looked over at him, running in the distance. Another faulty, fucked-up brain in a healthy body.

I have the phone in my lap. Why does it feel so difficult to dial Claire’s number? Neuronal impulses, muscular contractions. That is all it will take. Nothing complicated. Nothing difficult. Yet it feels so much easier to take up a pen and write about it instead.

I felt excited, all the way home. Lit with nervous energy. I looked at the world outside—the strange, mysterious, unfamiliar world—and in it, I did not see threat, but possibility. Dr. Nash told me he thought we were really getting somewhere. He seemed excited. This is good, he kept saying. This is good. I wasn’t sure whether he meant it was good f

Protect me from what, though? From the truth. I thought the truth more important than anything. Maybe I am wrong.

ectopic

could see it all. The hand on the shoulder, then the hug. The mouths that find each other through the tears, the moment when guilt and the certainty that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop.

“It’s so difficult, isn’t it? To see what’s going on when you’re in the absolute middle of something? It’s only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.”

Perhaps I was worried that she would be able to read its contents reflected in my face, and they would no longer be mine to own.

Unimagined dreams and unexpected horrors. I was afraid. But, I realized, these truths are all I have. They are my past. They are what makes me human. Without them, I am nothing. Nothing but an animal.