Root

it took root

it became truth

the

moment

I thought it.

Oh, Jolly.

Ha

Can you imagine it? Not all truths are the same size. Studying for math, 18 divided by 6 is 3, but that’s not how the numbers worked with the truth I suddenly had inside me.

Hey, realizing every path is open to you and will remain open to you for the rest of your life isn’t just encouragement.

It’s horror.

I was flooded: if me, why not Mom? Why not Dad? Were they already doing what they wanted with their lives? How about our teachers? Their parents, their friends? All of Samhattan? Was the entire city doing what they wanted with their lives?

Because…

they could.

I had to get up. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was going to die with it. My blood was moving too fast for my body. I remember thinking that. The music didn’t sound like songs anymore: just this FEELING and the feeling was that some truths are cold. TRUTH. Sudden, absolute, truth. The kind that changes your entire mind at once, and everything you thought was real…

was not.

I was scared. Overwhelmed. I couldn’t sit still. I walked toward the record player, walked back to the couch. Over and over, feeling like an animal in a cage. What was I doing in the living room of this house if I could be anywhere in the world?

A revelation like this is horrifying because it comes with pressure. You see? You can’t realize something like this and then not do anything about it. And here, I couldn’t even decide if I should turn down the dial. What if I turned it up and Mom came down and asked what I was doing and I told her I could do anything with my life and she said okay what do you want to do with it and I said I wanted to be a coach and she said okay then be a coach and THEN I got stuck on that path because I said it because I was too scared to say I don’t know? You see? I didn’t want to commit to anything because there was everything!

Yet I knew if I didn’t do something I was gonna die about it.

I hurried to the kitchen. I found Mom’s phone on the counter where she always leaves it and I called the police. I did it without asking myself why I would, without thinking this might be the wrong thing to do, this might make people ask you if you’re okay for the rest of your life.

I called 911 and when the woman at the other end said, “What’s your emergency?” I said:

I can do anything I want with my life.

She asked me to repeat it and I did but by then I wasn’t able to see straight, I could barely breathe, I thought this was it, you know, death, as Mom and Dad slept soundly upstairs, me, Kit, Kitty, gonna die down there in the kitchen, die from potential.