We waited in line forty-five minutes at least.
“So I told the car salesman I was uncomfortable driving already and he was super pushy.”
“Oh yeah, they are always like that.”
“And so, like, he convinces me to get in the drivers’ seat, and Cat, you knooow I am already so anxious.”
“Definitely.”
“But I do it anyway.”
“You just have your permit? Your learner’s permit?”
“Yeah, just my permit.”
“Ok.”
We are in line for the log flume. The last water ride of the day. We haven’t eaten in hours.

“So,” she looks toward the right, “I ask him how far we are going to go. He reassures me it’s just around the block, like, maybe around the neighborhood. And so we start and everything is fine. We just go around the block and he’s doing his salesman thing, pointing out all the features, the airbags, the radio.”
She leans in close to me.
“I’m pretty sure it was a CD player at that time so he’s going on and on,” she is gesturing to the air, “about how the CD player is great.”
“And you’re fifteen?”
“Yeah, ummm,” she looks up at the rafters, “fifteen or sixteen.”
She gestures to the air and looks to the right, up, again.
“But a CD player would have been a selling factor for you then.”
“Yeah, yeah, of course and we are driving and it’s going great and I’m still nervous but it’s fine. “
“Is your dad in the car?”
“No, he isn’t. He’s back at the dealership talking to the other dealers, probably about paperwork.”
“Ah.”

I am looking to the left a lot. The TV screen keeps playing an ad for the new wooden roller coaster: invadr which is strange to me. The line begins moving again so we take a few steps forward as Leana continues her story.
“So we get back to the dealership, NO ISSUES, Cat and as we are pulling into the parking lot, I don’t know why, but instead of pressing the brake, I pressed the gas and all I remember seeing is someone’s computer like come at the window towards me. Their monitor.”
We both hear the announcement for Invader and move forward.
“HAHAHAHA. Oh my god! That must have been so scary.”
“It was so embarassing.”
“Did you go through like glass?”
“The wall, I went through the wall.”
“Hahaha. Wow! What happened? Was your dad pissed?
“I mean,” she shrugged, “I told everyone I was nervous and then did it anyway so I think they were feeling bad about it. I think they realized that they had talked me into something I didn’t want to do.”

“Well, also you were a minor with a learner’s permit.”
“Yeah exactly. I think my dad worked out a deal with them or something.”
The line moved steadily. It was hot. We were closer.
“Holy shit.”
“It was scary.”
The TV hung above us in the rafters near the fan. It showed a man dressed like a viking getting into the wooden coaster and pulling down his lap bar getting ready for the ride. We both watched it. We had seen it several times now.
“Why does it keep playing the Invadr preview?”
“Oh maybe cuz they are advertising the newest coaster. The log flume is so boring. No one cares about that. Do you want to ride the Invadr next?”
Leana looked at me, cocked head.
“Oh hell to the no.”
I laughed.

I was sobbing in the net actually. Finally a movement inside. There was no stopping it. I didn’t care how many wolves came, I wanted it done. Let me loud about it, dramatic, terrorized.  Two more had arrived, the betas, so the intermediary rushed back to get his portion. The four alphas licked their paws and sauntered over. No one moved in close to me.They sat surrounding me. They were not hungry. They did not need to rush. They sat surrounding me as I sobbed unsure of whether or not I longed for the sun or my friend more, or just a blanket, or just the sharpie on my skin. The snow had begun. Lightly it fell, making no sound at all.

We got to the front before we realized this was not the log flume which looking back made complete sense. We were moving up in line, and remember I hadn’t been to this park in years, and we could see the cars now. There was only a dad and his son in front of us.
“Cat,” she started. “This is NOT the log flume.”
The cars were wooden and green. I don’t remember any of this.
I turned immediately to the man to the left of me, “Is this the log flume?”
“No, that’s the log flume,” he pointed to the right, where Leana had been looking but it was covered by the infrastructure of the shelter for the line. “This is Invadr.”
“Oh, hell fucking no, Cat. I am not riding this. No way. No way.”
Leana was flustered and I was laughing. Hysterically actually.
“Oh shit! Can you imagine if you got on this with your fear of accidentally being trapped on a roller coaster?”
“Oh my god, no, Cat, no.”
I was laughing.
“Can you even imagine?”
The next car rolled up. I looked at her, huge smile.
“I didn’t know. I thought this was the log flume.”
“Yeah.”
“I really didn’t.”
We hadn’t eaten in hours.
“I really didn’t. I thought this was the log flume.”
“I knew,” she began, “I knew it was weird they kept playing the advertisement for the Invader as we waited in line. That never made sense to me. I’m getting off.’
I stifled another laugh but it was hard.
“I’m gonna ride it.”
“Of course you are.”
When it was our turn, she stepped over the car to wait for me at the exit and I shuffled in, anxious feeling very unprepared for this ride. I beamed, she shook her head at me.
“I really didn’t know!”
She smiled at me, kind of smirking.
“I’ll let you know how it goes.”

