…The larger my world gets.

Our collective world is massive, and changes all the time. Every day that I live, I make choices and take chances that shove my boundaries of my own personhood outward. With each expansion, with every day that I age, I capture more opportunities, more people, more love, more world, any of which can drastically change any part of life I thought that I’d already extensively explored. Between every birthday is an expansion event that rivals that of the universe.

A yawn stretches over your face as the automatic doors open into the hospital lobby. The receptionist smiles at you warmly, and the nurse standing beside her, Mary, gives you a wave and a "good morning!". Your hands are full, but in return they get the most joyful smile that you can muster this early in the morning.

You take a left and make your way to the end of the hall where the stairs are, since the elevator somehow still has that "OUT OF ORDER" sign on it from a few days ago. You vaguely wonder how all these sick people are making their way around here without an elevator as you huff your way to the third floor. You push through the outer door and get greeted by Joanna, your favorite nurse, in her bright pink scrubs.

Her smile widens when she sees what's in your hands. "You sweet angel. I'm on hour 12 and one of those had better be for me."

You have to roll your eyes. "What, am I drinking four coffees for myself? Who the hell else would I give it to?" The paper cup is snatched immediately when you put it down on the reception counter in front of her. "Keep being all entitled and I might start drinking yours just out of spite. You'll just have to watch from the hallway, too."

Joanna rolls her eyes at you this time as she starts to walk away without replying, presumably to continue her rounds. You give her a smirk and a quick wink before continuing on to your destination. One of the remaining three coffees is left at the same reception desk because you know that Noah will be finishing his round on the other side of the ward within a few minutes.

You take a deep breath before you take the last few steps into the hospital room, and take a moment to observe the scene. Nina is currently taking up space on three chairs she's stolen from the waiting room, reclined horizontally as best as she can be above and around the various armrests that you know for a fact have a vendetta against people's joints. You stare for another minute or so, and smile when she snorts and snuffles in her sleep. The man in the hospital bed does what he's been doing for the past week, and that side of the room stays silent, save for the beeping and whirring of the mechanical menagerie that makes up life-support.

Your soft knock on the doorfram wakes Nina, and she sits up with a squint and a yawn of her own. "Hey, baby." A kiss on the cheek makes her smile softly at you before she sighs and turns her attention to her father. "Morning, Dad."

You put a cup of coffee in her hand. "How was he yesterday?"

"The same. All his tests came back inconclusive again." You hate how her face is already resting in an exhausted slump, even though she'd just woken up, but you hide your frustration. Instead, you walk over and place the remaining cup of coffee from the cardboard carrier on the bedside table, next to her father. When you turn back around, Nina's eyebrows are furrowed in confusion.

You walk over and sit down next to her before explaining, "I was thinking about it yesterday, about how much your dad likes his coffee. I got this scenario stuck in my head. If he has to deal with shitty hospital dispenser coffee as his first cup after waking up, we'll all just be so ashamed of ourselves. He might decide to die then, instead, just out of spite." You feign serious injury when Nina punches you on the shoulder, but you would take a thousand more blows if she gets to laugh like that just one more time today. You'll do your best to make that happen.

When you leave to get her a change of clothes later in the day, you throw away her empty coffee cup and leave the cold one right where it is.

I miss being a child.

Little Me knew how to read for hours and hours on end because she still (shockingly) had an attention span. She'd shoot through novels and their prequels and sequels before mom could buy her new ones. She knew our local Barnes and Noble like the back of her hand. She wrote the first few chapters of multiple novels. If I still had those Word documents, I'm sure I'd miss Little Me even more.

Little Me knew how to get what she wanted. She wrote up a contract for our first family dog, promising to feed and water and walk it. She made a spreadsheet, to calculate exactly what chores she would have to do, and how long she'd have to do them, to earn enough allowance to get a pet rat with all the supplies for it. She took karate for years because she wanted to know how to fight.

(the rat's name was Skeeter, and I still remember her as the best pet I've ever had)

Little Me was a good sister. She knew how to make her sibling laugh. She knew how to make them feel better and how to bond with their friends without being in the way. She knew how to forgive when some very classic sibling-fights went on, as they do.

It's nice to remember how awesome Little Me was. I miss being a child.

I met L when I was in college. I started a job at a grocery store, and we worked in different departments. We danced around it for a good moment, but eventually one of us messaged the other and we got to talking.

For the first conversation, I was on my way through a bottle of vodka, and for the next she told me later that she was more than a couple beers in. For a while, she would come over to my department when her shift ended and we would talk for a while. It felt awkward in a lovely way. I realized afterward how many of those conversations were around the beer section and which ones were our favorites.

We went on dates, we held hands, and I met her dogs. It felt like the beginning of something, but for whatever reason it wouldn't get over the next speedbumb. Like we didn't have enough momentum.

She told me she was almost engaged to another girl, not that long ago. I was the first person she'd tried to date afterward. She told me she tried to kill herself. She told me she'd been nervous to message me, because our boss had a bet going that I wasn't into girls.

I told her that I matched her insecurity, and that I was terrified of being out. I told her my parents didn't know, and I didn't know if I'd ever want them to. I told her about my therapy. These were things we thought were fine for ourselves and each other. We'd said that, anyway.

