#Libitina | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

sunlightontheseaa · 1 year ago

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Libitina

I wrote this in one day and haven't re read or edited it at all so it's probably a mess but. She's been consuming me I had to write her down

I didn’t focus on the girl in the hospital bed. I didn’t focus on anything, it was too difficult. Besides, there were too many other people surrounding her. I don’t know when I entered the room, or when I entered that nurse’s body, but I snapped to attention only when a doctor looked me dead in the eye and shouted at me to stop standing there and help.

It wasn’t the shout that did it, though, it was the way he looked at me. There was something uncanny in his eyes that told me he wasn’t looking at me. Or at least, that he didn’t know he was. I got the feeling of dread that something was very wrong.

I panicked and, in a moment of wanting to be anywhere else but there, I moved myself across the room and into a scalpel on the tool cart. I was in an operating room. I’d never been in an operating room before. I turned my focus to the nurse I just left, and watched as she blinked and shook herself back to life, her own self returning after I had taken over.

How had I taken her over?

After looking confused for only a moment, she joined the fray to help the girl. According to the monitor next to the bed, her heart was not beating, but the doctors valiantly performed chest compressions on her. Someone looked toward me and reached as if they’re going to grab something from the table, and I panicked, and moved again.

This time into a garbage can, but it was all wrong. I didn’t want to be a garbage can, why was I a garbage can? No one else in the room seemed to notice me jumping between objects, so I did it once more. This time, into the lighting fixture that shined straight down on the girl.

There wasn’t any blood, in fact, there weren’t any visible signs of trauma on her at all, but there were tubes hooked up to her and an army of doctors who were losing steam. They had been trying for a long time to get her back, to no avail. Finally someone said, “I don’t think we’re getting her back, she’s long gone.”

His voice was dejected. No one protested, they knew he was right. The room went quiet as they all looked somberly at the girl. Reverence, a quiet moment of mourning, one whispered, “She’s so young.”

I looked at her too, finally looked at her lying motionless below me. I wouldn’t recognize her face right away in this state, but a flash of purple hair sparked a memory. I knew who she was. I knew who I was.

The dead girl in the hospital bed was me.

The quiet was finally broken when someone said, “Time of death, 2:32pm. January 14th.”

Hearing that made me panic one last time. If they pronounced me dead, then…

I knew what I had to do, and it took me no effort to do it. My body offered no resistance as I re entered it.

An instant later I felt a terrible weight in my body, and I went to instinctively take a breath, but it backfired, and I ended up fiercely choking.I coughed and vomited up an unholy amount of liquid as someone said, “Oh my god!” and they all rushed to aid me. I finally opened my eyes, my point of view now reversed to look directly up at the light I inhabited a moment ago as I finally breathed. It took an awful lot of effort to force my lungs to open and close, and I felt the worst I had ever felt in my life. It seemed as though I was aware of every single vein in my body as they reopened, blood beginning to flow where it hadn’t been for too long. The mood in the room lifted in an instant as everyone cheered. I felt paralyzed.

I looked up at the light overhead as doctors and nurses took measurements and tested my vitals in disbelief. One tried to get my attention, to talk to me, but I looked straight past him to someone else. The nurse. I knew who she was, I had been in her body only a minute ago. Did she know who I was? Did she know what I had inadvertently done to her? If she did, her face didn’t reveal it.

Celebratory exclamations of “She’s alive!” and “Oh my god, it’s a miracle,” permeated the room. They said I’m alive and they said it very confidently. But even then, I wasn’t sure they were right.

That was when it all started.

When they’ve confirmed that it’s really true, that I’m going to be alright, I’m moved to a regular hospital room. The not-scary kind. The kind where you go to visit a family member who just had surgery or gave birth. Two people come in and try to talk to me. The doctor asks how I’m feeling, says I was underwater for so long, am I hungry or thirsty. I don’t answer, I don’t even really look at him. He waves a hand in my face, testing whether I’m there at all, I suppose. “Do you understand what I’m saying?” At this I nod, but I still don’t say anything. “Alright, good,” he says with a smile. “Can you tell me your name?”

