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.

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.”