u/Oceansunshine789

Whatever we want to see from today, let's visualize it and see it. Whatever we want to do, to say, to feel, to become. We can have it all.

We're here to experience the world, and ourselves in these bodies in it. I've heard that the Earth was originally created in order to be a vacation for people who had earned the rest doing other things, in other places.

Whatever we've collectively become as a species it's because we let ourselves meld into the slow atrophy and decay of greed, corruption, power dynamics and struggles that don't exist on a much less physical plane.

But man, isn't there such power in feeling good and happy? Is the light more powerful than the darkenss?

I've felt the pull of depression in my life. There is a sad, sweet, strange addiction that comes with feeling sad and miserable. You can sink into it, get lost in it sometimes. It's a powerful current, and can pull even the most powerful swimmers down into the depths.

When immersed in it, it feels as though that's all there is. But when the fog lifts, and the sun starts to shine in, you can feel that pull as well. A brand new summer day, a hug from someone you love where they don't let go until you do first. There's real power there.

Love is tangible. It is solid, it can move mountains.

As I drink my coffee this morning and wait for my babe to get up so that I can get her ready for preschool, I feel it. In the light of the sun starting to rise from the south east windows behind me. In the hug and kiss I gave my other daughter and partner as they walked out the door.

I can feel possibilities and magic start to move the air around me, and I just know it'll be whatever I dream soon enough.

We are the creators, and this is our world. Let's paint on this canvas with huge, bold strokes. Grabbing a paintbrush as big and solid as our arms as we reach the colored ends towards the sky and exhale gratitude. Coloring in the world we want to see and be in unmistakeable shades of blue, green, yellow, and orange. Beautiful swirls of purple and red.

Happiness is a choice, and in the shallow light and warm breeze wafting in to touch my skin, I can see only the beauty surrounding me.

For a moment I look at the floor and see crumbs and toys. I look around the room and see all the stuff there is to do. I can picture myself in a few hours. Busy and tired and maybe a little stressed from driving back and forth to school and gymnastics classes. I can get sucked in to the pull of that energy, and know it as I can hear it whispering "aren't you frustrated? aren't you tired?"

Gently I give that part of me a hug as I close my eyes and inhale. It is all a gift. A beautiful, wonderful, scary, thrilling ride. Instead of fighting it I want to flow with it, experience it, be it, until the day that it brings me back around to the beginning and I need to get off the ride. Only able to take with me my feelings about it all.

They will also make sure to not overcrowd each other, because even something that is not sentient understands compassion and grace apparently more than most people.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this, other than the state of this world makes me so weary.

It used to be a shameful thing to lord money over others. It used to be a shameful thing to focus solely on yourself at the expense of the greater good.

I get that speaking in generalizations is never wise. But overall as a society, at least in my life growing up in the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's prior to 'smart' phones - we cared more. We didn't think about the immediate when considering our actions. We thought about the lives of our children and their children.

My dad was a policeman and used every single AAA emergency call he and my mom personally had, on other people we would see stranded on the side of the road every year. He would always pull over to make sure someone was ok, even if we were in a hurry. He was a go-to to call for help from neighbors and friends, and not just for police-related issues. He would just be there, for heavy lifting, for emotional support.

He would get home from work and I'd see him, moving out of the car slowly, exhausted. Just putting his all into the potential for me, my siblings, my mom. My mom was the same, sacrificing everything for us and our future. Some days she was in the car the entire day just driving me and my siblings from activity to activity. We sometimes had utilities turned off. We never had food, rarely had meat in the house. Surviving on vibes and ramen noodles. But we never felt unprotected or alone in the world. And even when we objectively didn't have enough, we still had enough to share with others that needed it.

The lessons learned that I base my life on now were largely through example. It certainly wasn't easy but every single one of my siblings are so smart and successful - and overall they are great people. They would all absolutely stop to help a stranger, and they love their families and friends with all they have.

This never was outside of the norm prior to smart phones and social media. Most families I knew were comprised of solid people, who cared about the communities they lived in. The values systems were just so different.

Is it even possible to get to a collective mindset of love and care? Maybe all of our trust in each has been too damaged.

They will also make sure to not overcrowd each other, because even something that is not sentient understands compassion and grace apparently more than most people.

I'm not sure why I'm writing this, other than the state of this world makes me so weary.

It used to be a shameful thing to lord money over others. It used to be a shameful thing to focus solely on yourself at the expense of the greater good.

I get that speaking in generalizations is never wise. But overall as a society, at least in my life growing up in the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's prior to 'smart' phones - we cared more. We didn't think about the immediate when considering our actions. We thought about the lives of our children and their children.

My dad was a policeman and used every single AAA emergency call he and my mom personally had, on other people we would see stranded on the side of the road every year. He would always pull over to make sure someone was ok, even if we were in a hurry. He was a go-to to call for help from neighbors and friends, and not just for police-related issues. He would just be there, for heavy lifting, for emotional support.

He would get home from work and I'd see him, moving out of the car slowly, exhausted. Just putting his all into the potential for me, my siblings, my mom. My mom was the same, sacrificing everything for us and our future. Some days she was in the car the entire day just driving me and my siblings from activity to activity. We sometimes had utilities turned off. We never had food, rarely had meat in the house. Surviving on vibes and ramen noodles. But we never felt unprotected or alone in the world. And even when we objectively didn't have enough, we still had enough to share with others that needed it.

The lessons learned that I base my life on now were largely through example. It certainly wasn't easy but every single one of my siblings are so smart and successful - and overall they are great people. They would all absolutely stop to help a stranger, and they love their families and friends with all they have.

