August 22, 2026. Rounded out a week later with the help of an Irish coffee made by me. 

My brain and my body are going no contact. We gotta start pitching ideas to fix this. Please invent something. My insides deserve a smartphone with terrific reception, not this string and tin can thing. Couples counseling too. It’s just body yelling a stream of nonsense into the metal while brain takes it and interprets half-heartedly. The signal sucks. I do and do and do and then I find out later why. Am I blacking out?

I am preparing for something that’s coming. The tides recede and the wind is doing that run-past-me thing animals do when the monster is near. “On a whim” is a pill with strict instructions. Today it’s dbl bacardi strawberry soda and a blazin apple fireball shooter. I toss one of my sheer pink dresses over the desk lamp, relaxing the room that I will be taking so seriously for the remainder of the night. That was the first task in the queue, decided when I made eyes with the two moon-colored rectangles from the parking lot. Not against curtains just never had the thought to decorate.

This white light is obnoxious and makes me a little nuts.

I allow my body to steer as if I were already hungover. Self-driving car, I am. I go where the gps tells me to. Make a right towards the desk and open laptop, I like to start with whatever song was stuck in my head on the way up the stairs. From there it’s out of my hands. I’ll agree with whatever’s next because I enjoy not knowing what’s coming, it’s fitting for the occasion. Just like my surrender to the body, life may also move me however it wants. Stopping to care means times-a-wasting! 

Sharp turn left. Closet. Speak to me articles. I thrift to compile a large selection for a reason: I will never ever get uninspired. I admit I’m a bit gluttonous about fashion. Flowy dresses tend to be the answer when I’m in need of a little character reset. Something I can dance in. That whim gold. The rampage through the city. 

My hands manhandle the hung fabric, dragging the plastic hangers violently through the rack, scanning until I see a stop sign. Black linen overall styled romper, intended to be layered, but tonight I lock myself in my room with the windows uncovered. I think I’ll skip the inside shirt; it’ll add to this feeling that I crave all the time. An addiction to pressure relief where my consistent method of satisfaction is to unleash the glowy orb of absurdity.

I’ll mindlessly grab a random floral kimono cardigan thing, throw it all on with whatever jewelry, and it’s straight to the full length mirror. Maybe my favorite thing about myself: I’m not picky. I entertain this outfit with all the confidence in the world. Pure giddy witnessing this youthful glow I possess. With just a dash of color on my lips and nose, hair in messy pigtail braids; I’ve never felt more me. This entity that I am allowed to drive until I succumb to the rust. Now for my favorite part of the roadtrip: ringaroundabout. I do not think about time. I do not think about when I should stop or go to bed. All I know is windows down, music loud, and press gas on this endless loop. Strange behaviors but not technically illegal. Not a soul enters the street while I twirl and jump. I guess I’m just lucky!

I’m terrified. I’ve had my fun for a couple weeks now, but I know what’s behind the closet door and it’s time that I face it head on with this last hoorah. Grim Reaper’s little brother, the one that likes to play with his food. There’s a similar internal clock in every woman, I guess. It means something different to each person for the multiple stages of their life. I am fortunate that it was never that serious to me up until recently. Teenage me dreaded it lightly. Curl up in a ball for about an hour if I got caught off guard and didn’t already take a pill. It becomes like training yourself as if you’re your own dog. You get wiser. My cycle has always been irregular, and it doesn’t help that constant exercising, and calorie fluctuation takes that to a whole new level. 15 years of this and I’ve now gained the ability to tell when in the cycle I am. Developing good mind to body communication. Around 17 it became a blessing. I was actually happy to have it. Relieved. Reminded me that I could keep living my life the way I have been, unchanged. New problem: I lived under the fear rock a little bit anticipating my “no you’re not” answer every month. And then this year sharks became minnows. This year has been particularly difficult due to outside factors. It feels against the rules that a wrench could be thrown at me in this way at a time when I think I should already have all the answers. 3 periods in one month. Physically I was fine. I experienced a new really bad thing.

There’s red wine downstairs maybe we keep this party going.

DROWNING DRY

My body screams silently, mourns alone. I stay by her side on the bathroom floor and ask what’s wrong a million times, there will never be an answer. The more I sit by her the more rope she ties around my legs. I can understand her, I love her, she isn’t doing this on purpose at all. Those dead eyes frantically tying while screeching in agony. To her it’s like being in a car underwater. Gotta get the seatbelt undone, gotta break the window. I love her so I don’t attempt to move either way, but the rope is getting tight and now there’s this fuzzy feeling. I think she’s turning me into her. If we don’t become one then we both are stuck here, in purgatory apparently. But it’s a game of tug-a-war. I’m here for her but I’m me, she’s her. I will not let her drag me under. I will find a way to carry both our bodies up to the surface. My limbs are asleep now. Where’d she get this boulder? I don’t know, but it joins us at the end of the line. I turn into stone. 

I’ve been staring at this wall for 30 minutes. Things are happening outside and things are happening in my head. I couldn’t tell you what else goes on.

All the lights may be on but that doesn’t mean anything through thick fog. I know exactly what I’m looking at but why do I not know the name of it? All I can feel is incoherency. Steep drop. Loss of energy, loss of creativity. Ask me to describe myself, any and all of it do not exist at the moment. I’m with her. We’re codependent in her world. We will sit here on this bathroom floor, and it will feel like my body has convinced itself that it is already dead while my mind starves for bubbles on the ceiling. I resemble her while I panic; running along the edges in a crouch and checking the corners. I’ve wasted 2hrs just staring at a wall with an expression on my face that no one gets to see. She devours me until we’re both quiet.

– The best description I have of the monster.

I’m living in anticipation. Like having the same bad dream multiple nights in a row so you start to develop a fear of sleeping. The body adapts. So today I sit back while I allow my body to take sharp turns and hard breaks. I run the red lights without a care in the world because when your body is doing things to you that you didn’t agree to but have no choice but to deal with it, pressing down on the gas counteracts the attack and gives me back some control. I am able to think clearly while laughing during a funeral. The orb of absurdity used as your one last hope. It’s dark and you’ve got a single match.

Being alive is a cycle of break and repair. You gotta learn how to have fun on this abandoned merrigoround or living becomes unbearably uncomfortable. I thought I could predict everything. Like you’ve figured out health and happiness and then something like this happens and the confusion is so scary. For a month and a half, I went from figured it out to knowing nothing. During this month I went on a road trip around Maryland and Virginia by myself. I had fun but something felt wrong the entire time. I was winning the tug-a-war but still being eaten away. I chased down the feeling that I crave, got on every single rollercoaster at Kings Dominion in hopes of control. Loops and drops hundreds of feet in the air going 90mph, no different than back floating in lake water. The sun burns my body, and I am stuck on my back.