A boy, not more than two years old. Then, a woman. She is lifting the boy’s shirt off, and she tosses it to the ground. The ground, old rotting wood of a porch, darkens in color as the shirt lands with a splat. The boy’s arms stretch straight toward the sun, palms opening and closing like he is trying to hold onto the rays. Next, his shorts and underwear, already being pulled down by the weight of water, are removed at once, leaving the boy birthday naked, dripping. Strands of his gold blonde hair float across his scalp which is plastered with wet, darker strands. He blinks and blinks, flicking the droplets that slide from his forehead onto his fat cheeks into his mother’s hair. He never stops smiling. The woman — his mother, it’s clear — turns to grab a towel. When she faces the boy again, he is gone.

The boy is reversing down the porch steps, leaving dark brown footprints into the wood, giggling and giggling. His feet hit the grass, and he sprints. Sprinting and jumping and waving his arms through the sprinklers. His hair becoming a dark brown, his body becoming glossy in the sunlight. Laughing and laughing, he pauses and looks toward his mother who jumps to her feet and chases him. A playful scream forces its way out of his thick neck, and he pumps his chunky legs into the dirt as hard as he can, trying to keep his balance through the spray. Waddling through the crossfire, his soft arms unpredictably swat at the streams of water. 

To an observer, the spectacle of this deceptively speedy, naked boy distracts from the mother’s unwavering course. She meets the boy, and with a swift single move, he is lifted from the ground with one arm. 

The pure, untapped ecstasy of toddlerhood, concluded with the helpless dangling from a mother’s height. Innocence matched, skin against skin, water meeting water, breath against breath, flame igniting flame, one soaking mass dripping pools of brunette-stained proof along the porch wood: their hearts beat with each other’s blood. The mother lifts the panting boy to her eye level, squeezing underneath his blubbery arms.

She never stopped smiling.

____________

“It’s not a loop. It’s not. There’s been a sequence of episodes. Me now is like the final stop. Sure, I feel down often, but I call it ‘sorry acceptance’. My happiness threshold is just a bit higher than most. It’s just harder for me to get there. So I live in this ‘sorry acceptance’. But it’s okay, I’ve bared through the worst of it. I’m in no danger anymore. I’ve accepted who I am and where I am at. 

“I don’t need therapy. It’s useless. And the Cure is off limits for me. There’s no reality where I’ll take part in that. But therapy is useless. Five times I’ve tried, and I feel worse each time. I’ve learned nothing other than the most efficient way to scrape the feelings out of myself. The dreaded first session. Do you understand? I’m uncovering all the darkest corners of my life so far to someone who there is no guarantee I will ever talk to again. So I’m really laying myself out there for nothing, for no reason other than to affirm that I must accept these facts of my life. ‘Sorry acceptance’. And by therapist six the emotion has been exhausted. I can tell my story, but the heart is gone — again, ‘sorry acceptance’. I couldn’t convince anyone I actually had a problem, so I accepted that I don’t, and I now know how to live with it. 

“There will be low points, sure, but you have to understand this is how I was born. I am the eternal asker, I’ll get to know anyone, but no one needs to know about me. It’s fine. It isn’t a sad thought. My purpose is to uncover the beauty within others. It’s not sad because I’ve accepted this life. One out of a trillion, the insignificance of my life on the grand spectrum, I’ve accepted it. You don’t have to worry.

“And again — the Cure. It’s off limits. I just can’t. With all my power I will avoid it. It’s not that I am afraid. Honestly, I’m not really sure why. I can only feel how desperately I cannot take the Cure. It’s like I’ve spent all this time getting to the point I am now mentally. I’m at the equilibrium, sort of dangling underneath contentment, a bit into sadness. But this is how I had been created, and that’s okay. I’ve spent a decade understanding that. The Cure knows nothing about me. The risk is not worth tipping the scales. Then you have to worry. When the Cure messes with my brain and stacks the thoughts against me, then it’ll be over for real. 

“And I’m not denying my depression. Denial has made its way through my consciousness, and I’ve processed it and spit it out. I am depressed, sure, but I’m at a point where it doesn’t affect me as drastically as it has in the past. It’s there, and I can feel it in the back of my eyes after a long day at work, or at the dinner table when I can’t join a conversation, but you just have to accept it with me. It’s how I am. There’s no loop. We’ve done this before, but differently. Think of it like a sine wave, but with plateaued peaks. It’s taken work to get here, but I’m okay with that. And I can live the rest of my life like this, on one of those plateaus.

“You have to understand me. I love you, and you have made it worth it. Every thought of mine in the depths is pushed aside by the thought of you, so just know that. Everything I do is to keep you. All my efforts to tame my consciousness is to keep this life I have with you. But equally so, it’s to keep myself away from the Cure. Just understand and accept how I am.”

In the next thirty seconds of silence, the only sounds heard were the clicking of the hazard lights and the deafening blast of the A/C on high. Her hand in mine twitched before she sat straighter and breathed in deeply through her nose. We both stared into the residential intersection through the windshield. I watched the gnats fly in and out of the headlights, their patternless flight mimicking the twinkling stars.

She said, “Whatever you feel, or whatever you feel you are accepting, it doesn’t matter. I feel like the sole keeper of your sanity, and I can’t do it anymore. There’s no understanding anything. I am too tired, and I am too alone.”

In this moment, after so long, after so much effort to withstand the grasp of the Cure, I arrived nonetheless. She was desperate, for her own sake. No longer was it a question about me. She simply could not handle it anymore, and it took me this long to look past my selfish, sorry facade to see her face in her knees. I forced her to fight with me relentlessly. And now, her wounds have scarred over, and in this darkness, she pulled my fingertips across the stitched skin and told me she could fight on no longer. All reality caved onto me at once. My scaffold torn down by the shattering truth — her wounds, her calling, “Help me. Please, help me.”

