"ooh, traffic jam, got more cars than a beach got sand..." Dave Matthews Band, 'Too Much'

Too Much

Focus. I'm focusing on the shiny silver faucet as the scalding water builds up around me, as I bend my naked legs in towards my body, my thumbs pressing into the soles of my feet. "One, one, one," I repeat to myself, begging my eyes to see a single faucet. It's close - the images touch, dance around each other - but they never merge into one. Defeated, I sigh and release my feet, sinking backwards into the steaming liquid, feeling my hair snake along beside me. It's with terror that I recognize the strengthening of my other senses; it's with terror that I feel the heat from the water, smell the sharp scent of soap, hear my son outside, laughing gleefully as my father teasingly instructs him to "clean up all the dog shit" in the backyard. I can't ambulate through life seeing two of everything. I can't make sense of anything; it hurts to try to combine the images. I remember my stretch of double vision when I was a teenager and recall wanting to be blind, wanting to ignore the double sensation of sight, ignore the much too much of colors and retreat into a dark cavern of other, much more easily digestible inputs. Again and again and again I go over the possible reasons for the duplication of sights - dehydration? rapid weight loss? exhaustion? stress? the clogging of my shunt? Nothing makes sense, nothing has seemed to fix it. Thoughts of the future exhaust me; an eyepatch is unsightly and weakens the covered eye while shooting points of pain through the open one. I can't squint forever. I'd rather not tear one eye out like a halfhearted Oedipus. I turn my head in the darkened, far too large bathroom - I've turned on only two of the five million possible lights, allowing me enough light to see a foot or two in front of me, which isn't typically as duplicitous as the farther out areas - and try again to focus on one spot. This time, it's the handle of a vacuum cleaner, a large plastic circle a short way away. It slides together and I close my eyes, a grin spreading across my face. I need my eyes. I have articles to write, pieces to edit, emails to get out, movies to watch, communication to initiate. My writing vocabulary is so much larger than my spoken; I need those words, I can't give them up, I love language, I love what is concrete before me. As the water turns more tepid, I use my toe to release the drain, and I sit up, turned sideways in the bathtub, and focus on the double images in front of me. I can do this. I have to see. I have to see.