This never was outside of the norm prior to smart phones and social media. Most families I knew were comprised of solid people, who cared about the communities they lived in. The values systems were just so different.

Is it even possible to get to a collective mindset of love and care? Maybe all of our trust in each has been too damaged.

I feel so different lately. Like a bottle of amber gold honey was poured over me. Mellow and grateful.

A few days before my college graduation, so many years ago now, we were all at my apartment watching movies. My friends brother was in town. With all the wisdom of two years more experience than us he looked around, sipped his beer, and said:

"You guys have no idea. Cherish this because it's going to stop. Everyone is going to get jobs and lives and it won't be the same ever again."

We laughed it off, told him he was nuts. We were different, we'd always be together.

Life is beautiful. But it hurts.

There's nothing you can hold onto. It's all bright, colorful wisps of smoke disappearing between our fingers when we try.

I don't buzz anymore.

It used to be constant, I would open my door and jump into the world, running with it. Like that scene in Pochahontas as she’s running with the wind through the forest. Things move with her and for her as she leaps and lives. Her feet moving in sure, fast, light beats.

Looking back, life so far has been messy. Mistakes and heartbreak. Ripping myself open to bleed out so that as I sewed myself back together it could heal fresh. Years of pulling trauma out by the roots so that when I replanted it wouldn't linger.

There's also been laughter. So much damn laughter. What is it about being around people who have gone through it that makes them so damn funny? We'd be experiencing the most insane thing burned into all of our memories. And then later, someone would start imitating it until we all died laughing. I've laughed until I've cried, spent whole days with people and things that make that possible. I'm so grateful for it all my chest could explode.

I've danced on a beach in the moonlight. Ate the worm out of a bottle of mezcal in Mexico. Saved someone's life. Twice. Ate shrooms in the mountains in Peru. Moved to a different country and didn't know a soul around me. Swam topless in the open sunshine in Spain. Danced in a third story window frame in Paris while Notre Dame glittered in front of me before it was burned.

I've loved. I've loved so many things and people and places I've been. Foods I've eaten. Bodies I've held and who have held me as we've lain next to each other, our hearts beating together in the darkness.

I've created. Painting while smoking and listening to music. So many times of realizing hours had passed and I was unaware, just lost in it. My house is my current canvas, and I've been painting systematically, room by room. Trying to turn it into the sunshine and wildflowers that I see behind my eyelids when I close them at night.

I danced on the beach this past week with my two babies, both of whom have given me a depth of joy that I couldn't have thought possible before experiencing it. I look at their faces while they sleep in complete disbelief that we are traveling this world and this life together. I'm so grateful for the opportunity to show them joy. I'm so scared that I'll mess it all up, even as the undercurrent of love pulls so strong it is painful as it moves ceaselessly underneath.

This gift of this life, to be able to just experience. It's magic. It's all love, from the depths of my soul I feel it emanating.

Will it keep on getting better? Because so far I've loved each age more than the last, even as it's sad and painful saying goodbye every time I have to close the book on a chapter of myself.

I’m a lawyer and former corporate executive who thought I could build the kind of place that I thought we needed on this earth.

We had a beautiful 8,000-square-foot building. We had talented people. We had classes for $15. We hosted markets, dinners, workshops, retreats, and free events. People constantly told us how special the place was and how badly the city needed something like it.

Very few of them came back often enough to keep it alive.

For three years, I watched the distance between what people say they value and what they will actually spend money on. I learned that a business can be loved, praised, photographed, and completely financially unsustainable. I also learned how quickly a dream can eat your money, your relationships, your confidence, and the years when your children are still little.

Now the building is being sold, the business is ending, and I’m trying to understand whether I failed, if it was an impossible dream, or whether I should never have wanted it in the first place.

Ask me anything.

The summer after eighth grade stretched out long and hot. I was babysitting as much as I could, mostly to keep myself in Wendy’s chicken nuggets, and sweet tea from the coffee shop behind my best friend Chrissy’s house. 

Most of the kids I knew were going to the high school right around the corner, in the fall. My dad had gone there back when it was still an all-boys high school. He taught math there for a while in his twenties.

He told me once that he had read somewhere that being cold made you think better, so during a test in the middle of an Ohio winter, he opened every window in the room.

“They wanted to kill me,” he said, laughing. 

We weren’t allowed to go there.

The neighborhood was changing. At least that was how the adults talked about it. The voucher program had started in the Catholic schools, which meant some families had their tuition paid by the government while other families were still paying the full amount.

I didn’t really understand it. I only knew everyone had something to say.

“It’s a mix of church and state!” our neighbor Larry McGarry yelled while talking to my mom one afternoon.

He was sitting in the rocking chair on his front porch. My mom and I were carrying groceries into the house, the plastic in my hand stretching and heavy. 

“These gull-dern politicians have no idea what they’re doing. Watch what happens to the neighborhood. I’m so mad I could spit.”

I listened to my parents talk about it later. My dad sat in front of the television, wolfing down a bowl of spaghetti. My mom stood beside him holding the glass of water she brought him, one hand on her hip. Looking at the news story with him, covering the program.

“We’ve spent how much sending all seven of them?” she said.

I looked at the cracked molding along the stairs. The wallpaper peeling away from the living room wall. The carpet that hadn’t been replaced for as long as I could remember.

The neighborhood did change, and fast.

We used to ride our bikes down to 142nd Street and leave them outside without locks while we went in for pizza bagels. My brother Dave loved Dr. J’s Baseball Cards. He kept binders full of them and traded them the way we used to trade pogs.

Then things started closing.