____________

A boy. No, many. About an age where their arm and leg fat has been stretched thin along their lengthening bodies. They are in a pool, warmed enough by a morning’s worth of sunshine. The pool has a bubble letter T shape with uneven walls and two small islands filled with palms and ferns. The water washes up through the ramped pool entrance like a concrete shore. The water is filled with laughter and gossip and innocence. 

The boys have formed a line along the perimeter of one of the islands. Their hands move steadily like a linked chain as they perform a hanging march. They are silent, listening. One boy at the pool entrance has his eyes closed, and waits at the entrance grate. The water that reaches his feet spills into the reservoir with a gurgle. Between this boy and the chain, the water slaps against the bulged pool edge.

The boy at the entrance yells, “Go!” and the stampede commences. Some of the boys within the chain turn and kick off the wall in one movement. Some grab onto the legs of those ahead of them. Some climb the island edge, poked by the ferns as they rise up, then leap into the water and join the pod with their ungraceful strokes.

Midway toward the entrance, a few boys — recognizing their loss — drift off to the side of the pod and float there, watching the splashing feet nearing the finish line. Finally, when their hands and bellies scrape the concrete of the pool ramp, their hands reach in a frantic crawl toward the reservoir grate until their hands slap the studded plastic. 

Bickering ensues. Arguments blend together over who crossed first versus who touched first versus who pulled who versus an “I saw him!” from a rejoining drifter versus a “You couldn’t see!” counter. The arguing only halts when the standing boy, who was deliberating for some time, waves his finger in the air with an “I know!” 

Silence consumes the scene once again — a collective panting joining the usual pool noises. His finger continues to wave back and forth, slowing down in front of some boys who raise then drop their eyebrows with false hope. This finger — the most important thing in the world — dripping with power, withholding a sweet, sweet victory at the tip, ready to grant another boy the power himself in a pool that might as well be as mighty as the ocean.

Finally, he points at one boy who springs to his feet immediately and smiles over the rest of them — some now flopping backwards into the water like planks, some bickering, some shocked, but all equally revived with motivation to win next time.

One boy lay prone a couple feet away from the crowd. Softly bumping his belly against the ground. He has blonde hair stained brown by the water. It falls in front of a pair of goggles he has tight around his head. Behind them, blue eyes watch the scene unfold. He smiles to himself, lapping up the reactions of the boys, breaking down each and every bit of this memory like food into protein, building indifference to all else in the world until, feeding his innocence. Finally, he’s able to move himself through the bumping shoulders of the boys and join into the fuss. 

When reality settles in (the judge’s decision is unchanging), the boys drift back over to the island in conversation, while the victor remains as the next judge. The boys choose their starting spot around the island. The blonde boy wedges himself between the most contested point of the island, and once again, with everyone silent and keen to the victor’s voice, they are locked into the next round of the musical-chair water race.

Around and around the chain of boys move, bunching up at the most advantageous points, but pushed along by pelted whispers. Around and around they go as the judge relishes in his patience, causing the boys to seep through the water like it is butter. They are so focused, waiting for the callout to send them flying. Around and around the blonde boy crawls. The waves of the pool have settled into a sheet, wrinkled by the soft kicks of their elbows. The blonde boy has his eyes closed. The point at which his forearms and back break the surface tickle with every movement. Around and around he goes until a “Go!” sends his feet kicking and he uses his skinny arms to lift himself onto the island’s edge. 

At this moment, there is a feeling. A feeling connecting the sun, the water and the boy as senses collide, muscles fire, contracting, relaxing, guiding breath into lungs, the churn of survival like that of a newborn. The link between here and now. The thread of time looped through itself, pulled slowly apart. The boy bends his knees to dive. 

I flinch. My foot slides against the brick as if preparing to follow. The boy turns his head to the sound. His eyes meet mine. The thread of time is yanked tight, and the knot’s loop collapses, consuming the water, the sun, and the boy in an instant like how the morning breaks a dream.

____________

A home in darkness can wrap itself too tightly around me. The loneliness hits me like cobwebs, clinging to my face, my arms until I’m worn and slow, and I pull out the kitchen chair and sink my eyes deep into my palms. A chill washes over me. There are two invaders — savior and saboteur — slinging steel into steel, sending the harsh ring of regret through my palms, through my eyes. It is the perfect battle, a match for my undoing, reaching stalemate in a place as familiar as my home. How hopeless. 

I raise my head and watch the windows. Her car backs out of the driveway, and the kitchen is bathed in the white light of the headlights for a moment, until it slips away, and slips away she does.  I realize how badly I need her. How badly I love her. There is no pain like this one, the shame of causing so much distress to the most undeserved. The answer seems so clear — logic here is not the problem. It is a problem somewhere else, somewhere felt. The Cure lovingly opens itself to me, showing everything I want, but there is simply a denial, a refusal to step forward. 

In the discourse within my brain, my eyes refocus on the windows. The house’s air is so cold, so that the others within the house can feel safe and comfortable under the blankets’ weight. The efforts of the window panes are exposed – separating the elements from the occupants. It is impossible to see through them. The windows have frosted over completely as if those inside are locked behind a spell. The only way through the condensation are the paths left by the snails dragging themselves along the glass.  My eyes are drawn there. I try to find meaning from the strokes along the glass panes. I search for what they might be telling me, waiting for an answer. 

There is nothing, nothing but indecipherable accidents of nature, instinctual maps to nowhere.

What will it be? Do I fight? Do I follow the holes gnawed inside-out, following the paths along the windows until I am lost? Until it all caves in? 

