave me alone,” she shouted, and started picking up pace. But that didn’t stop Olive, as she kept following her.
“I can’t cause I need to tell you that your hair needs a wash. It’s all greasy and ewww,” Olive replied.
And with that, she had enough. She was about to turn and slap Olive on the face when a prefect walked up to her.
“Letter from your family. You have to see the headmaster after you read it,” the prefect said in a straight face, before walking off.
“Letter from your family? I bet they are disowning you for your ugliness. I guess they finally realized they took the wrong child home!” Olive said and stopped a few feet behind her.
Ignoring Olive, she quickly opened the letter and read. Once she was done, a heaviness started sinking within her soul.
“So, who died? If it’s your mother, she probably feels guilty for creating such a horrible child like you and killed herself,” Olive added, mercilessly.
Immediately, she burst into tears. Crumpling the letter in her hand, she ran. She ran till she reached the girls bathroom on the second floor, where she made her way to a cubicle at the far corner and locked herself in.
No, her mother did not die; she wouldn’t care if her mother did. But it was aunt; the only person in her family who actually cared about her, drowned. It was her aunt who never forgot her birthdays; her aunt who always wrote to her, and her aunt who was there to remind her that life was worth living. As her sobs got harder to control, all she wanted to do was take a bath, but she couldn’t. The pain was like a searing rod, burning the only good thing she had in life, and at that brief moment, she just wanted to die.
It was in that same moment, she remembered what her aunt told her, “Life may be a pain, but despite it, there’s so much more to gain.” Immediately, she remembered how her aunt lived her life, and even though she was a nobody, she probably lived it to the fullest. It was then that she decided she did not want to die, as she wanted to live on for her aunt.
And just as she made up her mind, she heard someone coming into the bathroom. Angry at the intrusion of her privacy, she decided to give that person a piece of her mind, but when she opened the cubicle door, all she saw was a pair of big, round, yellow eyes.
Jeyna Grace 