Everyone has a moment in their life they can look back to and think, this, this is when everything changed. Mine was an appendectomy. I know, simple and routine. Undramatic. The surgery went well but once the anesthesia wore off, I felt different. Something was off. You know how they say sometimes when people get transplants it can sometimes change their likes and dislike, certain aspects of their personality? It felt a little like that. Something had shifted.

 

My longtime boyfriend, Jason, held my hand tightly and with tears in his eyes, told me it was over. Not the bedside manner I would have sought for right after surgery but it was the strangest thing, you know? I looked into this man’s eyes, the ones I had planned to gaze into all my life and I felt nothing. I remembered just before wheeling me out of the room before the operation clinging to him worried about being put under for the first time and gently kissing my forehead the way he always did when I was anxious. He assured me that everything would be okay and I believed him and did feel assured. I even blew him a kiss. Now he wanted to let go and I let him without a fuss. I don’t know if the medication was making me feel numb, but I let him out of the room as if he was an orderly. Somehow, what I thought I wanted had changed after the surgery too. 

 

We all have things we’ve mulled over for so long, thinking that if we every had the opportunity we would like to do this or go there. I decided this was the time to take the leap. I broke the lease on our apartment and sold everything I had until all I owned in the world fit into one suitcase. I joined the peace corps and flew down to Argentina. For two years I traversed rainforests, treaded rivers and met the most beautiful people. And I gazed into new eyes.

 

Luke crashed into me like a hurricane and woke my heart like a house on fire. He saw right through my bluster and forced poise from the start. He looked deep into my eyes as if to say, don’t do that, let that all go, let everyone see. He challenged my way of thinking, how I thought about myself, what I wanted out of life and how I saw the world. He pushed me, he made me laugh until my stomach hurt and though his spirit was wild, I felt safe and secure in his sturdy arms. 

 

After our work in South America was through, we moved to Irvine, rented a little bungalow and decided to see this crazy life out together. Luke taught art classes at the local liberal arts college, I taught English as a second language at the community center. We would walk home together after work, cook a spaghetti dinner and ate it on a blanket on the floor in front of our open patio door when we couldn’t afford furniture. That’s how our yellow cat Oslo chose us. Or maybe he waltz through the door because he liked Luke’s red pasta sauce. 

 

Luke and I we’re married in a little ceremony at city hall and a reception at our favorite tavern. I remember the smell of his after shave when kissed as man and wife and his arm around my waist as we danced on the patio barefoot. I couldn’t believe how happy I felt, that a person could feel bliss this intensely. Each day felt like a dream I never wanted to wake up from. Within a year I got pregnant and had a little boy we called Jack. He had Luke’s intense eyes and adventurous nature. After two years, a week after Jack’s first day at daycare and learning his colors, I had a little girl we named Lilly because her skin was as pale as milk and her eyes shown out so bright. Lilly was a little more serious than Jack, a silent observer who wouldn’t miss a beat but spoke her mind when she thought it absolutely necessary.

 

On weekends we would have picnics in the park, teach the kids how to ride their bikes down our quiet street, get our hands dirty in Luke’s art projects, read books in a makeshift tent in the back yard and bake pastries that looked sloppy but tasted amazing. We were a little unit, close and loving. Our lives fell into rhythms that lulled us into routine that at times felt mundane. That’s when Luke would surprise us with a road trip, a hike into a wild part of the world, or a swim with turtles in the clearest waters.

 

One night, when Luke had taken the children to a movie so I could wrap presents for Jack’s birthday, I heard a crash in our bedroom. I went to investigate. I found a brick on the floor. I wasn’t sure where it had come from. I put it by the wall so we wouldn’t trip on it and made a note to ask Like about it. Sometimes he would bring odd materials home for projects. After Luke came home and we had put the children to bed I had asked him about the brick but he didn’t know what I was talking about. When we walked into the bedroom so I could show him the brick was gone. I got on my hands and knees to look for it but it was nowhere to be found. Luke brushed it off as maybe a dream I had but just couldn’t let it go. But what could I do? It wasn’t there.