But my cell phone buzzes with her message, and I remember the equal pull of refusing to give up.

Call me when you can.

It is then I decide to sink my teeth into the unknown and fight my way to her. The most uncomfortable feeling — this peeling myself away from all I’ve known in my life  — I must lower myself into it like a warm bath. And so I do, and I call.

____________

A boy. A much older man. A much older woman. The boy walks between the older couple, and they make sure to keep pace with the boy. He sporadically steps toward one table, but his eyes bounce to another, so he moves there, but another pulls his body even more — he is overwhelmed, so he looks up at the man (his grandpa, it seems), who widens his eyes with a smile and nods a few times. 

They’ve entered a massive convention center. Towering, steel ceiling covers the glossy white floor and spread across every few feet are massive tables with magnificent orchids leaning toward the passing crowds. Many of the displays have ribbons attached to the bases labeled with first through third place and honorary mentions.

The boy, still partly frozen, lightly squeezes his grandpa’s button-down sleeve. The grandpa, maybe familiar with this initial shock, says, “I know, right? We can start here.” And so they do. Slowly moving with the crowd’s gradient, the boy occasionally stops and points. 

“This is an exhibit section. They get awarded based on the entire display, not just the orchids,” the older woman — his grandma — says. The boy continues along, passing by waterfalls and moss and petals, soaking in the purples, whites, oranges, pinks, dangling from their craned stems. One flower seems to lean into the boy, and he reaches out to the fat, green leaves at the stem’s base. The exhibit’s attendant scares the boy with a light touch to his wrist. 

“Take your thumb, like this,” she says, gliding her skinny thumb along the gold petal, across the brown spots. The boy does the same. The petal is so delicate it sends a shiver through his arms, and all he can focus on is committing this moment to memory — the clinging fuzz of the flower, the buzz of the crowds around him, the meshed smell of plants between exhibits, and his grandparents guiding him along. It was a love of life in all forms. 

After about an hour, they had seen every exhibit, and the boy had eventually broken his silence with any question that popped into his head. Did you grow these? How long did it take? Are there any blue ones? What colors are impossible? Are these rare? Which ones can smell different? — flooded his grandparents. But they answered every one. The boy felt so sad to reach the end of the line of exhibits. If this hall had gone on infinitely, the boy would’ve looked at them all. He turned to his grandpa with concern.

“The exhibits aren’t even my favorite part,” he said with a smile. 

The boy whipped his head back to the last table and sprinted around the corner. “Individuals,” the boy mouthed, reading from the banner. Here, orchids were not involved in intricate displays, but rather awarded for their individual brilliance. Again, the boy was shocked, but he did not wait this time for his grandparents as he darted to the stretch of orchids.

Each table was labeled with a different category. The boy read the labels: “Rare and Unusual”, “Size”, “Color”, “Difficulty”, “Aesthetic Appeal”, each with dozens of the most gorgeous works of art nature made possible. 

As to extend his time here for as long as possible, the boy made a point to stop at each and every plant, and made sure to reach each and every description, often blurting questions to the plant owners if they were around. The boy’s grandparents did not mind. Their grandson and their flowers were equally worth it to them, and likewise, if this hall extended for forever, they would have reached the end, watching the boy’s expressions and listening to his curious conversation as they walked toward infinity.

Of course, and finally, they reached the last table. It faced perpendicular to the rest and was elevated above like a podium. “Best of Show”, the label read. On the lowest level sat an orchid with a single flower at the end of a stem that drooped lower than the dirt from which it sprouted. The flower’s petals were massive. They stretched like a monarch’s wings from its column and seemed just as delicate, too. A cautious glance from the boy caught the owner’s furrowed brow who watched the boy like prey, and with that, the boy took two steps back and approached the second plant. In contrast, this one was tiny, and if it hadn’t been for the previous two hours worth of inspection, the boy wouldn’t have appreciated the subtle magnificence of this flower. The four tight-knit pencil stems shot straight up to the sky, and the flowers rested at their tips like three pointed stars, reaching for their place by the moon. Deep purple streaks ran down the center of each petal from the column. It was almost moving — this tiny plant — how much nature dedicated to this tiny spot of the universe, to only be seen by the leaning eyes of inspectors, one person at a time. The boy would’ve been content calling this orchid his favorite, had it not been for the orchid that stood in the first place spot.

Thick, banana-shaped leaves knitted a bubble-like base who’s stringy roots embedded themselves into the dirt which was packed into an wood-log-layered octagon, about two feet in diameter. On top of this sturdy leaf base sat a mesh of identical, small, orange flowers which faded into a soft yellow at the center. There were hundreds scattered — no, assembled — into a half-globe like a hydrangea, except no two petals touched each other. The boy followed the gap between the flowers like a maze, too stunned to move or speak. 

His grandfather reached out and thumbed one of the leaves. The leaf was stiff, and shot back into position when he let go. He was smiling. The boy looked at him, and watched his thick fingers pick through some of the impurities in the dirt. The boy blinked a couple times, taken back to a moment in his past… A baby in the nook of his grandfather’s firm arm, the sliding glass door, the mesh encased patio, the damp morning air… The baby brought into a jungle of hanging orchids, nodding off to the sound of a voice describing each, banana-like fingers smoothing the baby’s hair back as mist softly lays itself down on each petal like snow…

The boy is brought back by a nudge. His grandma points to the label and says, “Take a look.”

And then I lean closer and closer and closer, until me and the boy read it in unison: “Thomas Beier.” Grandpa.

