"Fixing Starts With the Tap"



I want to share a piercing piece written by Timur Khamzin in my Creative Writing Club, which is a free project for people who share my passion for writing. Plain yet powerful, this story pierces my heart every time I read it. Enjoy!

✽✽✽

"Fixing Starts With the Tap"

“Today. I will fix that tap today,” was my first thought this morning. How many times did I ask him to do that? He’d ignore it, as he did with most things I asked him to do, but this tap - it’s a constant reminder of him now that he’s gone. I also need to play it safe and change the lock - he still has the key.

I could still see the bruise he gave me in the ceiling mirror above our bed. My bed. It’ll be a while till I like my reflection again, but the bruise has nothing to do with it. Why did I not finish it earlier? Why would I ever let anyone treat me like a doormat? I was lingering in the bed, slow to get out as has become my habit, looking blankly at my own reflection as if looking for an answer and knowing I won’t get it. But I need answers and there’s no one to turn to for them. How can I tell anyone if I am ashamed of my own reflection?

Then I remember it’s Saturday, the sole day we’d spend our mornings together. I’d spend weekdays at mom’s in the city because it’s closer to the uni, and Saturday was his only day off. I loved Saturday mornings. He would sleep in, prostrate and vulnerable, face to the side, mouth half-open, like a child caught up in surprise, his bare back displaying fresh scratches from the night. “I need to stop with the scratching,” I keep telling myself, except I never do. I guess, it’s my way of getting back at him, even though he doesn’t seem to mind.

There are scratches like that all over me inside: some fresh, some healed into scars, but nobody sees them, luckily - I can lick my wounds in private. Did I mind when he was inflicting them? I guess I did, but he never cared enough to try and stop. Stop with all the ignoring of my desires, the abuse and, worst of all, the cheating. It was the worst, because it was like a game for him, where he didn’t care to lose. He’d act guilty, knowing all the time I’d forgive him. And I’d hate and loathe myself for that and would know that all the rest of it was well deserved. Letting him cheat went straight to my heart. Letting him ill-treat me was like biting my nails to know that I’m still alive.

I blink away my reflection and the memories. I got him out of my bed, now it’s time to get myself out. Out of bed and flat and those walls of bad feelings about myself that I built to keep him in my life. I will have to learn to take care of myself now, and I’ll start with that tap. Because there is nothing more terrifying than the sound of dripping water in the kitchen when you wake up each morning and your first thought is for it to stop.

✽✽✽

Image credit: Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to tame your IELTS pie charts

Image
IELTS line graphs are easy to tame - you just go chronologically, so the description doesn't get out of hand. Information in pie charts, however, can be hard to organize because there are different directions you can go in. In this post, I want to share two IELTS pie chart answers I wrote for the same task. The task is from Cambridge IELTS 11 . The introduction and the overview are the same. As you read, pay attention to the organization and try to decide which description works better. ✼✼✼ Introduction  The pie charts compare the percentage of British students of one English university who knew foreign languages in 2000 and 2010. Main Body Version 1 The percentage of students in three groups grew. Speakers of Spanish formed the largest share in both years, rising by 5% from 30% to 35%. The increase was the same in the “Another language” and “Two other languages” groups. In 2010, the former amounted to 20%, while the latter comprised 15%, making up the second and third largest prop
Read more

Top 8 mistakes Russian learners of English actually make

Image
Due to the nature of my job, every once in a while I stumble upon an article about N most common mistakes that learners of English make. I look at them and go, “Who makes these mistakes? Russians certainly don’t.” (For example, Russians don’t confuse your and you’re .) In this post, I want to talk about 8 common mistakes Russian learners actually make. These mistakes persist on different levels, but are not usually addressed in EFL course books. The list is based on my personal teaching experience. The order is random. 1. I with I often ask students “What did you do at the weekend?” and what I hear is “ I with my friends went to the cinema. ” The right way to say something like this is “ My friends and I went to the cinema ,” or “ I went to the cinema with my friends .” In English, the word order is “subject+verb” and prepositional phrases can’t go in the middle. 2. How to say When students don’t know how to say something, they ask me or murmur to themselves “ How t
Read more

My Fulbright application or a teachable moment on essay writing

Image
I did it one day before the deadline. I submitted my Fulbright application on 30 May 2014. Now, 14 months later, I am going to the USA as a proud Fulbrighter! The program I am participating in is called Foreign Language Teaching Assistant or FLTA for short. As a participant of this program I will be teaching Russian and studying at an American university for an academic year. When my students heard the news, they asked, “What did it take to get this grant?” I replied, “Well, there were several stages. First, I had to write a lot of text. Then, I … .” And one student said, “I am curious to read what you wrote.” I suppose many are, so I am going to let you in on one of my application essays. One of the essays I wrote is called “Objectives and motivations.” What I wrote is too long to upload here (1274 words, no less!), so I am only going to share my introduction and conclusion . Oh, and I see a teachable moment here, which I just can’t help using. Introduction "Albe
Read more

C2 Proficiency. Writing Task 2. Review (of a film I haven’t seen).

Image
I keep writing like crazy because I am preparing for the C2 Proficiency test (fka CPE). In my previous post, I shared my Writing Part 2 article . In this post, I want to share a review I wrote about a movie I haven't seen and give some insights into handling an unfortunate task. Task A film magazine has invited readers to submit reviews of films which are set in the future, but deal with themes relevant to today’s world, such as our relationship with technology or environmental problems. You decide to submit a review briefly describing such a film and explaining why its themes are relevant today. You should also consider how important it is for films set in the future to say something about contemporary society.   ( Cambridge English Proficiency 2 , Test 2, Question 4). This is a really unfortunate task for me because I watch very few movies, maybe 3 a year. But as I read it, I imagined myself sitting in the exam room not wanting to fail, so I had to come up with somethin
Read more