Mindy’s Drug Store shut down with a sign in the window promising something new was coming soon. Nothing ever did. The landlord lived somewhere else and wanted too much money for the space, so it sat there empty.

Then another place closed. And another.

Everyone started moving away. 

I graduated from grade school while all of this was happening. I still felt like a kid, but I wanted so badly to know what it felt like not to be one.

To go wherever you wanted. To fall in love. To have a life nobody could stop you from living.

My best friend Chrissy had a home computer in her family’s office. The office had doors we could close. She had privacy like I’d never experienced. I couldn’t even remember a time I’d ever been home alone at my house. 

We played games. Downloaded songs from Napster and danced around the room while they played through the computer speakers. We went into chat rooms and asked strangers ASL. Practicing flirting, being funny. It felt a little dangerous, but in a good way.

It also felt a little weird to me. Talking to strangers in the chat rooms. Chrissy was better at it. Or maybe she just did it more often.

I was so envious of their computer. By the time my family finally got one, everyone else in the entire world already had one. And I mean everyone.

I once got in trouble at school for turning in something I had typed on a typewriter when it was supposed to be printed from a computer.

“What do you want me to do, Mrs. Gonzales?” I asked my teacher.

She took the assignment anyway. I think she got it. 

Everyone knew there were seven of us. They could hear our old station wagon coming, the muffler dragging as it picked us up from school. My dad was a cop. My mom stayed home raising babies. We all went to Catholic school, and money was tight. Tighter for us than it was for most of the people around us. At least it felt that way.

When we finally got a computer, my parents put it in the dining room. The exact center of our Craftsman house.

Anyone walking through could see what you were doing. Someone was always standing behind you waiting for a turn. There was a line to use it every day.

At Chrissy’s house, there were doors to shut. We were able to watch MTV and VHI because there were no little kids running around that shouldn't be seeing what was played on there.

It was the summer of getting tan.

Like we did on so many other days that summer, Chrissy and I spread our towels across the tennis courts at the park and lay there in our bikinis. I bought a bottle of Australian Gold SPF 8 with my babysitting money. This combined with the smell of a beach fire were my favorite scents of all time. 

I also brought two little heart stickers, one for each of us. I wanted a heart-shaped tan line on my lower belly like I saw in a music video.

I rubbed the oil over my stomach and wondered if I was ever going to get boobs. It felt like I had been waiting for them my whole life. Everyone else seemed to be getting theirs without even having to think about it.

We lay on our stomachs with our arms folded beneath our heads, our faces turned toward each other.

“I’ve been talking to this kid online,” Chrissy said.

There was something there, in her voice. Excitement, but something else too.

“He lives in England.”

“Oh, wow,” I said. I was confused, and felt a pang of jealousy. “Tell me everything.”

“He’s twenty-six. He plays soccer. He thinks I’m beautiful.”

She stopped for a minute, turning to fully look at me.

“He’s coming to visit in two weeks.”

She watched my face after she said it. For just a second, I saw something flash across hers. Like she was waiting for me to tell her something.

“Twenty-six? Girl, what?”

I sat up.

The skin on my back was hot from the sun. My stomach felt strange.

I hadn’t even had my first kiss. I was shy, and my dad was so overprotective that sometimes my whole life felt like a cage. I was so jealous of all the other girls I knew, who were out there actually living. I felt so trapped.

“Two weeks?” I asked.

“Yes.”

She sat up too.

“His name is Chris. So it’s Chrissy and Chris. We’re meant to be. I’ll show you what he looks like when we go back inside. I know he’s a little older than us, but he’s so funny. You’ll see.”

“He’s bringing his friend B with him,” she said. “So we can all hang out.”

“I’m so excited.” She was smiling and did look excited. 

“Me too,” I said.

In my stomach I could feel a small pit start. A clenching feeling. 

I'm so overwhelmed by the stories, spreading out like a tangled web stretching in every direction. I get caught up in this concept of time, and then what the absence of it might mean in my limited, physical capabilities to comprehend.

I think of it when I close my eyes lately, and it all swirls around me. Souls and people experiencing so many things. Cyclical, so nothing is really new after all. It's a comforting, yet terrifying thought.

I can't stand out, can I?

With all the noise, will I ever be known, actually seen? In a way I've always craved?

Does any of it matter when everything is going to happen to everyone, stretching out to infinity?

Even while I know that this is my ego talking.

Life on this planet is an absolutely spectacular gift. The gift of experience. Knowledge, growth. To allow ourselves to remember alchemy. We can turn lemons into sweet gold lemonade. Or clutch dry yellow straw in our hands because we don't know how to want and believe in something else.

I don't know how it was for other people. But when I started to wake up to the fact that there was more happening around me, in me, and through me than I was letting myself see, I was so scared. No one around me seemed to care about what existed outside of the invisible oppressive box I was starting to see around me at all times.

Each step since has felt like an almost dizzy realization. Like I'm standing on top of a very tall skyscraper.

A couple of months ago I let myself feel the concept of reincarnation. I've believed in it for many years at this point. I've visited the akashic records; I've even had experiences that hit me like a bolt of lightning and made me understand why my mom was who she is in this life and much more.

But I let myself think about it a little differently. And when I did it felt like free falling off to the pavement below. The understanding that the real me was somewhere else, someone else, in some other time. I looked in a mirror and I didn't see this person that I love and identify with. I would see the eyes, nose, ears of a stranger, I would be wearing that strangers skin; even while there is something inside of me that remembers. I would see myself too, even while everything else is different. I would remain in the eyes.

So what do I do with the current plateau that I am on? Where I know we are all one, and all god, and can live and do and be anything. But I'm dying to feel it. My thoughts ceaseless due to my undefined ajna. I can't let myself just believe, even as I've been able to manifest miraculous things.

