Phrenectomy

It’s fun, at first, like that waterslide at Six Flags New England. You know the one. But you start getting dizzy. And bored. You start to burn from the friction and the gravity pulling you further downward. You get lonely, too. Are your friends even behind you anymore? Did they go down at all? The person who went down the slide before you, are they even still there? It’s turbulent despite moving in slow motion. You can see things before they happen, even. But you’re so busy spiraling that you don’t realize you have the ability to stop these things from happening. You’re trying to learn to swim when you really just need a life raft. The only reason you went down the damn slide in the first place is that you thought maybe it would be fun this time. That this time, you wouldn’t absolutely hate waterslides. You would change your mind, and things would be okay. It turns out, I still fucking hate waterslides, but now I’m stuck on the world’s longest waterslide. There’s no water at the bottom, either. It’s like lava. Or something. Corrosive acid, maybe. But someone reaches out, and I take their hand. They pull me up and into a warm, dry hug. But now I need to walk back up all the stairs to the top again. Sometimes, the stairs are okay. Merely exhausting. But other times, the stairs are painful, and I can’t breathe. But I have to keep pushing. I have the hand that pulled me up and then some. Now that I’m off that damn slide, I can think clearly and return to my usual state of mental homeostasis. I make friends at scenic overlooks. They help me carry the rocks and sticks I found along the way that I thought were cool but are now more burdensome than they’re worth. It gets a lot easier once you climb far up enough to see the sun again, and eventually, you think you can see the top of the stairs. Sometimes the sun is hot, and the waterslide looks so refreshing and enticing. But you have to remember why it is that you’re climbing up Mt. Everest’s worth in stairs, and take them one at a time. I am not one of those people who can climb stairs two at a time to prove something or assert dominance or whatever, sorry. (If you’re super tall, I get it. But I’ve never seen a taller person go up the stairs two at a time.) If you start going up the stairs two at a time, and you expect me to follow you, I will purposefully continue to go one stair at a time at the most comfortable pace possible. Last one to the top is a rotten egg? Aged and fermented eggs are a delicacy in some cultures. I will take my sweet ass time, thank you. Anyway, eventually you have enough support and good times under your belt, and before you know it, you’ve reached the top of the stairs. Just like you did many times before. When you’re finally up there, you book a tattoo. A simple reminder– “Fuck waterslides” just below the knee or something.