 

A week later I was home alone again, in the kitchen making cookies for Lilly’s school bake sale. Just as I was putting a batch in the oven there was a thunderous shattering behind me, so loud I dropped the tray and ducked behind the kitchen counter. When I looked into the living room there was glass all over the floor. It looked like the patio doors exploded. A brick was in the middle of the floor. I quickly looked to see who threw the brick but there was no one there. I called the police and they pulled up just as Luke was coming home from work. I ushered them into the living room and I couldn’t quiet explain what we saw. For one, there was nothing. The room was how it always had been, the afternoon light streaming through the two glass patio doors and the brick was gone. Luke apologized to the cops claiming I was a just overexerting myself lately and I needed some rest. But I know what I saw. I had a cut on my heel from stepping on a shard of glass.

 

I began to jump at every sound, at every crack of a floor board and whenever the kids would crash their toys I would shout at them. I would see random bricks on the street, in corners of the house, one time stacked up blocking the front door. Windows would shatter and then reappear in their place without a scratch. I started to duct tape up all the windows so they would stop breaking. The house turned dark and stuffed with stale air. I wasn’t sleeping because my dreams were filled with lights exploding in their sockets. I was scaring Luke. I was scaring the kids. I was scaring myself. I didn’t argue when Luke suggested I should go into a facility and get some help. I wanted it all to stop. I wanted us to go back to the way we were. 

 

Suddenly my world was sparse and blank. These places have no personality or warmth. And they are always so blindingly bright. I longed for my family so much and couldn’t bare being so far away from them. And alone, I had never felt so alone. I wanted to get back to them, but the shattering continued. The lights above would spark and break sending flickers of flames down on the floor, I would scream and shut my eyes but when I opened them the lights were fine. 

 

One day after the lights had bursts and repaired themselves at least 20 times, the lights began to tremble as if in an earth wake. That is what I thought it was at first but only the lights were shaking. They shook as if about to pop and then the light grew brighter than the sun. I shielded my eyes with my arm and waited for a crash but it never came. The lights grew dim and I slowly opened my eyes. I was in a hospital room, but not at the institution. There were cables coming out of me and a monitor was softly beeping by my head. Next to me sat Jason, the one who left me after my appendectomy. “Hello, sleepy head,” he chimed. 

 

I recoiled as if he was trying to bite me. I asked him where Luke was and he looked at me strange. “I don’t want you, I want Luke, where’s Luke?” I shouted. He tried to calm me down but I didn’t understand why he was here or why I was in the hospital. “What happened?” I demanded

 

“You had your appendix out.” He said slowly, gently. 

 

“Yes, years ago.”

 

“What do you mean? It just happened, baby.” 

 

Impossible. “Why are you here? Why are lying?”

 

He tried to comfort me then. He held my hand tight like he had done a hundred times before; from the time before. But I was in consolable. I had to be sedated because I was screaming myself horse, and when I woke up a doctor was by my bedside. All wanted to do was run out of the room and back to my family. He explained I was put under anesthesia for two hours for a routine appendectomy that morning and was having a bad reaction to the anesthesia. I was wheeled into an operating room and then weld out. It’s been merely hours not years. 

 

But that was a lie. It had to be. I had a whole life after this moment. I had adventures, I had a husband, children; children that I had growing inside me and pushed out into the world. Those labor pains were as real to me as the bed I was lying in at that moment. How could all that never have happened? They weren’t a bad reaction, they were real, and I wanted them back. I wanted every moment I lived after this day; the ugly, beautiful, tender, frightening and even the dull. They were all mine.

 

I wouldn’t accept it. It had to all be a cruel trick. They wanted to make out that I was crazy for some reason but I would not let them. I wailed and screamed for those I lost. It was like my family had died in a horrible car crash and I had to mourn them but everyone kept telling me they were never really. They sent me to a different ward of a hospital and when I still insisted, they sent me to special facility for those like me; the ones who couldn’t swallow other people's truth. Ironically it was much like the institution I was committed to in my other life. At least that’s what I kept referring to it as. It was sparse, it smelled of starch and bleach, and gloomy despite the constant light. This one was filled with forgotten souls, cooped up in cold rooms and shuttled from one activity to the other. Their eyes were dull. Somewhere silent, others told stories that no one listen to, and I raved mad against those I was certain were trying to take everything away from me.