It feels like it's been forever since I've been able to purposefully manifest anything.

I practice giving up on manifestation altogether. Working through my thoughts, and cherry picking the ones stuck in the grooves of my brain. The ones telling me I'm not good enough. The ones that self deprecate and say awful things. And just letting it all be.

The universe will have my back. Because I am the universe.

But I've been stuck in a heavy transition period in my real life. I'm told to wait and let what is waiting for me unfold.

I'm impatient in the waiting. I'm ready to become. I'm ready to just be.

So I let myself define who and what I want and become it. What the life and accoutrements look like. Who I love and will be surrounded by.

And it feels like a struggle. I start to think about designing who and what I want to be. And get lost in the vastness of everyone and everything, everywhere all at once.

I'm so overwhelmed by the stories, spreading out like a tangled web stretching in every direction. I get caught up in this concept of time, and then what the absence of it might mean in my limited, physical capabilities to comprehend.

I think of it when I close my eyes lately, and it all swirls around me. Souls and people experiencing so many things. Cyclical, so nothing is really new after all. It's a comforting, yet terrifying thought.

I can't stand out, can I?

With all the noise, will I ever be known, actually seen? In a way I've always craved?

Does any of it matter when everything is going to happen to everyone, stretching out to infinity?

Even while I know that this is my ego talking.

Life on this planet is an absolutely spectacular gift. The gift of experience. Knowledge, growth. To allow ourselves to remember alchemy. We can turn lemons into sweet gold lemonade. Or clutch dry yellow straw in our hands because we don't know how to want and believe in something else.

I don't know how it was for other people. But when I started to wake up to the fact that there was more happening around me, in me, and through me than I was letting myself see, I was so scared. No one around me seemed to care about what existed outside of the invisible oppressive box I was starting to see around me at all times.

Each step since has felt like an almost dizzy realization. Like I'm standing on top of a very tall skyscraper.

A couple of months ago I let myself feel the concept of reincarnation. I've believed in it for many years at this point. I've visited the akashic records; I've even had experiences that hit me like a bolt of lightning and made me understand why my mom was who she is in this life and much more.

But I let myself think about it a little differently. And when I did it felt like free falling off to the pavement below. The understanding that the real me was somewhere else, someone else, in some other time. I looked in a mirror and I didn't see this person that I love and identify with. I would see the eyes, nose, ears of a stranger, I would be wearing that strangers skin; even while there is something inside of me that remembers. I would see myself too, even while everything else is different. I would remain in the eyes.

So what do I do with the current plateau that I am on? Where I know we are all one, and all god, and can live and do and be anything. But I'm dying to feel it. My thoughts ceaseless due to my undefined ajna. I can't let myself just believe, even as I've been able to manifest miraculous things.

It feels like it's been forever since I've been able to purposefully manifest anything.

I practice giving up on manifestation altogether. Working through my thoughts, and cherry picking the ones stuck in the grooves of my brain. The ones telling me I'm not good enough. The ones that self deprecate and say awful things. And just letting it all be.

The universe will have my back. Because I am the universe.

But I've been stuck in a heavy transition period in my real life. I'm told to wait and let what is waiting for me unfold.

I'm impatient in the waiting. I'm ready to become. I'm ready to just be.

So I let myself define who and what I want and become it. What the life and accoutrements look like. Who I love and will be surrounded by.

And it feels like a struggle. I start to think about designing who and what I want to be. And get lost in the vastness of everyone and everything, everywhere all at once.

It's Sunday again.

The web surrounding the start of the morning begins to thin. Strands break, one at a time, as it lifts.

Summer begins to waft in from the open window, potent and magic. The sun feels like it's not lifting up and over, but rather through the day. It doesn't gradually cover, it just is and always has been.

My girls come running in, miniature and perfect. Wearing matching pajamas they put on after swimming and baths the night before. My youngest one copying her older sister in everything she does lately.

I realize that I hear their feet running through the hallway seconds before the door to the room explodes, hitting the wall behind it. They jump onto our bed, and my mind wakes up instantly, even if my body still feels heavy and noncompliant.

Mark pulls the cover over his head and shrinks away to face the wall to the right in a fetal position. A few minutes later without saying a word, he heads downstairs to lay on the couch as the girls continue to jump up and down on me and next to me.

Eventually I walk downstairs as they bounce around me, singing and yelling in loud, high-pitched voices "it's Sunday morning coffee time, Sunday morning coffee!" over and over again.

Years ago my first baby and I started this together. She would wake up before the day began, and we'd go downstairs together. Her chubby hands would grip crayons, letting herself explore over wide, thick paper. I would make myself coffee, milk and maybe whipped cream for her. I'd play morning acoustic music, soft voices singing as I held her and we drew.

The air felt like magic around us in those times. I would hold her and tell her how much I love her. Ask her about her thoughts and her dreams. What she remembered from the times when she was asleep, and what she thought about for her future.

They are both getting older, and I can see it, marked into these weekly times together. What they like to do, the things we talk about. School, and expectations.

Sometimes we play games instead of working on art and creating together.

I'm tired lately. My eyes and head feel heavy. I've tried to hide it from them, these adult problems that begin to build. Sometimes I wonder if I can slough them off the way kids do. Taking no ownership, it's not my bag to pick up and carry. Letting them be transitory.

Knowing that it's on me, always has been, and always will be, to make sure that they are safe and protected. The second they were born, maybe even earlier, I hopped in the driver's seat and was never allowed to leave. Even as sometimes the car was allowed to go slow and just coast.

