The mansion has doors and stairways that lead to nowhere and windows that look into other rooms in the house. It has forty bedrooms and forty-seven fireplaces. There’s a bathroom door with a window in it, so a nurse could keep watch on Mrs. Winchester while she was relieving herself. As we toured the house, I remember feeling a certain kind of kinship with Sarah. I understood what it was like to live in fear that something horrible was looming just around the corner. I also concluded on that field trip that if I ever did die in a school shooting, I would spend the afterlife haunting the monsters who manufactured the gun.

I’m not exactly sure why I’m telling you all this. The first draft of my essay was about how sad I was when my grandmother died, and I was really sad, but mostly because I didn’t know her that well. The prompt said to write about my greatest struggle, and my greatest struggle is my own brain. A brain that’s terrified you will read this and think, We can’t let this head case into Harvard. But my brain is also the brain that can recite entire passages from To Kill a Mockingbird and entire scenes from the movie Booksmart. It’s the brain that speaks Farsi better than anyone else in my Iranian American household. It’s the brain that’s writing her first novel. It’s the brain that considers empathy my superpower and my cross to bear.

Come to think of it, I was wrong when I said I’ve braved nothing. I am braving anxiety. I am braving mental health stigmas. I am braving my own hang-ups and insecurities every day, all the time. But I want to do it on my terms and in my own time and in my own words. My dream is to be a writer and to hone my craft as an undergraduate at Harvard. But to be a writer, you have to live. And to truly live? You have to leave the house.

I let out a breath and glance up at my computer. Gideon stares back at me and smiles proudly.

“How do you feel about it?” he asks.

“How do you feel about it?” I ask him.

“I asked you first!”

“I feel good about it,” I admit. “I think… it’s the most honest thing I’ve ever written.”

Gideon nods. “There’s blood on the page, Parisa. I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

He runs his hand through his hair and shakes his head. “Yes, you could have.”