In a Tub is another very short story by Amy Hempel, who continues to prove just how much she can compress into such a small narrative space. In just a few paragraphs, she captures the overwhelming, disorienting feeling of a sudden panic attack with unsettling accuracy. The story is made up mostly of somber observations and quiet reflections with the narrator grasping for some sense of stability. Anything that might ground her when her mind starts to spiral.
I don’t read the narrator as having suicidal ideations. Instead, submerging herself under the water feels more like a coping mechanism; a kind of improvised meditation, or emotional self-regulation when anxiety becomes too loud to manage any other way. There’s something deeply relatable about that impulse: the desire to mute the world, to slow your breathing, to find a brief pocket of control when your body feels like it’s betraying you.
That idea really crystallizes in the final line: “Then you take a deep breath, and slide your head under, and listen for the playfulness of your heart.” It suggests stillness, calm, and attentiveness to the body rather than fear of it. Not a cure, not a permanent solution. Just a momentary pause. A small, fragile release from the weight of the world, and sometimes that’s enough to get through the next minute.
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