I keep looking at him, but I don’t respond. I’m not sure I remember how to use my voice. It seems like such a great effort

“Alright,” he says, getting up and speaking to the nurse who entered with him, “She’s a little bit responsive. We’ll need to order a full scan to determine the exact extent of brain damage.” They begin to exit the room, and I hear him murmur, “Could be significant, it’s a miracle she’s conscious at all…”

“Libitina,” I whisper, but they don’t hear me.

The time becomes a blur of doctors and nurses. Some of them talk to me, tell me what kind of test it is they’re doing. They ask me what happened, and I don’t answer. Every one of them seems incredulous. None of it makes sense, the numbers don’t add up. By all accounts I should be dead. But I’m not. They stop asking questions when they accept that I’m not going to answer, which suits me fine. Eventually it stops, and the next group of people to enter the room is my family.

My mother is all tears. She rushes over to my side and wraps her arms around me. I very limply put my arms around her as well. “Oh baby, what happened?” she asks, but I don’t answer. All I can think about is how my lungs feel like they don’t fit right in my body, and every breath is a conscious effort. I look right past her at my brothers, standing awkwardly on either side of my dad at the foot of the bed. They don’t know what to expect, they don’t know what to do, they’ve probably been told I have brain damage. I might have brain damage.

Leo, the 18-year-old, looks at me with wide eyes and a wavering expression, as if taking me in like he never thought he’d be able to again. Lucas, the 13-year-old, stands close to my father, as if waiting to be told what’s the right thing to do. When he notices me staring at him, he gives me a little smile. I try to smile back. I’m not sure whether it works or not. I’m not familiar enough with the muscles in my face to command them correctly. He looks at my hospital gown and says, “I think this is the first time you’ve ever worn white,” and my mother scolds him, “Lucas, not the time.” Which is a shame, cause it really was funny.

I’m given some food. I’m not really hungry, but once it’s in me I feel somewhat better physically. It’s the same nurse from the operating room who delivers it to me. When she looks at me, I don’t see any indication of what happened. What happened? Why did I become her?

My mom holds my hand and I don’t stop her, and every now and then she begins crying again. My brothers fight over what channel to put on the tv until my dad takes the remote and puts on Wheel of Fortune. I watch the colors spin and try to recall if I could always feel every one of my teeth at the same time.

I’m made to talk, alone, to a therapist. She doesn’t tell me she’s a therapist, but I understand the real meaning behind her questions: “Do you ever feel hopeless, or like a failure?” “Have you had low energy or appetite lately?” “Have you lost interest in things that used to be fun for you?” Finally, she asks me, very gently, if I did this on purpose. I tell her the truth, that I don’t know.

I also talk to a police officer, who asks if anyone else was involved, or if there’s anyone who might want to hurt me. I tell him the truth, that I don’t know.

I start figuring out how to talk again little by little, and no one seems to believe me at first when I say that I have no idea what happened. It’s true, I have no memory of today at all before I woke up here. I’m told I drowned, and I try to think back to last night. I don’t believe I had any plans to drown myself today, or where I might have gone to do it in the dead of winter, but I’m really not certain.

They put me on suicide watch anyway. It’s probably the right thing to do.

When I go home, it feels as though everyone is trying to make things as normal as possible. My mom makes my favorite meal. My dad and Leo talk about sports. I stay quiet and I can feel everyone’s eyes on me when I’m not looking.

I have a hard time falling asleep that night. I don’t feel very sleepy even though I know I should. I stay up thinking. I was supposed to die… why didn’t I die?

They said I had water in my lungs for no less than thirty minutes, that even if I survived my brain should have been so asphyxiated that I’d never wake up. I wonder if maybe it just didn’t take right away, and when I go to sleep now it will be for the last time.