We're beginning the day soon. Responsibilities and things that we need to get done taking precedence over simply being.

But for a moment in time that I will visit again and again, in other times when things feel hard, heavy, low, there is light and love. I watch my girls through their joy. Their laughter a sound that I want to bottle. Press a button next to my ear to hear over and over again. The authenticity in it. Their easy smiles. The trusting way in which they move, dance, ask for different music.

They live in a way that I left childhood forgetting how; in the subsequent years I've searched for it for so long and in the wrong places, that I forgot this way of life entirely.

Happiness without the baggage, thick and grime-ridden, life-worn and weary. Layers of responsibility, fear, shame, and guilt. Added one small brick at a time until we're buried behind, spending what feels like eternity in a catacomb of our own making. Wondering who and what we are, and if we've always been this.

They ask me if they can watch the TV before we go to the market. I say yes and I watch them run into the other room to turn it on. And I swear as their little feet crossed the floor, there was a moment where they didn't touch it at all. Doing what we all forgot was possible, letting themselves still fly.

I'm sick again. 

From the late night need to eat everything. Chips, pretzels, peanuts. Cake and chocolate bars. Waking up the next day with a food hangover. I’ve had headaches that lasted for two days straight due to eating myself into a fat, dull couch-coma. 

It’s not the worst thing about being addicted to marijuana.

The worst thing is at some point it was like I fell head first into a deep pool. Looking up and seeing the world reflected, I try to interact. Faces moving, bending in the small undulating waves in front of them. I open my mouth to speak and my brain is not connected. Like the movie Click, whole chapters in my life on fast-forward and I can't find the pause.

Cannabis. THC. The devil’s lettuce. Jazz cabbage. Mary Jane. 

Whatever you want to call her, she has her hooks in me good. 

I work in an office downtown. My mornings start like this. Wake up at five. Yoga. Make and eat two eggs. Shower then grab a coffee on my way to the train. The entire way there I listen to hypnosis tapes by Paul McKenna, telling me that I can do more, be more, accomplish more. 

Sometimes on the train I close my eyes and picture being on a beach somewhere, flamenco dancing in the moonlight, a sarong as light as air tied carelessly over my hips. Even the wind in the middle of the night is the temperature of bath water as it gently hugs my shoulders. 

At work I walk in and get a few nods. Everyone’s staring at their computers, analyzing. Building models. Everyone has on air pods. 

I think about the bare cupboards growing up every time I walk into the kitchen of the office. There are drawers and cupboards full of free healthy snacks. Our most lucrative Director eats an expensive imported bar of dark chocolate almost every afternoon, ordered by Tanya the office manager. She even takes requests, at least from the bankers who are killing it.

Half the time I don’t even take a lunch break anymore. I run out to grab food in my heels and skirt, and bring it straight back. Eating at my desk as I work on powerpoints and reports. 

It’s usually dark by the time I leave.

One time in summer I left at 5 and felt like I was playing hooky. I barely breathed until the moment I got off the elevator, walked out of the building, and stared up at the freedom of the sky. I swapped my heels for tennies and walked the entire way home, over three miles, in the humid, wet air. I stuffed my blazer in my bag and sweated through my sleeveless shirt underneath. Not caring that I was getting hit by the steam from the sidewalk vents, because for the first time in too long I felt alive.

Most days on my way home I suck on my vape pen like my breathing depends on it. Before I even get to the station all the edges start to get warm and fuzzy.

For the first time all day I look around me and appreciate. The beauty in a mom and her little baby. The man with the dirty shirt and even dirtier beard standing to my left. The clean cut guy who looks about my age, on his phone. I could see what he would look like in five years, ten, fifteen even. Who he would become. So much love I would feel as I looked around me.

Most nights were spent with Justin. He would get home, exhausted. We take a bath together, sharing a joint. Melt into each other as we lay in the warm water, soft music and candles in the darkness.

We'd make dinner together or order paneer tikka masala from the restaurant down the street with the brown awning.

I'd eat with his arms wrapped around me, not sure who and what I loved as I took another drag from my pen and imagined it was connecting me to the rest of the universe. Dreaming as I numbed.

I feel sick again. 

From the late night need to eat everything. Chips, pretzels, peanuts. Cake and chocolate bars. Waking up the next day with a food hangover. I’ve had headaches that lasted for two days straight due to eating myself into a fat, dull couch-coma. 

It’s not the worst thing about being addicted to marijuana. Cannabis. THC. The devil’s lettuce. Jazz cabbage. Mary Jane. 

Whatever you want to call her, she has her hooks in me good. 

The worst thing is the shell of myself that I’ve become. Like the movie Click, whole chapters in my life fast-forwarded. At some point it was like I fell head first into a deep pool. Looking up and seeing the world reflected, I try to interact. Faces moving, bending in the small undulating waves in front of them. I open my mouth to speak and my brain is not connected.

I work in an office downtown. My mornings start like this. Wake up at five. Yoga. Make and eat two eggs. Shower then grab a coffee on my way to the train. The entire way there I listen to hypnosis tapes by Paul McKenna, telling me that I can do more, be more, accomplish more. 

Sometimes on the train I close my eyes and picture being on a beach somewhere, flamenco dancing in the moonlight, a sarong as light as air tied carelessly over my hips. Even the wind in the middle of the night is the temperature of bath water as it gently hugs my shoulders. 

At work I walk in and get a few nods. Everyone’s staring at their computers, analyzing. Building models. Everyone has on air pods. 

I think about the summer of starvation when I was a kid, every time I walk into the kitchen. There are endless free healthy snacks. Our most lucrative Director eats an expensive imported bar of dark chocolate almost every afternoon, ordered by Tanya. 

