December 11

The night before I woke to a dark 5am, I was panicking about my toothache. I had just gone to the dentist, sat in the chair for a restless two hours, gasping when I felt a pinch and wiggling my nose to free it from the numbness. I spent the rest of my day in worry, cursing the pain, the searing soreness of my gums. My worry bled into the night, and no amount of funny tv shows could push it away, so I did just about all I could do, I went to bed.

When I awoke,I found myself still encased in that worry, but as I listened to music and brushed those aching teeth of mine, I began to feel a weight slowly lift off my shoulders. The anxiety was sliding down my back like melting snow off a mountain, sliding down into the floor like runoff into a lake. By the time I hopped in my sister’s car and she got me a small coffee, I had finally felt relief.

We chatted our whole way to school, the place in which I was to converse loudly and animatedly with my best pals as the teacher sat in the back and every so often joined in to heckle. We were assigned an art project. We were to create art based on another piece of art, to take the poems we had been studying and turn them into anything we wanted. I happily told my teacher that I intended to paint the pages of an old book, and he seemed pleased, though he forgot the idea later on. I didn’t mind. I was too excited to create.

I took a test about the American Government and at the end of it, was asked what I would change about it, if I could change anything. And as I sat there, pen to my chin, leg over the other, I thought about all the neglected ones in my country. I recall the time I drove through the city with my sister and stuck my head out the window. I can still hear her telling me to stick my head back in once we reached the bridge where a colony of cardboard tents and the homeless resided. I shrunk back into the car, defeated but oh so lucky. I think about the time I watched a man dig through a trash can for his next meal back when I was thirteen. I can still remember crying to my mother to bring him some food.

“Please, can we feed him?”

I gave a dollar to Salvation Army earlier this month. It was my last one and so I couldn’t get a snack from the vending machine when I had forgotten to eat breakfast one morning, but it didn’t seem quite as important to me. Nothing about me has ever seemed quite as important.

Ultimately, on my test I wrote: “If we want our government to be about representation, then the People should actually be represented.” Thinking back, I should’ve added this: “Leave no one behind.” From deep within my memory, I recall a time when my eldest sister found herself caught in a long embrace with a poor sobbing woman on the side of the street. I don’t remember her name or what had happened to her, but I know that she had probably needed to cry for a very long time. Sometimes, so do I.

I answered a few questions in science class and felt proud, then I read quietly as my friends boomed in laughter all around me. sounds of comfort.

My mother picked me up and took me to the store. We walked in and out of every aisle and didn’t argue, not even once. I don’t remember the last time we did that, just existed together, happily. We did that today and then we got lunch and watched a movie, an oh so brilliant movie.

Mom hated it, called it a waste of the last hour and a half of her life, but it drew closer to my heart the more I thought about it. Later on, I texted my boyfriend and then even later on, I laid out on the lawn with a towel, listening to the same music I had listened to this morning, and explained the plot of the movie, at least in my eyes, to my mother.

“The point was that as a little kid, it’s easier to use your imagination and make the most of your circumstances, even if they aren’t very good ones.”

She wouldn’t let up. I kept going.

“The ending was metaphorical. She didn’t actually go to Disney World, but she imagined it. She went back to her happy place in her head, what she does when things get difficult. She was making the most of her life. She was being a kid.”

Now, I couldn’t seem to stop.

“Think about how, the writer and director looked at Disney World, a rich corporation full of people rich enough and lucky enough to afford such an expensive vacation, and then they decided to give a voice to the poorer outskirts of that dream world. They decided to focus on the unlucky ones, the real ones. They exist. They’re real.”

I knew that I’d watch that movie again and again, that I would never get it out of my head. I told my mom that one day I was gonna write books like that, books that mean something, that lift up the voices of the unheard. I laid back down, squinted in the sun, and promised it to the clouds.

I took a walk around my house through the overgrown vines and under the big tree in the backyard. My dad found me as I was came around the corner. I liked that he saw me. It’s time my family get to know me and see what I do. I do things like watch movies other people hate and talk long walks around my own house. I make promises with the clouds. I do so unapologetically.

Up in the sky, I see two planes. One is leaving behind a long, white trail that doesn’t disappear for a little while. The other, had a beautiful white trail only following closely behind in its wake, leaving the sky behind it unmarked. I explain to my mom the difference between chemtrails and contrails, tell her that contrails are my favorite things. I recall how my boyfriend and I, back when we were just middle schoolers, when we knew each differently, would argue over what they were, those white trails behind planes. He’d always says they were chemtrails, I’d say contrails. Later on, I read a science facts book and discovered that some are contrails and some are chemtrails. We were both right.

Eventually, I had to go inside and get on with my life. I wrote part of a story I had been working on, finished a book about short stories, and hugged it tight as I did, and laid in bed, admiring my good day. But not only admiring it, realizing that I had had it. I had a good day. A genuine, adventurous day.

And in the end, isn’t that all we ever want? When we go to sleep anxious and panicking, isn’t that what we hope for in the morning?

A good day.

Turns out, it’s pretty possible.