My family attends church that weekend. My parents seem to feel a sudden religious zeal after what happened, and my mom wants to celebrate the miracle that saved my life before God. I zone out through most of it, but my mother weeps openly in thanks. He hides it well, but I notice a tear or two fall from Lucas’ eye as well.

My first day back at school is hell.

I enter my first period class a few minutes late, as I often do, but Mr. Salvatore doesn’t scold me and write me up as usual. Instead, he grins and says, “There she is, welcome back!”

A girl in the front row that I’ve never talked to hands me a card that reads: Libby, Get well soon!

It seems all my classmates have signed it. I’ve never once told anyone to call me Libby. I don’t like being called Libby. I stand frozen in place before the class, where a group of kids I would only ever call acquaintances look at me with at best mild supportiveness, at worst boredom, but mostly pity. I think maybe I will actually drown myself this time, or better yet, jump out the classroom window right now.

I don’t pay attention in algebra II, mostly because my hands are bothering me. There are too many bones in them, and none of them feel like they’re sitting quite right. The next day when I’m late again, Mr. Salvatore scolds me and writes me up.

I have sessions with a therapist my parents set me up with, and she asks a lot of questions about things I don’t really care to talk about. My home life is fine, school sucks, I don’t really have any friends. She tries to get me to open up about I don’t even know what, and one day I finally tell her about the one thing that’s bugging me most.

“While I was in the hospital…” I start slowly, “When they pronounced me dead, I was there, I was watching them. Like… from other parts of the room. Not from my own body.”

She nods. “That’s not uncommon,” she says, “To have an out of body experience while unconscious, for example while undergoing surgery.”

“No… no,” I say, “I know about that. It… wasn’t that. I was… in another person.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, not a hint of judgment.

“I mean…” I begin, struggling to find the words, struggling to let another person hear them, “There was a nurse, and I was her for a moment, until I left her, and then I was something else. And I did that until I went back into my body and… that’s when I woke up.”

She pauses a moment, considering this, “Yes, most people who experience out-of-body hallucinations in a hospital setting…”

I’m getting a little frustrated, and I don’t really know why. “No, no, it wasn’t a hallucination,” I say, “That’s the thing is… I was in her body. I was controlling her and I know that because… because I saw her react when I left her. Like she was confused, or dazed, when she came back to herself. And… and ever since then I… I feel like I’m not connected to my body anymore.”

“Can you elaborate on that feeling?”

I think about it a second, then everything I’ve been keeping in comes out. “Like… I’m just inhabiting my body, like it’s not actually me. And everything feels different since that day. I can’t sleep even though I know my body is tired. I don’t want to eat even though I know my body is hungry. I don’t feel tiredness or hunger the same way. I feel it like… like a notification on my phone that I can swipe away and ignore until they pile up and I get overwhelmed by all the basic things I’ve neglected to do. And I… I have to consciously remember to breathe and I feel each of my organs pulsing all the time. I can’t even keep track of it all! It feels like… like my skin doesn’t fit right over my bones and like… Like I’m an intruder in my own body.”

She takes a long time to respond, then asks if I think “adolescent bodily changes” might be the cause of that. I decide I won't tell anyone about these feelings again.

Eventually I tell her that yes, I do feel sad all the time. And yes, I hate that I don’t have any friends. And yes, I often wish I were dead. And yes, I sometimes think it would have been better if I had died that day the way I was supposed to.

I’m prescribed antidepressants. They don’t work, but I can’t tell anybody that the reason is because my physical brain isn’t the hub of my thoughts anymore.

One night while I lay awake, I think about that day again. The night is too bright to try and get my mind to turn off, and I’ve already taken stock of my bodily functions and made sure I’m not forgetting any that might be keeping me up. There’s nothing to do but lie here, and wait for sleep to come, and think.

I roll over onto my side and look at my face in the wall mirror. Looking at myself in third person, it reminds me of inhabiting that light fixture, looking down on my own dying self. I stare at my reflection for a long moment. I don’t understand anything anymore, but all of a sudden, I know what I have to do.