Half the time I don’t even take a lunch break anymore. I run out to grab food in my heels and skirts, and bring it straight back. Eating at my desk as I work on powerpoints and reports. 

It’s usually dark by the time I leave. One time in summer I left at 5 and felt like I was playing hooky. I barely breathed until the moment I got off the elevator, walked out of the building, and stared up at the freedom of the sky. I swapped my heels for tennies and walked the entire way home, over three miles, in the humid, wet air. I stuffed my blazer in my bag and sweated through my sleeveless shirt underneath. Not caring that I was getting hit by the steam from the sidewalk vents, because for the first time in too long I felt alive.

It was the way the air smelled. Fresh like newly cut grass. Flowers. The tinge of a lit cigarette laced in a warm breeze, perfume and music in the air. The ceaseless sound of the waves hitting the shore outside my open bedroom windows before I left to go out into the night.

It was the promise of the kind of night that makes you question the universe and who and what you are; that makes you forget everything else but the moment and the blood rushing through your veins while you are in it. 

We were heading down the freeway in Ryan’s Jeep, the top down, all of us home on our last summer break from college. Maybe our last break ever, I thought, feeling something that I couldn’t quite place.

My hair started blowing into my face, and I closed my eyes and let it for a moment. 

I opened them and looked over at Caroline to tell her I was going to miss not living with her after we moved out of our apartment next May.

She was smiling at something in front of her. Or I guess not smiling exactly. Like she was trying not to smile. She looked down at the floor to her left.

Ryan was looking at her from the rearview mirror. 

My heart skipped in my chest and I felt sick.

I looked out the window again, resting my head on my hands and turning my face up toward the moon. The highway lights moved over the backs of my eyelids, orange and white and then black again. I could hear John talking in the passenger seat about something stupid, and Ryan laughing too hard.

He started pulling away from me a few months ago. 

I never asked him about it because I didn’t want to know. Or Christ, I don’t know. I did know and didn’t want him to say it out loud.

I could hear the water before we pulled into the empty lot in front of the beach and parked.

The beachclub pavilion was dark except for one yellow light over the side door and the white glow of a vending machine inside the snack bar area.

The big Fourth of July block party will be happening here tomorrow. 

Families and coolers, the smell of barbeques, the sound of folding chairs scraping on the pavement. Little kids screaming over sparklers. The kind of day where everyone drinks too much. Where we all collectively take a deep breath and let it all go out into the sunshine. 

Tonight, it was empty.

“Is that the raft?” John asked, pointing towards the water. 

Every year the beachclub would put up a huge raft for the Fourth of July celebration and keep it up for the rest of the summer. It was old, big and square and painted blue every few years, though the paint always peeled off in strips by August. When I was little, me and my older siblings and neighbors would swim out and do backflips off the side. We’d play King of the Raft for hours. 

We moved away when my Mom and Dad got divorced. 

I nodded to John. “Yup, looks like big blue is big blue-ing out there.” 

The raft sat past the buoys, black and low on the water. The moon made a line between us and the raft that looked like a snake slowly slithering as the water breathed in small undulating waves. 

“Ok,” John said, turning around to look at us. “It’s like ninety degrees with zero breeze right now. Whose got the cooler?”

“You really think me and Beth are strong enough to swim with that thing?” Caroline asked.

Ryan looked at me in the mirror.

I looked away first.

“Let’s go,” I said, suddenly feeling too hot. Desperate to get in the cool water. “Want to race?”

“Yes,” John said immediately.

 “Eughhh. I hate when you guys do this.” Caroline said, glaring at John.

“You don’t have to race,” Ryan said.

“I obviously have to race.”

Everyone got out and started taking off their shoes and clothes. I folded my dress up and put it down neatly on top of my pale purple sandals, white in the moonlight..

The moon was full and bright, with visible pocked craters. It was reflecting off the water. Little waves touched the shore, rolled back, touched again. I could smell the damp mineral smell of the rocks, the salty smell of seaweed, cigarettes even though no one was smoking.

Ryan put the cooler next to my pile and kicked his shoes off beside it.

“Loser grabs it,” he said.

“Stop trying to make rules now,” John said. “You’re scared.”

“I’m more scared of your 10 year old sister than I’ll ever be of you, John.”

“Well, fair. You should be. She’s terrifying.”

Caroline stood there in her bra and underwear, arms crossed over her stomach.

“What?” I asked her.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t be weird.”

“I’m not being weird. I just hate my body sometimes.”

“Everyone hates their body sometimes.”

“Not you.”

I laughed because I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t looking at me.

She was looking at Ryan again.

I felt the sick feeling come back, sharp, hot, clenching in my stomach.

Clouds rolled in front of the moon, black and ominous. It felt like we were in a bath of ink, thick and cloying. 

John yelled “Go!” and I shook it off as we all ran into the water. 

It was cold. I put my face into it, turning as I started swimming with hard, sure strokes. 

The lake opened around my body, heavy and dark and familiar. I could hear everyone behind me splashing, yelling, John swearing because losing ruined his entire day.

The raft was far away.

Further than I remembered them ever putting it. I wonder if it’s drifting, I thought as I pumped my arms.

The clouds moved and in the light I could see the buoys on my left. 

I breathed right, then left, keeping the raft in sight. It sat low and still, a dark square against the silver, moving water.

I reached it first, touching the side and pulled myself up. The wood scraped the inside of my thigh. John came next, then Ryan. Caroline followed, dog paddling, saying, “I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.”

John reached down to help her up and we all laid down on the raft, breathing heavy.