The boy leaps backward straight into my chest. He whips his head toward me. His mouth is open, blue eyes beating into mine. And it’s then I remember that the most beautiful things are temporary. An orchid stretched into existence from hands that spent months preparing for this moment. A moment of bloom. So easily lost, and so quickly gone, but still cultivated for the eyes of this boy and his grandpa and his grandma simply and only because it is beautiful.

This moment fades out, and I’m lost into a void where the only recognizable thing is Grandpa’s belly laugh beating inside of me.  

____________

“It’s…” I say, and then a long pause commences. My eyes rest on Dr. T’s hands neatly placed on his knee. He has no intention of breaking the silence himself.

“It’s like—” I say, “I don’t know. It’s like a pure repulsion from within me. I can’t explain it.” And another long pause begins. “It’s like I’ve tried all my life to avoid the Cure, and it’s been a waste, and so I feel so sad about that, like I’ve failed in my only mission. And now, at the end of it all, after all my life, I still arrived. By default, too. All my options have been exhausted, and now I’ve hurt everyone, and failed myself, and I must join the band of the needy. I’m just so sad about it, and mad at myself, that I couldn’t do it on my own. I’m forced to lie limp at the hands of that thing — the Cure — and have it shift me, shift my brain and mold me into a different being. I don’t know. I swore to myself, swore that I would never arrive here. And after all I had to say, all your assessment, I’m backed into a corner. I feel like there’s no other option. I’m not mad at you, just mad at myself. I can’t believe I still ended up here, facing you, so scared, just hoping you say something that makes it click in my brain, and I go home like ‘Oh! I get it!’ and everything’s fixed.

“I can’t stomach the thought of losing this depression. It’s just so backwards. It’s caused me pain throughout every moment in my life, yet I am digging my nails into it, doing as much as I can to keep it within me. I’m super uncomfortable just with this conversation alone. Losing it is so scary, I just want to walk out of this office, go home, take a nap to forget about what we’ve talked about and continue living how I was. It’s like… It’s just talking about it makes me feel so uneasy. Every sentence is getting me closer to the Cure. And everyone in my life is begging me to go and make this change, but I can’t convince myself it’s what I must do. I thought seeing you would be enough — and no, I feel like these sessions have been great — I’m just so far gone that these talks don’t get deep enough into my brain. 

“I’m just so frustrated ‘cause… ‘cause I just want to be able to go through with it, but there’s a stupid, resolute, ‘No!’ just there overpowering anything else. I—“. At this moment, I press my palm into my eye and begin pulling my hair onto my forehead. I try to grab onto the thoughts whipping through my head, but none are substantial enough. It’s like the ocean on a cloudy night. So dark, the sea is no different from the emptiness of the sky. The only proof of water are the sounds of the waves and the smell of the salt, but the horizon is lost into overwhelming blackness. It’s so obviously there, but it’s something I can only feel.

I decide to let the ever-pumping stream of thoughts speak for themselves. As they go, I allow my conscious mind to double back on them, trying to watch their moves then snap! Capture, analyze, release, repeat. It’s a tremendous effort, but I want it so bad. I want to understand so desperately, I do not realize I am crying, only the coolness against my cheeks. But eventually, against the tide, I catch a glimpse of a pattern.

“It’s grief.” I dwell on this for a moment. Walking through my feelings, I realize that they are congruent with the cycle of grief. Dr. T raises his eyebrows, and his head twitches in a subtle, yet concerned way. I continue: “I don’t want to lose this depression because I’m anticipating the crushing grief to come.”

This time I stare at Dr. T – an invisible, outstretched hand. My heart skips a beat when he intakes a breath, preparing to speak.

“What is it you are so afraid to lose?” says Dr. T.

“I contain at this very moment every bit of me that’s lived since I was born. After the Cure, I will lose that. I don’t know who I will be. The Cure is the sever between my entire existence before this point. And I’m so scared.” I begin to blink rapidly. “The person I am now is a product of all my experiences. And my relationships are built on this depression. Without it—“ I shrug “—will I lose all that love and support of everyone in my life? It’s all they know. It’s all I know.

“I’m super uncomfortable just with the fact we are talking about this. Like losing my depression is so scary that I want to run away from this session and forget about what we talked about to keep that part of me intact. It’s so unsettling. I just want to keep it. Why even risk it, you know? I don’t know…”

I unclench my jaw and press the sides of my neck with my thumb and middle finger. My breathing is shaky. “I think of… I think of a younger me. It was just so different, and I never worried and never thought of anything. I was so oblivious. It’s like it was the peak me. And now there is a chance I lose him. Just gone, and that mourning — what I’ve been trying to avoid all this time — crushes me. The Cure represents a wall between me and him. And again, he’s just the best part of me I feel I can’t bear to lose. But here I am, and every day I am closer and closer to the Cure, and I just know I will arrive nonetheless, and I can’t handle that.”

“What do you think he would say?” Dr. T asks.

“Who?” I say.

“You. Your younger self.”

Immediately I felt an answer, and I felt it with no doubt. Like a grain of sand, I felt so small, and so insignificant, yet deep feelings of sorriness and regret boiled within me, bubbling, then popping at the surface of my skin. I wanted to melt down. I was clenching my jaw so hard that it was difficult to speak. “He would be disappointed,” I say.

“Well,” Dr. T said, “I think you should find out.”

____________

It’s white. Completely white. Then there’s a boy. He’s up to his nose in jackets. He pants and pushes his breath toward a small, round bridge. There’s a hissing, and then others, bundled to their noses, gliding past the boy. He watches them thrust their poles into the ground and up over the incline of the bridge, reaping the coast on the way down.  

He blinks a couple times, then looks down (as much as he can given the collar tightened around his neck). Red skis extend from his feet, neatly indented into the snow. His thumbed mittens lie empty at his sides. He slows his breathing, taking a deep inhale into his nose which enters damp through wool. And then he’s off. 

