12 | Psychopomp Magazine
MOLLY GAUDRY
Wild Thing
I’ll never watch The Godfather because of that horse head in the bed. Were the sheets blue? I’ll never know.
I am simultaneously watching Prison Break, Friday Night Lights, and Frasier—this is what my evenings have come to.
The only thing I really care about now is the ocean, but if I get too close I’ll just swim in and not swim back.
Temptation—or what my life has come to.
I see a fallen bough this morning, on the way to the pool. It looks so lonely on the ground, so out of place. There is not an evergreen in sight.
Where did it come from?
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I think of DH Lawrence’s small dead bird not ever having felt sorry for itself. I think of GI Jane. Demi Moore’s one-armed push-ups.
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This morning there are too many swimmers in the water, so we have to share lanes. My partner is the old Korean woman in a blue bathing cap. We paired up once, and now we’re stuck with each other.
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I have only one goal in the water—to get high.
A specialist I met with soon after diagnosis told me there are three things I can do to help aid the recovery process: (1) sleep 10-14 hours a day; (2) eat 6 small meals a day, or every 2-3 hours; (3) get as much aerobic exercise a day as needed in order to achieve a runner’s high, the natural endorphins necessary to combat the depression and anxiety that accompany the acceptance of the death of the former self.
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Sometimes I imagine I’m in a flock of white horses. We are soaring into the pink sky and clouds and sun.
Then it’s over. I’m in the hot soup restaurant where the water glasses are always full. A salt shaker. Sriracha and Hoisin. Coffee with sweetened condensed milk.