I leaned on my elbows and looked down at my stomach, watching the air move up and down as I breathed. 

I was a lot more cold after swimming. I sat up and crossed my arms over my chest, feeling self-conscious.

I looked over at Caroline. She had on a dark lace bra with a tiny pink bow in the middle. Matching underwear.

Ryan was wearing the same kind of athletic boxer briefs that he always bought. John was wearing boxers. I noticed a hole near the band.

“Nice underwear,” I said to him.

He looked down.

“Ventilation.”

Caroline laughed, and the sound seemed to echo.

I looked out at the deep clear water, seeing the crests of the small waves in the moonlight, and shivered.

Looking back at the shoreline, I saw someone walking next to the tree on the cliff edge, the silhouette large and hunched.

“Who is that?” I said, pointing and standing to try to get a better look.

The silhouette walked in front of the tree and disappeared in its backlit shadow.

“I don’t see anything,” Ryan said, standing to try to see the shoreline better.

“There was someone there.”

“Probably old man Daly,” John said.

“Mr. Daly died like fifteen years ago,” Caroline said.

“Oh. Well then probably not him.”

I sat back down, but kept looking.

The tree stood at the top of the cliff where the park met the beachclub property. It had been there forever, twisted toward the water. When I was little I thought it looked like a woman bending over to wash her long hair. 

No one was there now.

Ryan lay back on the raft, one arm over his eyes.

“God, this is nice,” he said.

I hated the sound of his voice. My eyes burned with tears. I put my head in between my arms, my knees up to create a cocoon and inhaled deeply, breathing out slowly.

The raft rocked gently. Not a lot. Just enough to make the sky move above us. The Big Dipper was high and clear. Somewhere I could hear a train blowing its horn, long, low, and far away. I could hear music too, coming from somewhere. 

John sat up.

“I need a frosty beverage.”

“No,” Caroline said immediately.

He looked at her.

“What?”

She didn’t say anything. Just shook her head and stepped back, sitting down with crossed legs. 

I looked back at the beach.

The cooler was there next to our clothes. White lid, red handle. I could see the little dent near the bottom from when John dropped it last summer.

The beach seemed to pull back slightly, not moving exactly, but becoming farther away in the way things do when you stare too long and your eyes shift perspective. 

“Does the shore look weird to you?” I asked.

Ryan lifted his arm from his eyes.

“What?”

“The shore. Does it look farther than it did?”

He turned his head and looked.

“It’s dark.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“It looks like the shore.”

John stood, stretching his arms over his head.

“I’ll settle this scientific debate.”

“John,” Caroline said.

“What?”

She didn’t answer.

The raft knocked softly beneath us. One corner dipped, then lifted.

“I’ll be right back,” John said, and jumped in. 

He surfaced as he shook water out of his hair and started swimming toward shore. His elbows and arms were white in the moonlight, moving neatly. He had a nice stroke, but we all grew up swimming on the lake every summer. 

The lake kept moving. Little waves. Moonlight. Nothing else.

Then his stroke changed.

One arm went too wide. His head came up too high. He looked like someone trying to swim in a dream.

“John?” Caroline called.

He didn’t answer.

“John,” Ryan yelled. 

John stopped swimming and turned in the water.

“What?”

His voice sounded far away.

Too far away.

“You ok?” Ryan called.

He looked like he yelled something back but we couldn’t hear it. 

John looked toward shore. Then back at us.

He didn’t look any closer to the beach. But he was starting to look really far away from us. 

“Are you guys seeing this?” I asked, feeling a dull sense of dread begin to grow in my stomach. 

Then he started swimming again.

Harder this time.

His arms slapped the water. His legs kicked it up, white and frothy in the moonlight. He looked annoyed first, then confused, then scared.

“Come back,” Caroline yelled.

He turned his head toward us, took water in his mouth, coughed, and tried to swim back.

For a moment I felt relief.

Then I saw his face.

He wasn’t getting closer to the raft. 

Ryan stood up.

“What the fuck,” he said under his breath.

John kept swimming. Toward us now. Then toward shore. Then toward us again. Not deciding, maybe. Or trying both. His strokes got shorter and uglier.

“John, float,” Ryan yelled. “Just float.”

John tried. I could see him roll onto his back. For one second his face tilted up toward the sky, pale and open.

Then a wave came up and moved over his face. 

It was a small wave that broke a little weird, jumping to the left when it shouldn’t have. 

He coughed and rolled back over.

“John!” Caroline screamed.

He raised one hand, his fingers spread and reaching up. 

His head went under. Then his hand. 

One second.

Two.

Three.

He came up again farther away, his mouth gasping. 

Caroline saw him first, “John!” she screamed, pointing. 

He was to the side somehow, near the buoys.

“Swim!” Ryan shouted, and his voice cracked.

John tried to answer.

I saw his mouth open.

I heard nothing.

Then he went under again.

Caroline screamed his name so loudly it made my ears hurt.

Ryan moved toward the edge.

“No Johnny,” I said, soft and involuntary, remembering that time he did the worm in front of our entire high school, the gym exploding as everyone cheered. 

“He went under.” Ryan said, moving towards the edge of the raft. 

“Don’t get in.”

“He went under, Elizabeth.”

The way he said my name made me hate him. Like I was the unreasonable one. Like I was just some thing that was always in the way.

“You can’t get to him,” I said, starting to shake in the warm night air. I wrapped my arms around myself. 

We both looked towards the shore at the same time. The lake looked normal. I could see the sand, pale and glittering in the moonlight. Our clothes in a pile next to the cooler that was sitting in the sand.

Caroline was on her knees, sobbing so hard she was struggling to breathe, with gasping, sharp breaths.