With nothing more than a thought, I shift my consciousness into the mirror.

It feels completely natural to leave my body, like I’d done it a hundred times, like it’s not where I’m supposed to be at all.

From the other side, within the mirror itself, I look back at my body. Not a reflection this time, the real thing. For a single moment, it feels vindicating. That this is real, that it wasn’t a hallucination, that there really is something strange going on with me and I’m not crazy. After a moment of looking at myself, though, I feel a sense of dread. There’s something wrong. I haven’t blinked, my mouth hangs open slightly, and… yes I’m certain that I’m not breathing. I panic, and return to my body. When I do so, I suck in air in a big dramatic gasp.

I sit up and feel around to make sure I’m real. I stand, and look at myself in the mirror again. I’m breathing, I’m in control again.

My heart is racing and in a moment of insane exhilaration, I do it again. I pick a random picture on the wall and shift my view to there.

The weird satisfaction I get from discovering this ability to see things from impossible angles is immediately soured by the sight of my body collapsing to the floor, my arm hitting the frame of my bed with a hard bang on the way down. I rush back into my body and take another big gasp, then feel the consuming pain from hitting my arm.

I lie still on the ground until the pain subsides, and try to breathe deeply as I take stock of what I know. I was underwater for far too long and drowned. I can leave my body, and when I do so, my body is left completely lifeless. One thing just became clear.

I didn’t almost die. I did die.

And a secondary realization: I’m a ghost that’s simply choosing to possess my own corpse.

I start crying uncontrollably, and as if to prove that I’m real, for the first time since I was a little kid I go into my parents’ room and ask if I can sleep with them the rest of the night. Through sobs I say that I had a nightmare, and my mother holds me tight until I finally fall asleep.

After that, I try to keep myself distracted. I stare at my homework, but only sometimes do it. I walk into town with Leo, who says, “God, it’s fucking cold out here.” I hadn’t noticed, but now that I think about it, yes my body is shivering quite badly. Spring comes and it takes me a long time to notice. My mind is entirely still stuck in the darkness of winter. I play a video game with Lucas because he needs a player two to give him a certain powerup. It’s a first-person-shooter, which I’m not much for, but I do my best for his sake until my character gets shot in the head and dies.

I freeze. My side of the screen goes black, and I can’t help but think about if I ever did take a bullet, or got terribly hurt in some other way. Would I die for real like most people? Or would I be left to drift forever as a ghost with no functional body to return to?

“You can respawn,” Lucas says, cutting through my thoughts and bringing me back to the room. For a moment I forget what he’s really talking about. I tell my brother that I don’t think I want to play this game anymore.

When I can’t help my curiosity, I go online and try to find as much information as I can about ghosts, about being undead, about anything and everything of the supernatural variety. I don’t quite know if what I have fits any description I can find. Searches of “project soul out of body at will” yield little results.

I spend most of my time alone with the one thing that really truly brings me joy, the only thing that gets my blood pumping and makes me feel alive.

The music of the most perfect, most talented band ever: My Radioactive Powers.

A million years ago there was this band called My Chemical Romance, but their music was lame and they were super untalented. Fortunately, four gods came to take their extremely mid music and turn it into something incredible.

Harry Road, the lead singer. If gender were a straight-line spectrum, he’d be at 100% male. The most masculine man to ever exist, with no effeminate qualities whatsoever.

His brother, Anthony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Road, the bassist. He’s pretty shy and is known for not really talking to people or making out with bassists from other bands at all.

Beam Taurus, drummer. He plays the drums.

And then there’s the final member. The love of my life, the hottest man to ever grace this planet, the guitarist: Euro Bolt.

And he’s nothing like that Frank Iero guy, no matter what anyone says. Euro has black hair (cute) while Frank has black hair (weird). Euro has muscles and tattoos (hot) while Frank has muscles and tattoos (gross). Euro plays the guitar like a god, and Frank plays the guitar, I guess. They’re not identical at all, the differences are clear.

