Minutes felt like hours; my pride did not easily allow me to experience this level of embarrassment, but my brain gave me no choice. The cool pavement was not as cool as it could have been, and I was keenly aware of both the awkward physical position I was in, as well as the curious gaze of onlooking strangers. The spin of the world was slowly integrating with my vision as I slowly tested my balance. Thankfully, this time, I did not lose consciousness. Unfortunately, the time and location were not ideal.
“If you’re going to have another one of your episodes, next time I recommend you do it over on the comfy grass over there. You know you’re fortunate I was here this time. Had I not caught you, I’m pretty sure you’d have knocked all the sense out of your pretty head.“ My eyes fixed on the face where the sound was coming from, and I tried to hold still the image of my co-worker. His voice was the singular comfort I took away from the situation as he was right — it could have been way worse.
“I feel like it’s been getting worse. I have to stop in my tracks and just completely re-orient myself. It’s like I’m suddenly made aware of the turning of the Earth, at best, and at worst, it feels like I’m whipping through space at some impossible speed.” This sense of vertigo and nausea was so sudden and intense that I was often forced to hug the ground out of some instinctual need to hold onto the very Earth itself, if for no other reason than to bind my fate to it — wherever it was hurtled, I definitely wanted to follow. It was becoming increasingly more evident that if I was to navigate this new part of my existence then surely I needed to learn how to adapt.
“That sounds so fucked!” The tone was a mix of dismissal, pity, disbelief, all tinged in a sort of caring way that only Eli could really pull off. Underneath it all, I knew he supported me, but he sometimes had a funny way of showing it.
“You make it sound like I have some sort of choice in the matter. No one chooses this. If you think for a moment that it doesn’t scare the existential piss out of me, you’re so very wrong.” I righted myself so that I could meet him eye to eye. We had been friends since freshman year of college, but only recently had we grown close.
“Besides”, I continued, “the final scans came back this week. Completely normal physiology. Completely normal blood work. By all accounts, I’m a normal ass person, just like you, but this world decided to single me out just to shit on me. Fuck me in particular, am I right?”
Eli’s brow furrowed briefly, as if contemplating his next words carefully. “Truly, you’re not right in the head.”
I punched him in the arm, ineffective at best, but it sent the right message. The playful interaction seemed to put the small gathered crowd at ease, and their watchful, curious staring began to disperse.
“Have you considered following up with Nat? She seems to think that you never really recovered, spiritually, after the accident.”
The accident. Or the Incident. The unfortunate occurrence. No matter how many names I tried to come up with to label it, none of the terms changed my relationship with what had happened. I have always viewed myself as a person of great mental fortitude, and if I were to believe what the various doctors told me about my physical recovery, I should be back at full capacity. I didn’t even hit my head, which made it much easier to brush off Eli’s comments about being down several gumballs in ye olde gumball machine.
“Yea…. some days I still can’t believe I was found and was still alive. I remember fading out of consciousness and panicking when I saw my own blood. As I yelled for help, I eventually came to the conclusion that this was it. I was donezo. I basically gave up and my eyes stopped working. I couldn’t hear anything. I had made peace with dying and was waiting to just pass. It felt like forever — an impossible amount of time. It was so strange — time. I had no sense for place, and I was able to see impossible geometry and experience it for what seemed forever. I have no fucking clue what it was that I saw, but whatever it was, I have never experienced it since. And thank god for that; I thought that I was meeting God, but whatever it was that was out there did not have my own interests in mind. Sure, they were happy to see me at first, but right before I came to, they suddenly became so… so… so mad. Like, it seemed like they were infuriated that I wasn’t actually going to die.”
“So, like a great cosmic asshole? Thanks for that; I didn’t need the knowledge that there is some entity out there that is existentially bent on gutter stomping us out. Talk about a butt hurt grim reaper, am I right?”
My creative mind latched onto the flippant images that Eli birthed into the universe. I imagined a too skinny grim reaper riding upon a too skinny pale horse and I smiled as I imagined the chaffing pain it would have caused it before responding. “Nothing that had such a form. God, maybe you’re right though. I’ll see if the offer still stands with Natalie and maybe she can see if something is out of line.
Natalie was another friend from college. She was the definition of a free spirit and only ever really cared about the unseen nature of the world. It was sometimes difficult to relate to her as Eli and I both wondered how she was going to make a living in the world. She was so occupied with understanding the nature and order of the universe writ large that it always amazed us that she found both the time and means to find nourishment to keep herself going. Still, for as out there as she was, we both appreciated her kind nature and gentle demure. Regardless of my current predicament, I was overdue for having visited her; I had not seen her since college let out for the year. Thankfully, she did not live very far away from campus, so visiting her was a very real possibility.
Eli and I had stayed on campus this year to further our own academic pursuits. I was involved in studying neurophysiology, while Eli was immersed in studying quantum mechanics. Our interest and relationships to knowledge were strange. I had often viewed psychology as a soft science and physics a hard science, but our individual areas of pursuit within these knowledge domains appeared to reverse as I began to study the autonomic nervous system and he began studying theoretical physics. While I measured the brain objectively, he postulated the nature of hidden dimensions that are not easily observed. While Eli loved to make broad sweeping statements about the nature of matter, and how all matter is actually mostly made up of empty space between individual atoms, I loved to assure him that the sparse nature of matter mostly just applied to his own brain. I loved him like a brother, and for the most part, I think, he thought of me as his sister. Our playful existence could have easily been interpreted as something more intimate, but as it turns out, Eli didn’t have the confidence to try.
“You’ve learned your lesson, right?” his voice broke my internal dialogue and brought me out of my daydream.
“Yes, I get it. I have a new adopted ethos about doing stupid shit while alone. I won’t go hiking near sheer cliffs by myself anymore.”
“Good job, Jen. And why is that?” I could feel his attention on me as if it were a drape around my shoulders, holding me down and safe to the once rapidly turning Earth in its own unique caring way.
A deep sigh. “Well, as you often state, ‘The dildo of consequence often arrives unlubed.’”
A silly laugh from Eli as he channeled his best Walter White. “You’re goddamn right.”