I hate wooden roller coasters. They are rickety, hurt my head and feel less structurally sound than steel ones but I enjoy adrenaline. Leana had said to me earlier, as I looked up at Griffon,you’re not like me, you want to ride these rides. The coaster rounded the bend and began moving up so where I was positioned, to the left of me, was the log flume going right underneaththe tracks. A happy family smiled at me. I smiled back.

“I just have fears that, like, the coaster will go off the track and you’re stuck there, the whole ride. You can’t get off.”
“Yeah,” I had nodded, admiring the Grifffon’s height.
“You should go on it,” she said. “You’re not like me. You want to ride these rides. You always like this stuff.”

Leana and I had known each other since we were five. That’s what I thought as the coaster began. I kept laughing. She would have never gotten on. She would have figured it out like she did. We even left line to go get her hat from the locker and got back in and both times didn’t notice the sign said “Invadr.” Both times she let me lead her. Both times we missed the sign. I was laughing. She was right. I want to ride these rides.
She was there when I pulled up, hair fucked up, messy. I began laughing immediately.
“How was it?”
I shrugged.
“Honestly, I don’t really like wooden coasters but we had waited this whole time. Can you imagine?”
“No, oh my god,” she looked down at her shoe, kind of leaned over with light laughter. “I would have freaked out.”
“If you had gotten on,” I led her down the ramp, turning around slightly to tell her, “you would have realized this wasn’t the log flume immediately. The log flume goes right underneath Invadr.”

“Really?”
“Yeah,” I gestured my arm to show her, kind of rolled it like a wave.
“You would have panicked.”
We stopped to admire the photo booth searching for my picture.
“There,” I pointed.
Beaming and filtered, I looked young.
“Wanna ride the log flume, now? It’s right there.”
She shrugged, kind of sighed.
“Sure.”
We had not eaten in hours and had been on our way to dinner for two.

“Suffering ennobles the sufferer and edifies the observer; it doesn’t have to kill you and is not so disabling that you cannot recover from it, find compensation for it, restore the rhythm of your life despite the full stop you came to.”

–Repair, Elizabeth Spelman

painters paint, writers write, filmers film.

if you do it, you are it. that’s it. live in the liminal.

“How long is it?”
I was driving. There was no music on. I was too tired and needed to focus.  Leana leaned her head against the window. It was seven am. The drive was two hours. We had been up since five.
“About four hours if we take the red trail. The blue trail is much lighter, only an hour and a half total. Not worth it.”
I sipped water from the aluminum bottle. Craving coffee, I submitted to self care. I knew the hike was long and it was cold but it was beautiful. Worth it.
“What’s the other one, you said?”
She perked her head up to look at me and then quickly covered a yawn.
“The black trail,” I turned my head to glance at her. “But I think it’s too long for us.”
“The black trail? Why would they name it something so ominous?”
“To scare tourists from trying it.”
We were in Canada for a long weekend. It was five pm and the black wolf hit my back once more just to watch the little net twirl, just to hear the branch squeak, just to wonder how long it’s gonna take before the whole thing collapses. And me, my sharpie tucked neatly away in my pants, unreachable, I for once had some leisure. Looked like I had the pleasure of letting an hour pass without documenting it somewhere and watching the sky turn black, as promised, without any true sunset or portrait.

If you asked my friends what I was doing during that time, they wouldn’t know. They would say something like fine or ok, I think, I haven’t heard from her but no one would have known. They surely wouldn’t have set foot in my apartment for more than a second.

“You added more pictures?”

That was generous. My apartment was slathered in photographs like wallpaper, everywhere. Feral, I stood at the doorway with my coat already on waiting to go.

“Yeah, it brightens things.”

She kind of nodded, looked around, nothing too revealing. She had to use the bathroom.

“How’s school?”

