But I was thinking about every horror I’d ever watched, and how the monster was always scarier when you didn’t know what it looked like. When you can’t see it, it could be anything. And anything is always scarier than something. Anything is incomprehensible, an infinite amount of horrors – and you can’t fight anything. But then the monster gets some gratuitous money shot, and it’s either a person in makeup or a puppet or bad CGI, and it becomes a tangible thing. An assailable thing. Abstract is scarier than physical. Unknown is scarier than known – not because of what it is, but because of all the things it could be.

So that’s what I was doing, I think. Making it known. Becoming acquainted with death. I pasted Dad’s face on to theirs, his face from the hospital room when he was still kicking, hooked up to God-knows-what levels of machinery, all pumping and pushing and beeping, but he got worse and worse and worse until the nurse said softly, ‘OK, I think he’s going now,’ and Mom held his hand and whispered in his ear because hearing is the last sense to go, and I left.

Didn’t watch. Didn’t want to watch. Didn’t want to know how his face would contort or how his lungs would beg for more breath or how Mom would wail when he flat-lined; hearing it muffled behind the door was enough for me, thanks!

So I had to see it now. I had to.

Saturday. Finally left my room, which was actually surprisingly clean. All my clothes, mostly consisting of Pleasant Hills-themed sweatshirts and skinny jeans, hung neatly in my wardrobe, since I hadn’t changed; the usual pile of empty plates from snacks that sat on my nightstand wasn’t there, since I hadn’t been eating; my bed was made, green checker-print duvet crisp and fluffy, since I hadn’t been sleeping. Though there was a decidedly human-shaped imprint in the beanbag that sat against the far wall (the walls being an almost neon fuchsia – a non-decision made by younger, stupider me), facing my TV and, by extension, my PlayStation. Leaving felt like exiting a bomb shelter into nuclear fallout.

Someone else stared back at me from the mirror. A puffy-eyed beast, face swollen beyond recognition. I – and I mean this in the most affectionate, self-loving way – didn’t think I had ever looked more disgusting than I did in that moment. Sadness isn’t some clean, porcelain thing; it’s raw, and ugly, but mainly, it smells. I hadn’t brushed my teeth in a week, let alone bathed, and I was even paler than normal, so sickly you could see the blue veins running down my neck, branching off like centipede legs. My own face unsettled me. Wasn’t me.