Tonya's Disillusion

Before Tonya discovered the cheat sheet to restoring the loss of one’s power, it was social suicide to reveal such information to anyone. Stories like that of whole communities shunning the discharged who would be exiled to lives as hermits kept people from ever revealing their losses. However, after Tonya had discovered how to recharge the power of love, though it was still embarrassing if ever such news about oneself slipped out, now it was something one could bounce back from. The catch for the cheat code to life was that a person had to know from where all one’s power got taken from or wasted on. To be able to recharge one's powers it was important for the uncharged to realize the where, why, their powers had disappeared or else the recharger volunteers would lose their powers in the process.

Today, Tonya was meeting with a tsipareht, a form of therapist who helps with figuring out the where, why, and how. Walking down the corridor, with the navy-blue painted walls and white doors, she couldn’t help notice the knot in her throat getting harder to swallow. At the end of the hall to the right, she paused in front of the door. She knocked on the door and when there was no answer she decided to enter.

Facing the door, parallel to it was a brown desk with a minimalist look, only with a desktop and it’s parts, a blank calendar on the table and a cup full of pens on a corner. Behind the desk, was a black swivel chair. In the moment her eyes laid upon the desk she noticed the spark of a portal. A little shiny speck growing brighter as it spiraled into a large human sized oval and then a blurry scene that became clearer. A lady stepped through it and she could see a man holding her hand behind her. “I’ll be back, I’ll call you back around 8 o’clock so we can open it again.” They gave each other a peck before the sparkle appeared and spiraled backwards into nothing but the room.

“Tonya, I can’t believe it’s really you!” the lady walked around the desk over to hug her.

“Mersa, I’d say the same but I did seek you out so it wouldn’t make sense. Haha,” wrapping her arms around Mersa felt awkward to her body. “I didn’t mean to pull you away from your travels?”

Mersa indicates Tonya to take a seat in the sofa and this is when Tonya takes in the room. It’s what you’d expect from a tsipareht’s room. Lime-green walls with a baby blue ceiling, was a weird combination of colors Tonya thought, but the grey couch with it’s plush pillows stretched along the wall, the plotted plants in the corners and the pink cushioned bay window with frilly pink curtains that let in the golden rays of the sun really made for a peaceful, warm feeling. The brown coffee table had tissues and a box of chocolates, it separated the couch from two comfy chairs, one of which Mersa had taken a seat in.

“I was pleasantly surprised when my secretary said Thee Tonya Chesterfield had scheduled an appointment with me. I had taken the month off from helping my patients with tracking because my husband and I felt it was about time to make time for us. But when I heard how you had contacted my office I couldn’t wait for the day of our meeting, even just now as I left Jake he joked about how I haven't been able to stop talking about us meeting.” She added, “Oh but I hope you know that you didn’t really have to schedule a meeting in order for us to catch up.”

“Yes, well. This wasn’t a social visit…” a pang of guilt hit’s her when she sees Mersa’s brows wrinkle for a second. She keeps going, “actually, I was hoping if you could help me track when it was and what it was that took away my powers.”

“Waiit, wait wait. I’m not understanding, didn’t you write in your book that you lost your power when you experimented with trying to save your boyfriend? This is the love story of the century, wasn’t it during one of those trips that your love fueled but then that it discharged during the car accident and that the moment he died, your power died with him. I mean, I guess that if your power died when he died it would be simple to restore your power but didn’t you try to save him with your power during the accident and you discharged yourself in the process? Also I thought you didn’t care abou-”

“I lied...about it all.” Tonya had forgotten how prone to rambling Mersa had always been. She didn’t need a whole summary of her book. She had been the one to write it after all. Mersa didn’t say anything, “ I guess I may have lost my power then, and I guess I was truthful about not wanting it back, but I’ve changed and I want to be recharged. Except none of my methods are working for me. I figured there must have been some advancements in the study of this field in the past twenty years and I just decided to reach out to someone I knew had made a successful career for herself, who hopefully wouldn’t mind too much in giving me some help.”

Mersa got up and walked back to her desk, “Well, I must admit I am a little disappointed that your only reaching out for your sake but I’m just so glad you’ve reappeared, that I’m ok with that.” She opened a cabinet and pulled out a little black moleskin notebook. “You’re right to assume our field of expertise on Recharging has developed over the years. We have methods to help with getting so in touch with oneself that sometimes community is no longer needed to get recharged. Sometimes, losing one’s power has more to do with a subconscious off switch than the actual loss of electricity to the house. We’ve developed these little books that can help track your thoughts and keep them in order.” She made her way back and reached over the coffee table to hand the notebook to Tonya before settling back into her chair.

