Brain Cliff (Part 1)
On repeat, she stood at the edge of a cliff, watching him fall. The white noise of the airplane’s engine sustained as she instinctively opened the shutter on her window seat view.
“Why aren’t these damn drugs working!?”
Tori felt a familiar restlessness first in her legs. The plane was halfway to Seattle, and the lightning storm was already brewing in her body. The closer she got, the more frequent the hallucination.
She jostled the mother and daughter sitting beside her. The apology was quickly understood, a universal signal for “I have to pee, can you please get up?”
If she couldn’t stay present and grounded in front of him, she was certain he wouldn’t take her back. But the psychiatric drugs didn’t seem to be helping much. There she was, imagining his death, over and over again.
“Right…about…NOW,” she said, latching the lavatory door.
Tori loved imagining the lighted placard illuminate suddenly with a red X, a small act that reasserted a sense of control and brought her back to the present.
But even on the toilet, her mind wandered to her rehearsed lines.
“What I did was wrong. I felt terrified of your love. It was easier for me to run away than to face it. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve that.”
Sure, she was acknowledging the truth. But there was a gap between what her mind could do on a good day, and what it did do every day: push him off a cliff.
She flushed.
Tori’s phone lit up with notifications when the plane landed. She hadn’t been to Seattle since she ghosted her own life three years ago, but Sea-Tac felt like a comfy pair of joggers that fit in all the right places.
She scrolled through WhatsApp, feeling the embarrassing dopamine hit of multiple message threads awaiting response.
Two blue checks. He had read her message but not responded. Without restraint, she started typing.
“Just landed. Let me know when might be good for you. I can meet you wherever.”
Again, two blue checks.
Tori had awakened the beast of her own anxiety, which started in her stomach before crawling into and contracting her throat.
“Why are you such an idiot?”
She hadn’t even exited the plane, and already she was filled with remorse.