He builds momentum. Flopping his skis in front of him wildly, his arms flailing in circles opposite his feet like a penguin. He leans forward, breath reaching the tips of his skis, until he feels the immediate incline of the bridge. His speed drops to a near zero, but he continues, each ski digging into the snow, inching him to the peak until, eventually, he’s there.

He straightens up when he feels the ski’s friction is enough to lock him in place. He feels the heat radiating from his beanied forehead. 

“You need some of these, buddy,” someone says with his pole hand extended towards the boy. The boy knows he looked silly in his duck-walk stupor up the bridge, but seeing the huge cabin in front of him, and watching his parents and uncle and grandfather waving him in, he didn’t care. Food was coming. Letting gravity take him, he leaned his head forward slightly, and he slipped down the bridge.

His grandfather unclicked the boy’s boots, and he wobbled toward the double doors. The warmth immediately wrapped itself around him, but it wasn’t until his mother unwrapped his scarf that the smell hit — a smokiness that brought a color to his cheeks to match his nose. Without a word, he walked through the next set of double doors, past the chuckles from his family.

The boy looked straight up at the ceilings towering so high above everyone. A set of three giant iron chandeliers hung along the length of the room. Country flags hung alongside them. Wooden tables with bench seats lined the length of the building like pews. With his head cocked back, the boy’s beanie was plucked from his head by his uncle, who gestured toward the beginning of the cafeteria line. The boy patted his blonde hair down, then took his spot in line. 

Studying the tables, it was packed with people bundled together sipping coffees and sodas and spooning soups and hot chocolates from steaming cups. He was worried he’d have to eat a bowl of soup. As they neared the kitchen, the boy’s mom placed a red tray along the track. On the tips of his toes, he pushed his tray, eyeing the stations and cooks serving thing after thing he didn’t want to eat. Then he heard a familiar sizzle. 

Smoke erupted from the surface of a flat top grill. Leaning over the railing, he craned his neck forward and caught a glimpse of red meat patties being pressed into the grill. He swallowed and continued to push his tray along, tapping it against his mother’s. 

In time, he found his mark directly in front of the cook. He met the cook’s eyes. The cook pointed at a burger with his spatula, slightly charred around the edges, sitting in a pool of juice. The boy nodded. 

“Cheese?”

The boy shook his head.

“Lettuce? Tomato?”

The boy shook his head again. 

The cook flipped the burger once over, then reached for a pair of pale, spiral buns. He rested them on a plate, then scraped the bottom of the burger off the flat top and served it to the boy. The most perfect burger, and the boy acknowledged this with a smile. His stomach, twisting into its own premature smile, pulled him towards the tables. Walking straight past the line of snow-flaked skiers clutching their own trays and past the condiments, the drinks, the registers until he reached the first open spot at the table warmed by the meshing of conversation around him. My eyes followed his mother who had left her tray behind, whispering sorries to the others in line as she went to accompany her son at the table. 

A knotting sensation creeped below me. I looked down and saw that I, too, had been served a plain burger, and with a similar resolve, I took my tray and headed toward the boy. 

His mother was pulling a pair of greasy mittens off his hands. It was evident the boy forgot to remove them when attempting his first bite. Right when the boy turned back toward the burger, I sat across from him. He did not look up at me. He lifted the burger to his mouth, and as did I, and we took a first bite — one bite a discovery, the other a memory — and then our eyes leveled. I knew and he knew, this meal would follow me closely against time-bloated doubt, against denial, and against every meal after.

It was then, with our eyes met, I was pulled into the log rafters as if stretched thin, deafened by the conversations floating upward like smoke. And I stretched and twisted through the ceiling and into the gray of the clouds until I couldn’t tell up from down, left from right. All I knew was the satisfaction of a full belly.

____________

Since the last meeting with Dr. T, the word grief clung to me like a knotted tie. I processed through my days, dreading the coolness of my pillow and the mornings following as I sunk past denial and into a thick sadness. I’m not sure I ate.

But in contrast to times before, these thoughts weren’t consumed by hopelessness. I missed the sun above the canopy. I could feel it on my skin in flashes, between leaps from shadow to shadow, casted by trees mightier than I. I searched for a new acceptance. Something to root me in the dirt. I want to feed on the heat, to grow high and mighty myself and intercept the sun’s rays and bask in them for the rest of my time…

The dawn made it through my windows once again. I blinked my sticky eyes, and I tried to figure out how many hours I had slept, if any. My tongue felt swollen. It felt lodged between the gaps of my teeth, and so I rose out of the covers and walked to the kitchen for water. I felt relief that the frost had yet to thaw from the windows.

I grabbed a glass from the cupboard, then pressed it into the switch on the fridge’s water dispenser. As the water poured, I stared out the window. I could see a man walking his dog along the sidewalk, and immediately, I felt jealous. I snapped at this thought and held it there, so that I could understand it properly. 

Jealousy. I sifted through the possibilities. His dog. His hair. His clothes. His motivation. His life. I knew what it was. I was simply jealous of his ease of life. His ability to walk his dog. To experience a morning without a crutch. To live a life without the Cure. My thinking expanded to others. Others living life without the Cure. Others experiencing depression and simply living on. Dealing with it. I thought of these people, and how I would no longer be a part of them. No longer relate to them. I would be among the cheaters. Unable to relate or help. Stuck in a faulty mind, artificially strung up out of my control. I—

A stinging coolness pulled me from my thoughts. The water had begun to overflow from the glass. I yanked it back, splashing some onto my feet. I stared down at the pool of water spreading in all directions, collecting the droplets that had scattered from the splash. 

