20
I lay in bed, waiting to hear voices. My psychiatrist has asked me if I have heard voices, and told me if I do I’m to ignore them, so hearing voices must be a possibility. I’m nineteen, and new to anxiety, panic attacks, and everything implicit. I don’t know what I’m facing. I don’t know what might come. I don’t know anything, so a mental health professional is logically my guide. I’ve never been so conscious of my thoughts. Like everybody, I think about what I might have to do, but only inasmuch as how it connects to do what I need to do in the world around me –…
17
I dream again I’m running. There is a freedom in being so unencumbered, in feeling nothing but the speed of zipping through the world with an abandon I wouldn’t be able to duplicate in life, even if my right leg was still capable. This is all that’s important now: the motion. I revel in the velocity. There’s very little awareness of my surrounds, but it’s open terrain. Concrete pavements so that I’m thinking civilization but, distantly, mountains also. I don’t think there are any other people here with me either. I think this place has been built just for me, and for just this purpose. Running. If I could, I…