[ WP ] Your whole life you been afraid to go to the washroom with the shower curtain closed so you open it everyday . Today you open the curtain to find something you did n't expect .

There is just something about a closed curtain that frightens me. Fear of the unknown. You never knew just what was lurking on the other side. 
 
 My boyfriend and I live together in a small, one bedroom apartment on the seventh floor of one of the oldest buildings in our city. We'd only been dating a few months when my lease ran out on my old place. He'd been going month-to-month with a roommate from hell and we'd become so close that it only made sense for us to find a place together. 
 
 It was n't until then that he learned of my fear. At first he'd thought I was kidding. Then he'd thought it was cute. But after a few months of me constantly asking him to open the shower curtain in the bathroom for me, it started to lose its appeal. 
 
 We started fighting about it. He could n't understand why it was such a big deal to me, and I could n't understand why he always pulled it shut. He had to open the damn thing to get out of the shower, why could n't he just leave it that way? 
 
 When the curtain was closed and he was n't around to open it for me, I would pee the kitchen sink if I did n't have a bottle. If I had to do number two, it would happen in a plastic bag, which I would immediately take down to the dumpster. One day he came home while I was peeing in a bottle and I think he felt bad. 
 
 He never shut the curtain on purpose, he promised me. It was just a habit formed from having a neat-freak mom and a tattle-tale little sister who'd reported every infarction. It was n't something he even thought about when doing it. 
 
 But it was something I thought about. Going to friends' houses meant me holding my pee until I could use a public restroom or get home. I never understood why it scared me so, but the fear had always been there and so I'd learned to cope with it. 
 
 The fact that Dean could n't remember to leave the curtain open bothered me. I think it was what started the trouble in our relationship. Soon we fought constantly over the stupidest little things and he started going out more and more with friends. 
 
 One night we had the worst fight to date and he'd told me he could n't be with me anymore. He'd said I was pathetic and that he could hardly stand to look at me anymore. He felt like a parent, checking the closet and under the bed for a child's imaginary monster. 
 
 I was disgusting, he'd shouted. Pissing in bottles and shitting in bags like a lunatic. `` Who even *does* that?'' he'd shouted. I made him sick and when he got home from work he was packing his things and leaving. He'd stormed from the bedroom and gone to shower and get ready. 
 
 As the bedroom door slammed shut and I heard the shower turn on, I felt numb. I'd never opened myself up to anyone like I had Dean. He'd taken my biggest weakness and told me he hated me for it. 
 
 He'd left without saying anything to me. I called out of work and then stayed in bed. I cried for hours, agonizing over the loss of my first - and probably only - love. I must have fallen asleep because I do n't remember anything until it was dark outside. 
 
 I sat up in bed and from the little light provided by the streetlights outside I realized all of Dean's things were gone. The closet was devoid of all male clothing. Dresser drawers gaped open, empty. Even the autographed picture of Steven Tyler had been taken off the wall above the head of the bed. 
 
 How had he packed up all of his belongings without waking me? The idea of him coldly deleting himself from my life while I lay sleeping in the same room hurt. 
 
 I stood from the bed. I was freezing. Had Dean left the door open? I fought off a shiver and decided a hot bubble bath might help me. 
 
 I flipped the bathroom light switch on and stopped short as a shiver tore down my spine. A row of happy little cartoon dolphins leaping out of the ocean blocked my view of the bathtub. 
 
 Here it was. Dean's final `` fuck you'' in the form of a closed shower curtain. A sob escaped me as I fled into the hallway, heart pounding. 
 
 Even if he had n't understood me, Dean *knew* how frightening that was for me. How could he have been so cruel? And this time there was no hope of him coming home. 
 
 I started to dismiss the idea of a bath entirely but stopped myself. No. This was exactly what had driven the love of my life away from me. I would n't let the fear get the better of me this time. I was taking a bath. 
 
 With my mind made up I marched back into the bathroom, heart hammering in my chest, and searched my lavender bubblebath from underneath the cabinet. The scent had always calmed me and right now it seemed like I could even smell it from the closed bottle... wherever it was... 
 
 When my search came up empty, I did n't know what to think. Maybe I'd run out? Or had Dean decided to take that with him too? 
 
 Realizing it was possible that I'd simply left it in the shower the last time I'd taken a bath, I turned sharply and confronted the stupid dolphins. 
 
 Here it was. The moment of truth. I could do this, right? 
 
 With a shaking hand, I reached out and grasped the curtain in my fist. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I had several false-starts of tugging the thing open. 
 
 I decided to do it on three. 
 
 One. 
 
 Two. 
 
 As I counted three, I yanked the curtain so hard that the rod holding it came crashing down on top of me, knocking me to the floor. As I struggled to get free of the fabric and metal rod, my eyes came up to the tub and I froze. 
 
 What I was looking at did n't make any sense at all and I just sat there, blinking stupidly at the sight of myself in the bathtub. My skin was pale and my eyes stared ahead blindly. My mouth hung open, as though I was about to say something. 
 
 I clambered up to my feet in disbelief. My naked body soaked before me in water that had turned a cloudy rose-pink. My bare breasts were covered in a coat of rust colored dried blood that had come from the long, wide gash in my neck. My lavender bubblebath sat on the edge of the tub, next to my outstretched hand that gripped one of the knives from the kitchen. 
 
 I stumbled backward, a scream tearing from inside me even as I realized: All my life I'd been afraid of this moment.
