I read the words in my mind. And the figure is there in the room with me. As if his hand is on my shoulder. He means well for me; he wants to support me, but his presence is terrifying. I don’t move or make a sound. My heartbeat pounds in my ears and my ragged breath fills my head as I struggle to listen.

Even before a word is on my tongue…

Why do you run, child? Why do you hide? he asks me. I don’t want what I wanted; I don’t want what I chose, I tell him.

The words coming out of our mouths, of my mouth, start to slur together into one soft buzz. Can we not talk, or can I not hear? Then those questions disappear altogether, and I feel something hard under my chin. The bar top. I put my head down and watch through my one winking eye the best friend’s jaunty movements. He lurches forward and leans heavily on the bar. He moves like in a viewfinder, stopping in one pose and starting in another. I realize he’s not in an old-timey movie. As hard as I try to hold them open, my eyes are heavy and blinking.

Black. So quiet you can hear the still.

He was so devoted to me. You would think I liked it but instead, it’s like it made me angry. He was unfazed by the largeness of my personality, the wildness of my emotions. I talked incessantly and he listened. He adored everything I did, even the annoying or gross stuff. He was steady. I could count on him. It drove me mad. I found myself breaking up with him just to watch his expression change, just to feel something. It devastated him. I creeped myself out how I couldn’t feel anything. It’s like he was in a jar, under glass. I couldn’t quite make out what he was saying. I couldn’t touch him. It was like I could press pause or mute and he would just be stuck there, quiet and helpless.

There was an alchemical magic to it, Charlie was so curious and willing to ponder any notion and I was so packed with sacred ideas that I had enclosed in iron-clad orbs of doubt and shame for protection, but I was finally free to release them, to speak them as Truth, impart them on another to amplify their power. I didn’t proselytize and he wasn’t hypnotized, blindly absorbing my message. It was Socratic and invigorating, and had that energy of kindergarten, where Charlie innocently questioned and challenged everything including the reality of the leaves we walked on, the space between us. And I enthusiastically, joyously shared with him the staggering idea that it was all an illusion, that in fact, there was no space between us, and we were recreating the appearance of the leaves underneath our feet with every step we took, in perfect cooperation with their own consciousness, of course.

Grandma came in, sat in the chair opposite me, and faced me. The counselor asked her if she knew what this was about. She said, ‘No, I don’t believe I do, I guess we’re here to talk about Sarah’s recovery.’ The counselor verified that was true and signaled for me to tell her what we had discussed. When my grandmother looked at me again, she became worried, because I suppose she could see how badly I was shaking and stuttering to speak. I said, ‘You remember how you took me to Barnes & Noble to get a book?’ as I held it out for her to see the title, The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Survivors of… Her brow was furrowed, her jaw dropped slack as she let out a weak, “Yeah…?” I began a sentence with, “My dad…” and my she turned sharply away from me and said to this counselor in almost a scolding manner: “You know she’s a liar, right? She’s sick and she makes up stories? That’s why we’re trying to get her help.”

I saw him, but not clearly, not at first. First, I saw an aura, a swollen, angry aura. I hadn’t seen an aura so clearly in a while. The young man, as I said, was stooped over slightly, and so, spurting spontaneously from his back, energetically, were these small fires, like volcanic eruptions. They were violent swirls of orange and yellow light, but they subsided quickly and smoldered, choked out without steady fuel. Then all around him were hazy layers of smoke, grays and browns, wafting, swirling. I could feel him locked in an obsessive thought loop of shame and disgust, anger and despair. Occasionally, it would add a sputter of fire to the aura, and his penitent trance didn’t allow any of the smoke to clear. I just watched it thicken around him as though he were in a glass oven. He sat transfixed in the chair, hands palm up in his lap, weakly clasping an imaginary object, his eyes locked onto an unforgiving abyss. I saw in his mind’s eye, a heavy pistol, a handgun.

I’m hovering in some immense space; practically nonexistent, blissfully immersed in this intense calm, a constant humming certainty, like if there were a white noise machine that were whispering algorithmic equations into a room full of chalkboards. There’s darkness all around me, but I can see, or sense, into it. In an instant, I have this crisp feeling like crawling out from underneath a down comforter after 7 solid hours of sleep to stand in cold, empty room and I’m covered in spidery tingles. Without moving an inch, I’ve suddenly appeared out of nowhere. In the dark, it’s not that there is light, it’s that I am light. But no physical form. I try to blink, no eyes. Try to reach out and touch the air, no hands. I gasp from panic but even my chest feels empty. No stomach to turn. I am and I am not. The nothing moves right through me.

To the heartache of those who love me, against their advice, against all odds, oblivious or indifferent to signs of turning back or impending obstacles, I skip gayly, stagger blindly, or even sometimes scratch and crawl with spiteful determination down this path that others disdainfully refer to as “the hard way.”