I closed my eyes and brought myself back to the car and the headlights and her. Assumptions were consuming my relationships, and they were consuming me here. I continued to breathe until I felt calm enough to take a sip. I put the glass down, grabbed a rag, and began to wipe the water from the floor. 

I am not my assumptions. I am not.

And then I thought of something else.

I am the opposite.

And it was along the fragile ground of this statement I found my acceptance. The Cure would be administered in 12 hours. My assumptions. My loss. The grieving. And the opposite? The same me from now. Me, not less myself, but myself with less pain. 

As I stood straight, the sun bore its way into my eyes, wedged between the trails the snails left along the frost. It bore straight through my eyes, but I kept them there for longer than I should have and focused on the warmth.

The rest of my morning crept along like a shadow reaching against the sunset. And then the sunset itself approached me and let me know it was time. I made my way toward the metro — a short walk — which would land me a block away from Dr. T’s office. There were so many times in my life I wished to fall unconscious. To allow my vessel to continue its steps forward. To reach the other side where I would be rustled awake with a motherly tenderness and step into the skin I lifted away from and continue this life soul bound to body as if the in between didn’t exist. But when the train sucked wind from behind my ears, and the humming wheels slowed, and the doors slid open — I held so tightly to this moment as to keep every last drop of me savored, to remain woven in every path I had taken until now — and then I stepped into the train car, and sat against the window. 

The sun was so beautiful against the canal waters which snaked through the suburbs. I caught glimpses as the metro whipped past each ocean entrance. In this somber procession, I kept the thoughts about the sun and the thoughts about her as close as possible. Thank you, I thought, thank you for being.

I woke up with a startle. My heart was pounding, and I realized I was already standing. The metro doors slid open. “Downtown,” said the automated voice. Without time to catch my bearings, I stepped onto the raised platform. The hum of the metro pulling away made my legs twitch, and I let that feeling radiate through the rest of my body. I focused my vision on the street indicator until I could see it clearly, then made my way down the stairs and onto the sidewalk. I walked a block to the office.

I stood in front of the tall building for some time, and as if answering my hesitations, the door swung open as a group was exiting. I had no choice but to enter and ride the elevator to Dr. T’s office where I spent no longer than 30 seconds in the waiting room. His secretary called my name — rather, confirmed it was me — then guided me through the first set of doors. She brought me through another set of doors, down a long hallway, into a door-less room just before a third set of doors. I noticed this third set did not have a window. The door-less room was standard — cabinets, sink, stool, computer, exam table. The secretary instructed me to sit on the parchment that lined the table, and so I did. My legs dangled, and my heels clicked against the table’s support. I closed my eyes. Immediately, I felt the weight of my eyelids. A final escape — my breathing slowed and slowed and slowed…

“Okay,” said Dr. T, entering the room.

I opened my eyes. I don’t know how much time had passed, and I didn’t try to figure it out. The parchment had ripped underneath my fingers where I had been gripping. 

“Are you ready?” Dr. T continued.

I nodded slowly.

“Great. He’s going to get you set up.” He motioned to a new person who entered the room with a tray of stickers, gadgets, and string. He set the tray next to me.

“The Cure is magnificent,” Dr. T said. “Standard medicine — especially mental health medicine — is filled with happenstance. It’s a lot of guessing and testing. A lot of historical accidents. We don’t really know why some medicine works, but it worked for someone, and we remember that, and hope it works for someone else in the same situation.” 

The nurse placed a thick, white, circle sticker in the center of my forehead. 

“The Cure though — it’s magnificent.”

The nurse softly pulled my head down, and he placed another one of the stickers against the back of my neck.

“It makes itself work per individual. That’s why it’s so effective. No guesses.”

The nurse stuck a string against the forehead sticker then wrapped it along the side of my head until it stuck against the sticker on my neck. At a point in between on my cheek, a third sticker was stuck. He did the same measurements with the string and the stickers on the other side of my head, the sides of my neck, and my shoulders.

“It’ll read you quickly. Maybe show you something, maybe not, I don’t know. Again, it’s per individual. We haven’t been able to pinpoint one certain thing it does for the patients. What we do know is that it reads you through these nodes,” he Dr. T points to the stickers on the tray, “and it privately does its work within you. Whatever it does is between you and the Cure. You don’t have to tell anybody.”

A pressure built in my head. Until this point, there was a tiny feeling that maybe, the Cure would simply not be a solution for me, and I could continue living this life, the only life I knew. But that had fleeted. At this point, I let my mind go limp. I did not listen to the rest of Dr. T’s spiel. I only followed the silent instructions of the nurse as he now pressed a pointed tool into each sticker, reading a mini display on his side. After pressing the tool into each sticker, the nurse nodded to Dr. T and stepped away.

I zoned back in. “Ah! Last step,” Dr. T said, and he peeled the top layer of the stickers off, leaving some sort of residue on my skin. It felt like it had a distinctive pattern expanding from the center of each sticker. “Beautiful,” Dr. T said, pausing. “Alright, let’s get you to the Cure.”

I followed the nurse and him out of the exam room, and through the third set of doors. The room was pitch black. There were a couple of red LEDs around the center of the room, just bright enough to make out a leather, reclining chair. I couldn’t tell exactly how big the room was, but based on the echo of our footsteps, I could tell the ceiling was very tall. Both Dr. T and the nurse had grabbed a red-glowing baton. With them, they led me to the chair.

As I sat down and laid back against the leather, I wondered if I would be strapped down. I hadn’t noticed anything along the armrests. For what I could see and feel, it was just a comfortable chair. 

