Today is Thursday.
She found herself wanting to hold onto the knowledge, to cradle it in her arms, safe from her mind and its habit of eating things that matter. Things like her identity, her whereabouts, the date. All food for a fractured psyche. Typically, when the knowing faded so completely, when it had settled in the belly of the beast, she began to sense the loss, to wonder:
Who am I?
Where am I?
When?
“Amari,” the receptionist called out, lifting her eyes from the warm glow of her phone screen. “Maureen will see you now. You know where to find her, don’t you darling?”
Amari smiled. “Of course. Thank you.”
As she headed towards the blue room, she thought about Maureen. Amari had been introduced to her the previous year. She’d had no choice in the matter. Her mother had cried buckets after the whole ordeal with the pills. She believed that a journey such as the one Amari had attempted would leave behind footprints, that in the dark of night the hosts, tired of waiting in anticipation of her arrival, would trace her steps, grab her feet, and yank her into the land of the spirits so she could dance with them forever. Her father, having since succumbed to the force that was her mother’s being, had agreed in that perfectly docile manner of his. The decision was made. So, she watched on as they spun her around, right into the blue room with its promise of normalcy.
It was this room that she entered in the present day. It was in this room that Amari found Maureen seated in the armchair she’d come to see as hers, with her back resting against the velvety cushion—a constant presence. A necessary one too, filling the space between her lumbar spine and the seat and making the meeting between the two comfortable. Her laptop lay awake on one side of the desk before her. On the other side was the peace lily Amari liked to call Abelia, meaning breath in Hebrew. She had named it as such—bothered with the naming at all really—once she noticed she’d begun reaching for its glossy, oval-shaped leaves in the moments when Maureen, with her gentle probing and prodding, reminded Amari that the world is a real place. Actions don’t vanish into thin air. They transform into pesky little things known as consequences. Humans are insatiable creatures. They eat your heart, your brain, your common sense. They ignore your growling stomach while demanding your soul as a fourth course. To survive in this jungle is to pay attention to your insides without drowning in the interstitial fluid. It is to look life in the face with your eyes wide open, to fight the urge to scream, to scratch—nails on walls—to bang bang bang your way out because it is all too loud, too dark, too much.
Now, who wants to hear all that? Who wants to remember all that? Who?
Not Amari. Never Amari.
But ignorance leaves one ill-prepared for a fight. It keeps you smiling your best, brightest smile in the seconds before your foe slashes your throat because it had never occurred to you—sweet child, you—that what looked like honey could be anything other than. That a lover could hate you so. Amari had spent eternity and a year being thrown unexpectedly into boxing rings, shoved into headgear, positioned in stare-downs with opponents, only to look up and meet the eyes of people she would have worshipped for as long as they’d let her. She had felt enough of that staggering pain to know that she detested it. Along the way, she’d learned that it is preferable to look at a nightmare, see it clearly, and choose to experience it rather than mistake it for a fairytale—to treat it like a wish come true only to find horror in its place. In the end, it was the fear of always being so fucking naïve about the world, its creatures and their immense capacity for cruelty, the desire to actually live—not the knee-jerk urge to run far, far away from it all—that won out. So, she began to touch the plant, to clutch onto its leaves during conversations with Maureen as she breathed—in and out, gentle and slow—to quiet the panic, calm her nerves.
In the four years to come, Amari will exchange the blue room for a green one. Then black, white, brown. Maureen will be left behind and, in her stead, there will be John, Samantha, Frank, Lindsey. Each will hold up a mirror, and she will stare unabashedly at the image: delicate as fine china, a blend of ethereal and youcantouchmeholdmefeelme, madness steeped in ginger tea, part sweet, part spice. All worthy. Always worthy.
One day, she will sit with a partner soul, holding hands underneath the stars, a blunt in the space beside them, theirs to share. They will talk fondly, in whispers, about the journey, the traffic encountered along the way, the many moments spent standing still, right at the edge of malevolence.
“Do you remember when you died to it all?” they will ask her.
And she will shake her head softly, let out a giggle, eyes all twinkly like Christmas lights, head sitting pretty in the clouds above, unmoored.
“It’s a blur now, honestly. I think the process often is. What I do remember is waking up one random Tuesday morning and realizing that all that yearning, pining, hunger for acceptance, belonging, recognition, all the things that one tends to crave when they are stuffed into a body and sent out into the wild—all of it—had shrunk to the size of a freshwater pearl. I marveled at the stark contrast. The desire used to be enormous—heavy, burdensome. And there I was: light as a feather, untethered. I cried, and it tasted like salty goodness.”
Evangelle is a lover of words in their entirety, spoken and written alike. In writing, she draws heavily from the world unseen, the spirituality of life and the elements of light and dark. She believes in the elevation of self as the pathway to happiness and true peace. When she is not writing or reading literature, you can find her nose deep in a movie, tv show, or music. To Evangelle, art forms the very center of the human experience, so if you ever lose yourself, all you need to do is follow the art.
Featured image by Igor Son on Unsplash.
