Desperate for faith

Annie's been having a lot of problems lately, and after nearly passing out in the shower she contemplates why.

Annie got into the shower too quickly to notice how unbearably dizzy she felt. The water was hot and pounded against her skin. Her eyes locked onto the wall in front of her; her hand pressed against it for balance. “What's the point of that?” she wondered, staring at her hand. She slowly turned and faced the water, it beat down on her face and her chest. Unsteadily, Annie sunk down onto the floor of the tub. She sat with her knees drawn up close to her, her neck extended slightly so that the full pressure of the water fell upon her face. Her hands were on her knees, and for a moment she broke her gaze with the relentless stream of water to stare at them. She looked as though they were not her hands. Not as if they were someone else's, just as if they weren't hands. She stared at them as one would stare at a half-empty shampoo bottle in the shower; without much interest, merely accepting it as part of the scenery. These were not the instruments of her own pain, these were not what she used to grasp onto reality with, they were simply something that was there. They no longer held immense meaning to her. She stared at them for a long time, mind completely blank. Very slowly, she moved her hands and lowered her head onto her knees. Her arms encircled her waist and squeezed tightly. The water pounded against the top and back of her head, rivers of it falling down her back and into the nearly nonexistent space between her and the wall of the tub. After a few minutes of this her head shot up. Her eyes fixed on the ceiling. No, they were fixed beyond the ceiling. They moved back and forth as she searched through the cosmos above for something that could help her. Someone. She sat on the floor of her shower and searched for God, for meaning, and above all else, hope. She searched for twenty minutes, until the water grew cold enough to bring her back to this small apartment on Earth. She had yet again failed to find her God. Leaning forward with apparent difficulty, she turned the water off. But after this she made no motions for several minutes. Her head was tilted back, leaning against the wall. She had been crying the entire shower, although she had apparently not realized this while the water had been running. More likely, she had bigger things in mind than what her own body was doing.

She stood up, but knew she was still too dizzy to stay like that. Stepping out of the tub gingerly, she took the large towel hanging on a nearby rack and wrapped it around herself. She sat down on the bathroom floor, pressing her knees to her chest yet again.

Once, Jeanie had told her that she needed God to fix her problems. That her mind would never stop, her body would never act normally without his love. Annie had wanted to scream at her.

“You think I haven't looked? No one chooses to be faithless. We all want to think that there's something powerful out there who cares. We want that final judgment system. We want to know that if we're good, good things will happen. And if they don't in this life, he'll make up for it in the next. We need that, you know? I need that. But I've looked f*****g everywhere, Jeanie. Everywhere. I've spend days of my life staring up at the sky trying to find meaning, but I just can't find him. I just can't believe in him.”

But Annie didn't say that to Jeanie. Annie had nodded and remained silent at the time. Jeanie wouldn't understand, and it would just upset her. No use having two crying girls.

That same night there had been a storm. Annie used to be terrified of storms, but that night she wasn't afraid. She, in fact, wanted to go outside. She wanted to stand under the thick rain until it soaked her completely through. She wanted this big, heavy storm to baptize her. Maybe then, she would find God. At the very least, she felt, she would feel as if a million things had been washed away from her. As if she could finally breath again. But she knew that Jeanie would see her and think she was acting crazy. Fearing that, Annie had stayed inside. It was years and years ago, and she hadn't thought about that night until this one. Sitting on the bathroom floor, she wondered if that had been her one and only chance to truly find God.

The thought brought her out of her head and she was able to stand. She dried off with the towel and wrapped her hair with it. She slowly put on clothes �" sweatpants and a shirt to sleep in �" and looked into the mirror. She had been avoiding mirrors all day, she had a hard time bearing the sight of herself when she got like this. She looked now. Her eyes seemed dead to her. Her skin particularly pale and very shiny. She cocked her head to one side and stared into her own eyes. She stared until they could no longer focus and everything blurred. She shut her eyes and turned away from the mirror. She only opened them when she quickly opened the door and left the bathroom.  

Author's Note

I have a book I've been working on, and I'm not sure if this will be part of it. But the main character is the same so if she seems a little underdeveloped, that's why.