“There’s no risk of something going wrong,” Dr C. said, as if reading my thoughts. “Our prep doesn’t even need to be exact. The Cure will use the nodes as a starting point, and it’ll guide you from there.” He raised his red baton up to my face studying the points where the sticker residue was left. He looked into my eyes for a moment, smiled, then quickly turned to the nurse and nodded. 

The nurse reached behind the headrest, and then I heard a click. I looked in the direction of the two men, but I could only see the red batons far into the blackness of the room. They flicked off, and so did the lights around the chair, and then it was darkness. 

This darkness I could not handle. There was solitude. There was loneliness. And then there was this — a darkness unpalatable — so far into the unnatural, I was breathless. It was all-consuming. There was nowhere to go, nothing to find. In danger, I could only accept the gift of an impending feeling — something, anything to remind me of sense. But no. It was a perpetual drop. The brakes decoupled, a collapse at the apex, the weight of my stomach lifted — so uncomfortable, so unnatural — there wasn’t a scream to share, to pull me out of this void, to cross the threshold into flight. 

I was only darkness and in darkness alone.

I could not move any part of my body. I was too heavy. I couldn’t even blink. I tried and tried to move anything until I was out of breath. No, my breath was growing less and less possible. The force of gravity felt tenfold like I was stuck to a magnet and my lungs were sucked flat. My eyes slowly shut — from one darkness to another — and I could not open them. I was powerless. 

I gave myself up.

Immediately, a sequence of clicks sputtered from above. A soft hum descended upon me. 

And then I was gone. Someplace warm. Someplace heavy. Someplace ago. But someplace gone, indeed.

____________

A boy. And then a man. A familiar man. 

The boy looked seven years old. The man, he looked— well, I knew he was 24 years old. His familiarity faded. The less I focused on him, the more he left me. 

The boy. I knew the boy. He had blonde hair and blue eyes. His eyes were focused on something away from here. I wanted to say something to him, to get his attention, but I couldn’t. It wasn’t like he couldn’t hear me. Or that I phased through him. I simply did not exist. I had no means of performing any action, of saying any word. Like sight to the blind, there wasn’t a darkness or a changing of hues. I was simply not there.

I focused on the familiar man. He became clearer in my view. As I continued to stare, I could start to notice specific pieces of him that were familiar to me — the flatness of his nails, the tautness of the skin around his achilles — I was filling the gaps of my knowledge like water into a glove. I continued to focus on him. 

The creases of his belly, the bumps on his neck — the details became warmer and warmer until I could feel his arms, see the hairs standing up in patches. I felt a heaviness, an aching to move as one with the man. It was this feeling, this eagerness to join him, that I understood: the man was me. And at that moment, I blinked. 

Startled by my own eyelids — as if taking a punch to the cheek — I jerked my head to the side and took a step backwards. Then again, as I was shocked by suddenly having my own pair of legs, I fell to the ground onto my back. The sky was shifting so fast that it was a pure white. It was indecipherable to my brain, but soft enough that I was put at ease by the understanding that I did not have to understand it. I turned my head so that my cheek rested on the ground. The ground was the same milky white glow — I couldn’t fully process it, but I couldn’t mistake it for being anything except the ground. I knew it would hold me up.

“Are you okay?” a voice said from in front of me. I sat up quickly and leaned against my palms extended behind me. 

The boy!

He stood at the base of my feet. I could barely see his blonde hair from where I was sitting. He was moving at the speed of the world around me.

In the silence that grew between me and the boy, I could feel myself being dragged away. This version of me was so unstable, I could feel — down to the atoms — I was being peeled apart. This form was a miracle in entropy. If I did not keep myself here, the bonds soldering my body and soul would sever, scattering every tiny quantum piece of me into the edges of the shifting world around me. I’m not sure where I was, but I knew I had to maintain the balance set before me, follow the eye of the storm, maintain my center, and…the boy…talk to the boy in front of me. My soul connected to the cosmic parts of me here for a reason. So, I held them together and called out to the boy.

“Yes,” I said. The word fell out of my mouth as if by accident. I was not yet in full control.

“Okay, good,” the boy said. He spun on one foot and started in the opposite direction.

As soon as his foot hit the ground away from me, everything vibrated violently. It was like an instant migraine. I shut my eyes tight, trying to contain every fiber of my being from exploding. 

“Wait,” I said, barely audible. The boy turned around once more. 

“What?” he said.

“Wait,” I said again, unable to conjure any other words.

“Did you hit your head?” The question was asked with genuine concern. Each word out of his mouth eased the world around me. I wanted to keep him talking.

“No, no,” I said. The more I focused on him, the clearer his figure became. It seemed like he was somewhere else. 

“So what happened, then?” he asked, taking a couple steps toward me. His words soothed my rolling vision. With a couple breaths, I stabilized myself, and I got up to my feet. 

Looking down at him, I could tell he wasn’t a single boy. Or…it was a single boy, but a collection of many versions of this same boy at once, like all his memories were paper-mache’d into the being in front of me.

I tried my luck. “Where are we?” 

The boy looked confused. “We’re in—“ and the words that followed sounded like max-volume TV static…a million answers to one question at the same time, unintelligible to this single version of me. 

“Oh, okay,” I said. Although the boy’s being flittered a bit, he was stable enough where conversation felt more natural. “I think I fainted.”

“Oh, wow,” the boy said. “Do you need anything?”

“No, but thank you.” I paused for a bit too long. I panicked, trying to rack my brain for anything to continue the conversation. The boy broke the silence. 

“I know you.”

“What’s—“ As soon as the word left my mouth, I knew, too. I recognized his face, his hands — I recognized it all as someone I knew long ago. 

This was the younger version of myself.

