A Day, A Month, A Year

We are taught to expect a structure. A beginning, a middle, an end. Closure. We wait for the climax. The reveal. The resolution. It doesn’t come.

Last year, I thought I was done with the dream. The one where I never graduated. I understood the symbolism. I had the analysis. But it came back. It always comes back.

The medication distorts time. Some days I feel like myself. Some days I don’t know who that is. I’m either asleep or electrified. There’s no middle ground. In the dream, I’m back at school. I find out I never graduated. I didn’t even attend. The details change. The shame stays. I failed everyone.

I don’t know if I’m sad or just unwell. I cry without knowing why. I want to crawl out of my skin.

Last year I lost not one, but two puppies. What are the odds, right? So fucking funny. The first death broke me open. The second—left me hollow. I cried a little. Then I felt nothing. I took another dog so my one remaining wouldn’t be alone. But the grief didn’t go anywhere. It grew teeth. The new puppy wasn’t her. Her absence echoed.

My brain felt like gooey egg. Melted. Soft. Unstructured. I couldn’t unhear the scream, couldn’t undo the shift in the air. Something had snapped reality in half. I saw furry legs and told myself: it’s not her. It just looks like her. The ground was frozen. It’s hard to dig in winter. Her body, stiff like stone. She was gone. And you go deeper. And deeper.

Death is not pain. It’s just an ending. Sudden. Brutal. Like a gift you never got to unwrap. Ripped away. Life around you doesn’t stop, which makes it worse. How the fuck are you supposed to keep going? But there’s nothing else to do. So you do.

Summer light falls across the room, and you’re a child again. Hiding from the heat in a cold stone living room. Same sun from 1998. So am I even here now? Is any of this real?

I don’t think of Julian much anymore. I barely remember him. I remember he was my soulmate.

Marcella was trouble from the start. Beautiful. Wild. Biting everything. Running through rooms like lightning. Eyes like black buttons. Teeth falling out to make space for grown-up ones. She cried when a bee bit her in the mouth. Same cry I heard when she died.

Months passed. The void stayed.

And I go deeper. Chest heavy. I don’t want to go there. But she drilled a space into my heart. Why can’t I find peace?

We’re tapering the meds. Slowly. Apparently this antidepressant is hard to quit. They gave me stabilizers—same ones they use for opioid withdrawal. They call it “distress.” Brain zaps. Muscle twitches. Full meltdowns. Night sweats. Heat waves. Everything is annoying. Literally everything.

It’s month three. I don’t know where the climax is. Did I miss it? What’s the story supposed to be?

The movie in my head plays like this: You wake up. You get the call. You never finished school because you chose not to. You meant to go back. But you forgot how. Now you have to face it. The guilt. The years lost. Everyone you let down.

Where were you?

That’s the question. In the dream, I never know. Time just passed. It loops. Like penance on repeat. I know the script now. I sit through it. Quiet. Accepting punishment.

Then—

Tiny body in my hand. Long black-and-white hair. Black button eyes stare through the glass. So familiar. I know she belongs here.

And I can breathe again.