 

Talk therapy, group therapy, art therapy, music therapy, I had to do them all. I resisted. I wasn’t crazy. I wanted to talk about Luke, Jack and Lilly, but my doctors would always frown and scribble in their folders whenever I did. They upped my medication, added more treatments, consulted more specialists. It felt like swimming in circles but the water was honey. Everything moved so slowly and it became clear to me they were plotting to keep me there forever. It took six months before I realized that if I was going to get out of there and find my family, I had to play their game. They thought I was I couldn’t accept the truth, well for a little while I’ll pretend the love of my life was a dream, that my children were medical side effects. Fine. 

 

Slowly at first so that no one would catch on, I began to show progress in all my treatments, I told them I wasn’t having torturous dreams of how things were before, I told them that the medication must have been working because I was beginning to accept what was real and what was not. They weened me off the heavy pills, and I smiled through all the therapies, drew happy pictures and sang jolly songs. The doctors moved on. The treatments faded down to two a week and in four months, my plan had worked. I was deemed fit to enter the world again and once I was out of those doors I could think what I ever I want.

 

I didn’t have anyone pick me up from the hospital. I wanted to walk beyond it’s walls and roam wherever I wished. Besides, my circle became very small. My father came to visit every few weeks, a friend from college and my boyfriend Jason, though it was difficult to refer to him that way. It felt like I was cheating. I told Jason he didn’t have to stay but he persisted. I told him I needed time. He pretended to believe me I had all of my things moved out of the apartment we shared and into the room above my father’s garage. Most people began to treat me like a crystal vase, timid with the slightest touch, whispering around me as if I’d crack at loud noises. Mostly they kept their distance, which was what I wanted. I need time alone to think up what I would do next. 

 

I spent a lot of time alone above the garage making it down for meals so that my father wouldn’t begin to worry. I knew I could only do this for so long before the smile I had plastered on my face began to peel and fade. If I didn’t play my cards right I would end up back at the hospital. During the day I made it seem like I was trying to get my life together. I looked for work, I went on runs and cooked dinner. I even kept knitting, something I picked up for craft therapy. I hated knitting but the more sweaters and hats I gave my dad the more he sighed with relief.

 

By night I spent my time in those far corners of the internet, trying to find Luke. You might have heard of the cesspools lonely people wade in looking for all sorts or just spewing ugly tales. I googled our jobs, the villages we visited in south America, even our children’s birth announcements we had carefully written for the paper but I couldn’t find us anywhere. I started to prowl internet forums, chat rooms and sketchy websites. I was searching for answers and perhaps others like me. I looked for those that might have had experiences like me. There were a few, but none so intricate as mine. They might have visited a fond family vacation spot, found Jesus or dreamed they spoke another language. My research proved to me that I was unique but not how I might get back to my other life. Even if I could.

 

I remember myself before the surgery. I remember being content with who I was and where I was going. An intern at a popular women’s magazine beginning to make contacts, attending glittering events that excluded our readers, friends that helped me escape my insecurities of what my future could entail, Sundays tucked under blankets with a man I could picture myself marrying. I was someone who thought logically through problems. I searched for practical solutions. I believed in what I could see and hold and smell and taste. I was not someone who was spiritual. I never meditated or even attended a yoga class. I never got my fortune told or looked for my horoscope when I wanted to get my hair cut. Yet here I was looking through a directory of mediums trying to suss out the one that seemed “legit.”  I didn’t realize there were so many in my county. If I had seen myself the way I was now, I might have gawked and scoffed. I might have had myself committed. But that woman I was is gone now. I didn’t know then what I knew now and I desperately needed answers. This was my last chance to figure out if my brain had conducted the cruelest joke, did I have a premonition, had I really made it all up?