What should have been confusion or excitement or nostalgia instead took the form of dread. The great fear of my adult life formed in front of me in this 3 foot form. Everything I had accepted losing, everything I wished to earn back, all my innocence personified — it all stood in front of me on two feet. I was facing judgment day. The final send-off. Exposed to what I wanted to be. To be so close, somewhere so temporary. I almost wanted to leave right then. To fall into the entropy sea. To be taken back to my sorry acceptance. To avoid his doomsday. To avoid the confirmation of my greatest fear. To avoid this boy’s disappointment in me. The who-I-am-now forever falling short of the who-I-want-to-be. It would be all over in an instant. And I had the chance to leave. But all the anticipation bottled within me kept deep by my self-sabotage. A perfect storm of curiosity and self-centeredness, closure and self-destructiveness — it kept me planted into the white ground. I held myself together, feeling bloated with emotion, awaiting the boy’s assessment. 

The boy’s eyes widened. His mouth stretched open into a shocked smile. He was at the same realization. Standing in front of him was the adult version of him, and he was forming a response. Staring into the folds of my mind. Collecting my memories, my experiences — never to match the expectations of the child’s, I knew, but I let him in. I couldn’t do anything else. 

In the half-second the boy’s mouth shifted into an inhale, ready to speak, I felt the urge to run up to him. To hold him close. To stand together speechless. To feel the wonder of being young — the simplest happiness — until the surging energy around us slowed and brought me back into reality.

But I did not do anything. I was too afraid to touch him. Too afraid of shattering him, as if he was made of ice. This bundle of feelings, so precious to me, I could not risk them being ripped away from me, sending me back to reality without knowing what he’d say. And so I let his voice float onto me like pollen in the wind…

“You have long hair?!” the boy said.

“What?” I said, not expecting the question.

“I didn’t think I’d get long hair, but it is awesome,” the boy said, patting the top of his short-cropped hair. I did the same, pulling back part of my hair behind my ear. I was still in a bit of a shock at his question. I wasn’t processing it in full. 

“Yeah…” is all I could say, still occupied by the boy’s assessment.

After merging with all my memories, witnessing all my decisions, his only concern was my hair. 

“How tall are you?” the boy asked.

“Six feet.”

“Woah. Do you know Momma?”

It was by answering this question I realized how foolish I was. The weight of my whole world put on the shoulders of a boy who’s priorities did break the surface of my skin. I was so mistaken. The younger version of me was just happy to know I knew Momma!

A relief settled over my body with each question the boy asked. We eventually sat on the white ground, dissecting my adult experiences. The boy continued to ask random questions, whatever flooded into his mind first, without any sign of slowing down. I started to understand that any answer I gave was met with awe. The boy was impossible to disappoint. It doesn’t matter what answers I gave. He was so excited that I was simply able to answer, that an answer even exists. 

Eventually, the boy started to lose steam. I could tell he was growing tired. There were much longer pauses between questions, and some conversations started to last minutes rather than being interrupted seconds later by another question. I could feel my own mental exhaustion settling in. If I lost focus, the boy would flicker. I’d lose recognition of one piece of him and have to concentrate to find it again. I grew a bit sad knowing we would be separated shortly, and I would be left alone once again, but ultimately I felt thankful, for the kindness and the innocence of the boy, and for his sharing those pieces with me again.

I interrupted the boy’s next question.

“I am going to miss you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I’m just going to miss you.”

The boy cocked his head and said, “Oh. I guess maybe I don’t understand why.”

I tried to offer the boy any explanation of what we were experiencing. “We were sent here by some sort of machine. It’s called the Cure. I didn’t tell you, but I am pretty sick right now, and the Cure is supposed to help me.”

“Oh…” the boy said. “So, the Cure sent you here? And sent me here?”

“Yeah. And you helped me so much already. And I can feel the Cure’s effect wearing off. So that’s why I am going to miss you. When I’m brought back to my life, and you are sent back to yours.”

“Oh,” the boy said again. He was still visibly confused. He was plucking the white ground from under him.

“Well, something else,” I said. The boy looked up at me. “When I accepted the Cure…” I trailed off, feeling a swelling in my throat. The boy remained silent. “When I accepted the Cure, I essentially decided to change myself. To alter my brain. I will lose every part of me that existed before the Cure. And now here I am. And the me after will be changed. Changed to fit an artificial threshold of happiness. And you will be gone. You are the biggest part of everything everyone knows about me. You are everything I wish to keep. But I can’t. And that makes me so sad.”

The boy was just staring at me. He was frozen in thought.

“I just don’t want to lose you,” I said. Tears began to fall down my cheeks, but I released no other sound.

The boy blinked hard a couple times. Then his face softened. He extended one of his hands toward me, his palms facing the white sky, and he said, “But I am you.”

A deafening rush of energy invaded the space as if we were on an airborne plane and the door opened up to the sky. Within the chaos, I rooted myself into the ground (no longer pure white, but a whipping mesh of stills from my lifetime). The boy was unmoving in front of me as if nothing was happening. I reached out and touched his palm, and for the first time, I understood. 

In an instant, the room collapsed, swallowing me whole. In the nothingness that followed I heard the beating of a heart. And then I saw an orange glow. It was warm. I looked at my hands. They were translucent. Blue veins spread throughout them like roots. And then my hands shifted, shifted through versions of my own, fused into a single being. Me from every point in time, layer upon layer upon layer, until they felt most familiar, the most fitting, and I could squeeze them into fists and feel the blood surge through the tips of my fingers, letting my heartbeat well up into my palm. I undid my fists. The white impressions across the creases of my hand filled with a soft pinkness. I felt so full.

The room was dark. I couldn’t see the walls, nor could I see the ceiling. A soft glow of dim, red lights surrounded my chair. I let my consciousness join the emptiness around me, welcoming tomorrow.