Who am I today?

My eyelids fluttered open. Where did all the colors
go? The only variance to the white room was my metal bed frame, painted silver
like its nonexistent springs. As I moved, the mattress made a plastic rustling sound, and I knew I missed the
squeaky
bed springs already. This is what happens when you make a choice, or try to. It changes your destiny.
It leaves you to sleep on an oversized KinderMat, instead of a normal bed, because you might find a way
to disassemble the bed springs and scratch yourself with them. I shivered through my standard-
issue white cotton pajamas. Who keeps the air
conditioning on when it’s already forty degrees? About the best thing in this place is the canned pears
They bring up with the slop they call a meal. But at least that is brown and green, and sometimes red –
the unidentifiable food brings colors
to the room. I’d do anything for colors. Except paint the walls brown.
That’s what Harriet does; she lives down the hall. I’m not quite sure how she does it, but I hear her room smells
worse than the animals Eddie (he’s from next door) used to catch on fire.
I walked to my closet – the cabinet where I keep my extra pajamas, anyway – and fiddled with the handle. What
happened to my little wire?
I know it’s in here somewhere… unless They took it. I looked at my wrists,
all wrapped in white bandage. Ugh, so much white! And they itched like crazy. I need my wire; I need to
scratch my itch but I don’t want to seem
like I’m trying to break the rules. They rules say not to scratch yourself until you bleed, but They don’t
understand; that’s not what I was doing. I was scratching myself to tears.
The blood just came first, that’s all. I toyed with the slender white string
that hung from my pajamas. I heard somewhere that silk was really strong – it held a guy to a rock, I think,
while some bird ate out his liver. I don’t care much for liver, but I wonder if cotton could be as strong as
silk? Maybe I could unravel my shirt and throw the string over the high
wall that (among other things) separates me from everything else. There’s so much white
here, I don’t know if there could be any anywhere else. Over the wall, I imagine, is a paradise
filled with colors!
And if not red, then certainly purples and greens and oranges and blues and yellows and pink.
It’s more than I can take, I can’t help but hug myself and giggle. Sometimes I forget to blink.
Like when they let me paint, and all I can see are colors. I feel compelled to cover the canvas, and erase that
awful white. Anything I can do to erase the white, I let it inspire
me. But they keep me in a room with white canvases and people in white jackets, and more people in white
cotton pajamas like mine… it’s enough to drive a person insane! While
I’m trying to ignore the blandness, my mind likes to wander away
to a place full of reds and pinks and oranges and blues, where I can scratch my itches until I cry without being
afraid to wake up to that white room every day.
I can almost see red through the white bandage now, because I keep moving my hands like a gymnast would –
loosening the joints, increasing the blood flow, stretching the tendons and muscles in hopes of the
perfect
backward double handspring-roundoff combination. If there is such a thing, anyway. I bet they can scratch their
itches, and people don’t put them in white rooms. I bet gymnasts can scratch their itches, and be called Perfection,
which is so unlike me in every way. I wander into the hallway. A food cart is left unattended, and immediately I
reach for the plastic dinnerware. Must. Scratch. Itch. I tear off the white bandage and am relieved.
There’s red… no more white. The serrated plastic knife scratches at the itch on my wrist
until the red runs over my skin. Eddie from next door screams, and I hear Harriet yelling about the newest
painting in her room. Nurses flock to us. A large woman begins to twist
the knife out of my hand. Another nurse pushes me into a chair and straps down my ankles and arms. But not
my wrists. Those she leaves free, flowing onto the floor, in preparation
to wrap them once again in that godforsaken white. The blood lands on the floor in spots, and I can’t wait to
paint again. I found my inspiration.