Tonya opened the book and with dismay saw the rectangular silver mirror within the inside of the cover of the book. She slammed it shut. “Is there some other method?" Mersa looked at her in confusion. Tonya explained, "I’ve recently been gifted an award of $20,000 because of my pioneer work on RECHARGE but I don't think I can handle it, right now. Being in hiding is the only way they can't reach out to me and force the money on me. I don’t want to scan back into the world yet.”

Mersa took this in before responding, “I suppose I could scan myself in and make the account in my name and then put the notebook into a combination of manual-sleep mode so you wouldn't have to scan...” she seemed to be in conversation with herself. Turning to Tonya she said, “You realize that if I were to do this you wouldn't have the benefits of automatic organization of thoughts? You’d have to do it the old fashioned way of pen to paper.”

“I’ll manage.”

__________________________________________

The fundamentals to understand our power is within the discovery that emotions, an internal state of being, have a physical feature. It is that emotions can affect the atoms of the universe. For instance, the theory is that if a person was mad the day’s events would be affected to trigger the increase of anger and so their emotions and their physical reality would feed into each other. It applies to other emotions as well, like with a person waking up happy, their day would only be set up for wonderful surprises which would only feed into that person’s increase of happiness. When humans lived more primitive lifestyles, they called it manifestations. They thought it was by affirmations that the universe would be affected. Ironically, the power itself was more primitive, based solely on emotion. But as all theories fall short of the ideal when compared to how they actually work in real life, since humans are complex creatures such loops of emotion and how life is affected are imperfect and not as strong. Notably not everyone had control and very few had emotions with strong effect, if any, with affecting the molecules. Actually only two emotions of power could truly be mastered by the majority of the population, the power of love and hate. Hate as a power would always end in tragedy and was all about destruction. Love was the opposite and it was all about connection. Even to this day, people still haven't worked out all the kinks to our powers like there was the difficulty of not knowing how to get charged again after becoming discharged, which is when you lose your power. As the pioneer of RECHARGE I really did open the field of possibility to bounce back from discharging. But there are some exceptions, like myself, because some people sometimes don’t get their power.

Tonya had thought reflection had been a good place to start but Mersa had disagreed. According to her, it was as if Tonya had been writing another book. She wanted to see more about Tonya's emotional state. Look inside, she had said. Tonya hadn’t realized how much harder pen to paper would be as compared to the privileged technological advancements of her time, with how hand placement on the page could trigger the mental-object connection and allow the words in her mind to simply materialize on the page.

I shouldn’t say this, but it’s hard for me sometimes to see the point in living. There’s so much hard stuff to deal with when it comes to life and people make it that much more complicated. I don’t really like living and I refuse to wonder if life is worth living because then I’d turn to suicide which isn’t an option I’d ever want to take. I feel stuck.

When I was younger I took everything to mean what it was. Life, the world, it was simple. When I lost the ability to naturally think this way, I consciously tried to see the world that way again and for the longest time it worked but then I got to an age where my emotions had a way of stirring things up. Like when I lost my friendship to Rebi because I wanted to help her and instead I pushed her to hard. I guess, I decided to get rid of my emotions as a solution to pacify my sudden urges of fixing unfixable things.

Looking back I realize that as I got older the beauty and my positive emotions towards living only dissipated.

I don’t think I’ll ever be like I was when I was a child and that used to make me sad but after I turned the volume off on my emotions it made for more livable conditions. I just became numb and yes I was living life like a walking zombie. It was working for me. But I guess it’s not working anymore. I need help.

“Aha, yes!” Mersa said. Her yelp almost jolted Tonya out of her seat. “Weltschmerz! That’s what’s sucking your power, or at least why you don’t have your pow-”

“What’s that? German? Wel-welsmez-welsmerz?

“Weltschmerz! A mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of world with an ideal state. Girl. even with all the wonder in our world you’ve still managed to get Weltschmerz.”

“World weariness?”

“Yeah, and I know exactly how to help get your powers back.”

Tonya felt hopeful. Maybe, she would soon get back to her old self and even use the $20000 for a cause she was passionate about.