“John,” she kept saying. “John, come on. Please. John.”

Ryan stood at the edge, both hands on his head.

“We need to call someone.”

“Our phones are on the beach,” I said.

“Fuck.”

“Maybe someone saw.”

“No one saw.”

We all looked toward shore.

The man was there again.

He stood by the tree at the top of the cliff. I could see him more clearly now, or thought I could. He wore a hat with a brim. His arms hung straight at his sides.

“You guys,” I said, my throat starting to hurt. 

Caroline looked up.

She saw him and stopped crying.

“Who is that?” she whispered.

Ryan turned.

“I don’t see anyone.”

“He’s right there,” Caroline said, pointing, her arm shaking.

Ryan stared toward the cliff.

“There’s nobody there.”

The man did not move.

I could hear music again from somewhere near the beachclub. Old and kind of tinny, like my grandma’s radio she used to play when she watched us. 

Caroline stood suddenly.

“John?” she called. She looked down into the water, and then to the shore.

“No Caroline, please don’t go in” I said, begging. I looked at her, her blond hair wet, body pale in the moonlight. For a second I thought about sitting on the couch with her in our hoodies, watching Magic Mike, and eating Chinese food, both of us hungover from being at the club until 4am the night before.

“Johnny?” she said again, staring at the water. 

“Girl, I’m sorry, he’s gone.”

“I see him.”

She sounded strange. She was speaking in a flat monotone that made my stomach turn.

Ryan reached for her arm.

She pulled away.

“Caroline, stop.”

“He’s right there,” she said, and stepped off the raft like she thought the air was going to catch her. 

She went into the water and came up gasping, hair stuck to her face.

“John!”

She started swimming hard. Not toward shore exactly. Not toward where John went under either. Like she was heading towards something I couldn’t see. 

She stopped and looked back at us, impossibly far all of a sudden. 

Ryan put his hands on his head and sat down on the raft, putting his elbows on his knees. 

“What is happening” he whispered.

He turned to look at me with an expression I had never seen before.

Caroline started screaming in the water.

“Help! Help!”

Ryan stood up and jumped into the water.

I screamed his name.

He surfaced close to the raft, turned once, and started swimming toward her.

I could see his curly light hair. For a moment I remembered the first time I ever slept over, and I fell asleep with my face on his chest, his fingers gently tickling my arm as he pulled me even closer. 

He was fast. He always had been. Strong in an easy, fluid way. 

For a few seconds it looked like he would reach her.

He was close enough that I could see Caroline turn toward him. Close enough that I saw her face when she saw him. 

Then something shifted. My stomach lurched and I bent over, gagging. 

I looked back at the water. 

Ryan was near her, and then he wasn’t. Caroline was in front of him, and then to his left. I looked toward shore and it was further away than I’d ever seen it, even when I was in a boat on the water. I could still see our clothes in the sand, the cooler, bright and stupid in the garish pale light. 

“Ryan!” I yelled.

He looked back at me.

His face was white, with dark circles under his eyes.

“Lizard,” he said. He hadn’t called me that in months. 

The water made a loud thwacking sound as Caroline disappeared beneath the surface. It looked like she were being pulled. 

Ryan dove towards her. 

Came up.

Dove again.

When he came up the second time, he was farther away.

He looked around, confused, water running down his face. He turned toward shore, then toward me, then toward shore again.

The man by the tree had stepped out from the shadow. I could see his eyes, just watching. 

Ryan started swimming back to the raft.

I could hear him breathing. Or thought I could. A ragged, wet sound.

“Keep going,” I whispered.

He did.

He kept going.

The raft knocked back and forth gently beneath my feet. I knelt down at the edge, saying the Our Father out loud to myself without realizing I was doing it. 

Ryan stopped swimming.

His head was above water. His eyes were on me.

The lake lifted up over his face and he was gone.

I don’t remember screaming after that.

Maybe I did. I remember the taste of metal in my mouth and the feeling of my nails digging into my palms. I remember the raft rocking softly beneath me, incessantly. Back and forth, back and forth. 

The beach was still there.

The cooler.

The pile of clothes.

Ryan’s Jeep in the lot.

The vending machine light.

The moon.

The man.

Everything staring back at me, quiet and unblinking. 

I sat in the middle of the raft and wrapped my arms around my knees.

I could see water starting to come up between the boards in thin black lines, growing thicker. 

I looked up.

The shore looked close.

I focused my eyes on the cooler.

White lid. Red handle. Dark dent near the bottom.

The raft dipped.

Water ran over my feet.

I stood up and jumped into the cold, dark water. Pumping my arms and kicking my legs. Aiming for a white lid. Red Handle. Dent.

One arm. Then the other.

One arm. Then the other.

The beach started to look further away. 

I swam harder.

My shoulders began to burn. My chest hurt. Water slapped into my mouth. My legs felt loose and gelatinous. Like I was swimming through a dream. 

The cooler stayed clear in front of me.

Then my foot hit something as I kicked. 

I screamed and swallowed water.

I turned around as the raft rose up in front of me. 

I looked to shore. 

The man was there.

He had moved down from the cliff. He stood on the sand now, near the clothes. His eyes unblinking as they watched.

The water was black. I thought I saw something moving below me. Hair. Hands. Pale whisps of smoke underneath the water. 

Something brushed my ankle.

I kicked hard, screaming a gutteral “Aueghh!” 

I treaded water as I breathed in and out, in and out, hard and fast.

The beach looked close enough to reach.

The man had taken off his hat.

He held it in both hands in front of him. Standing and staring. I could smell freshly cut grass as I started swimming again in fast, sure strokes.