I began to list them in my head:
1. a three year programfor my MSW
2.40 hours a week as a case manager for those with severe mental health disorders, a case load of 32
3. WINTER IN PHILADELPHIA
4. A part time escort
5. Writing a book that mixes elements of fiction and truth and poetry into a labyrinthian composition reflecting my shadow.
6. volunteering with an organization that works with street based sex workers in Kensington
7. I have begun smoking weed.

“Everything is truly good, Selene.”

8. Complete and utter isolation.

“Great! Let’s go to dinner.”

“You want revenge or long sleep?”
“Revenge.”
“Lol, Catarina.”
“What?”
“I mean, you always pick revenge.”

If you asked my friends what I was doing during that time, they wouldn’t know. They would say something like fine or ok, I think, I haven’t heard from her but no one would have known.

“But you aren’t choking?”
I was suddenly very careful and aware of where I was. I am in the psych hospital a place where the state will 302 you if you present as a danger to yourself or others, or are unable to care for yourself.
“No, I am not.”
I begin listing things in my head to calm me:

  1.  sometimes resilience is the only consolation
2. I need to check in on Evelyn, Patricia, Carlos, Peter and Janelle first thing monday   morning.
3. I forgot to enter that note about Rinita.
4. Strength accumulates in the body in a series of traumas that turn into seizures if you’re not careful with how much media you consume.

“I feel confused.”
My legs were crossed and so were my arms. I take up as little space as possible, even in panic, I shrink to the size of a bean.
“Tell me more.”

Put me in your pocket. I began suddenly in the middle. He said mmm hmm when appropriate. I gestured to the air a lot. I let tears sting my face for the first time since my last partner told me I weaponized my own emotion to grab power.. He appeared amused by the way I mentioned synchronicity enough times and then on the other hand, but I would say it

“On the other hand.”

And I would dive into all the ways I understood textbook psychology, and stress and the ways it builds in you. What it is like to be surrounded by people with delusions.
“You understand, doing this,”I wave my hand his way. “The ways in which we infuse with others’ beliefs unnoticed.”

Tell him about the apparitions, Cat.
“You can’t take my spiritual practice away from me. It informs a big part of me.”
Tell him about the mirrors.
Intentional, distraught but I intentionally marched my way into the anxiety. It’s the anxiety of the ritual, of the ways in which I recount things.
“And then I began to list them.”

1. Write the note for Rinita
2. Check on Carlos first, but call Janelle and Peter, then go see Evelyn.
3. Buy wet food.
4.Throw away the stone on your dresser altar, it is cursed.
5. Jump off the bridge, Cat.
The bondage of safety, I craved safety.
Tell him how many times you rearranged your house this year.

“I can’t untangle these things and yet, I realize I am fully here and present in this body being eaten alive by the stress of my job and no finances and just trying to calm myself.”

I could have told that man I was thinking of tying myself to the bedpost and setting my apartment on fire but that I had no plan to do it and just imagined it because I compartmentalized emotion and understood that my ire at a system that failed had to be represented visually and turned internally.

Tell him about all the times you wore the red bracelet.

“It’s not suicidal ideation, it’s frustration.”

I was in no danger. He wasn’t listening and he won’t listen in the future. And I know, and I unburdened you of the mystery, because he referred me to a psychiatrist that doesn’t even take my health insurance, didn’t check my throat in which he would have discovered a goiter caused by hyperthyroidism which was causing several spikes in mania throughout the day leading to trembling panic attacks, spikes in mood, drops in mood and encouraging my sugar addiction.  This would, in the future, grow so large that it would lead me to almost choke to death several times before medical intervention became necessary. He let me walk home, exhausted from sobbing for two straight hours about how my job was so stressful I did not know if I could last another day, that I sometimes think I make things happen with my mind but could also see myself falling into my clients delusions, that I was surrounded by nothing but people with bipolar, borderline and delusions, the only friends I had were either in crisis or community organizers so hanging out required untold amounts of labor poured into a person or  project, that I daydream to escape this and that my spiritual practice guides some of my manifestation belief so it was hard to convince me that manifestation wasn’t real.

“That sounds confusing.”

He let me walk home that night in my tiny shorts. It had rained a little, so I was dotted with drops and full of terror.  When I see you again, look me dead in the fucking eye and tell me men listen to women because your number is written in red and I distinctly remember asking you. I distinctly remember asking you. I distinctly remember walking across the bridge and asking you for help. You said (I do this out of spite),  I distinctly remember because I catalog error

“I can’t get into any of this right now.”

“datura moon”