Their covers of the original albums are probably the only reason I barely pass sophomore year. Whenever I feel depressed or full of dread, I know they’ll be right there in my headphones when I need them.

The flower petals fall from the trees as the days get hotter. One moment when my brothers dragged me out to the backyard, I watch the falling bits of pink instead of watching the boys throw a ball back and forth. It makes me wonder what it’d be like to be among them. In a moment of bravery I pull my knees up and sit back, closing my eyes as I shift myself into a petal in a way I’ve been too afraid to do for months.

It’s dizzying, the feeling of being carried by the gentle breeze. I turn over and over as I’m taken every which way, dancing with all my fellow petals until I finally land, impossibly softly on the ground.

I gasp as I return to myself. Neither of them noticed me leave, but when I’m back, Leo turns to me and says, “What, you fall asleep? Guess we’ll just have to be more interesting.” Then he pelts Lucas hard with the softball they’re throwing, which is met with an angry “Hey! Stop that!”

I occasionally test my ability on an object out of curiosity, and find that depending on what it is, I can have some level of control over it. I can “drive” a toy car or play sounds from an instrument. And the strangest experience of my life comes when I decide to possess someone’s small dog.

Being myself in the body of a different creature, with the ability to bark but not speak, seeing the world in the colors it sees, I get an overwhelming sense that this life has so much in it for me. And for the first time, I feel actively thankful that I didn’t die that day.

The summer comes and though previously I couldn’t stand the heat, I barely register it when I step outside in long sleeves and pants. My mother says I’ll get heat stroke that way, but on certain days where my body feels completely wrong, I’ve defaulted toward covering it up. As if wearing full-length pants will stop anyone from noticing the way my knees move when I walk, which I can’t stop fixating on lately.

Summer has always been an especially depressing time. School is awful, but at least I get to sit with certain other quiet girls at lunch and pretend I have friends. Summer comes and I’m suddenly reminded that I, in fact, do not, and the days blend together in a hazy soup of nothing but my own thoughts. I put on my headphones to drown it out.

A few weeks in, my parents call me down from my room and ask me to sit down. I get the sinking feeling that I’m in trouble, but they assure me I’m not, and I take a seat.

“Tina,” my mom begins, “We noticed you’ve been very quiet lately, and that you spend all your time by yourself.”

“More than… before,” my dad says.

“We hate seeing you sad, and we feel as though you would benefit from getting out more, and making some friends.”

I’m about to ask And how do you suggest I do that? But they don’t give me enough of a pause.

My dad says, “I know you’ve been having a really tough time. And we think some fresh air and activities with other kids your age would be good for you.”

I don’t say anything, waiting for the reveal. Finally, my mom smiles and says, “We signed you up for summer camp.”

A beat. “Uh. No thanks.”

“Not an option,” my dad says.

“I don’t like getting dirty,” I say. It’s always been true, but more so now that I can feel every grain of dirt that touches me like it’s crawling on my skin.

“Tough,” he says, “You can’t keep sitting around here all summer, you need to do something with your time.”

“It’ll be good for you, I promise,” my mom says, “You’ll meet some new people, maybe find something you like doing.”

“And this camp says they take a tailored approach to each kid and their ‘abilities.’ They say they specialize in ‘unlocking your full potential.’”

Oh great, so I’ll be surrounded by exceptional kids who will quickly realize I’m talentless.

After a long moment, I say, “Do I have to?” and it comes out a lot sadder and more pitiable than I meant it to.

“Yes,” my mom says gently, and then, “It’ll be great, I promise.”

#backstory for my character in our current ttrpg #The beginning stuff might be unrealistic but idc i didn't want to do any research on hospital procedure leave me alone #libitina #also it's superhero summer camp that's the whole shtick of the game #her parents don't even realize lol #tw: depression and suicide

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