Texts got vague, and conversations got short. Plans for dates hung in the air and drifted away when we ignored them. When we finally addressed it, the consensus was, "let's not fall in love..."

I moved here to Alaska almost a year ago. The first night that I got here, the few new coworkers I'd met took me out to what is now my favorite bar in the world for a few drinks. That's where I met Katrina.

This girl wormed her way into my life and my heart like no one else has before, and she's showed me what a best friend is meant to be. We talked for hours that first night, and we haven't shut up since.

I've always held friends close, but never opened myself up really to any of them. Katrina is someone who finds any little opening that I allow, digs her claw-like nails into the crack, and tugs it away until I tell her things I've never trusted anyone with before.

We've shouted at each other, and it's beautiful because I've never felt this passionately about a friendship, and never had anyone feel the same way toward me. If it had ever gotten close to that point with anyone else I know, I would have cut and run from that relationship so soon.

She's made me a better person. She makes me re-evaluate things about myself that no one else has bothered to point out, and wants me to do the same for her.

She has qualities that I want to emulate but know I could never do so to her level. Her compassion, kindness, and generous spirit can't be matched.

She likes to quote something from Sex and the City (a show I don't watch but hear about from her constantly), something about how your friends are your true soulmates, not a romantic connection. I'd be more reluctant to believe that statement if it weren't for her.

this is what ceiling tiles should look like

When you look up, you see the water shift and move above you. The light that shines through the surface creates undulating and curving waves that remind you of the ceiling tiles in every office building, school classroom, and hotel you've ever been in. The pattern triggers memories of your Kindergarten naptime, when you just lied still and stared above you for an hour while everyone else rolled over and ignored the design on the ceiling. Even as it closes you in while you sink below, the surface of the water doesn't make you feel sad or alone or misplaced.

we'd be so much happier in the world if they just painted the ceiling blue

Do you know where the diaphragm is? It's the muscle right at the bottom of your ribcage, essentially dividing your abodomen from your chest. If you can envision where you would pinpoint the middle of your torso, you get the general idea. That's where the creature lives.

Sometimes it vibrates there, creating and spreading tension from the core of me to my extremities, and I'm perpetually on the edge of something and feeling wrong in a way that is impossible to verbalize.

Sometimes I think that it can stretch itself out. That creature is still in my chest, but thorny tendrils originating from this being make their way up my spinal cord and into the base of my skull. My shoulders tighten and I get the intense and excrutiating feeling that I've done something horrifyingly wrong, and any moment someone I love will come through the nearest doorway having been disappointed by yours truly.

Sometimes it stays put there, surrounded by that diaphragm muscle, but still shifts within its little cage. It will crawl in little circles, restless, it will twist and turn and scrape against my ribs as though it's trying to play percussion, but softly. It doesn't create such an intense sensation for me, but that's the sneaky part. It's just conserving its energy so it can prolong this activity. All. Day. Long. By the time the day is over I want to scratch and scratch at anything I can reach.

Sometimes it will be completely silent and still, but it will become unimaginably heavy. I'll wake up and find myself sunken, as though this thing has compressed my core while simultaneously being the only thing holding my ribcage from meeting my spine. Because of this weight, this new burden I have to carry, every task takes incalculable new levels of energy. Getting out of bed requires a recovery period of unpredictable length.

Sometimes it doesn't do any of these things. I can still feel its presence, but sometimes it just exists. It doesn't stretch, or buzz, or compress itself into the heaviest thing in the universe. At times like this, I imagine it in the little cave that my ribs create, just reading. Or writing, like I do. Instead of a parasite, I think of this creature as a symbiote. Does it know that it hurts me otherwise? I wonder, sometimes, if I could eventually find a way to tell it that this is best.

I heard recently that it takes "creative-types" around 22 minutes to get into their state of creative "flow".

That proves true for me, in general, with an exception for the past decade or so that I've been avoiding my creative "flow" obstinately. I think we can call that at outlier, though. I'm comfortable with that.

In more recent days, I sit down every morning at my desk with my computer or notepad placed purposefully in front of me with absolutely no idea what I'm doing. These muscles haven't been utilized in so damn long. The "flow" of this creative, metaphorical river feels more like what my grandpa would dialectically call the trickling of a struggling "crick". I find myself asking the same question that this challenge poses. It would be so much easier just to get back in bed and browse Instagram.

Regardless, as obstinately as I've been avoiding voluntary creativity for the majority of my adult life, I start to write. Even before that 22-minute sweet spot, I start to remember why this was a thing I pushed myself to do, once upon a time.

It's becuase I can do whatever I want.

In my journal, on a post-it note, in this challenge, I can do whatever I goddamn please. I could use as many adjectives as I could think of to describe the look of the mountain outside my window, or just the pencil that is currently to the left of my left-hand pinky finger. I could spend three pages ruminating on the taste of one brand of coffee in contrast to another. If I felt so inclined, I could write a story about a cow who becomes the next President of the United States. It wouldn't be good, and I think the audience looking for that would be a fascinating one, but I could do it.

Let's disregard estimates of 22-minutes or the initiation of any kind of "flow". When I ask myself why I write, I'm not asking why writing is fluid or easy or good. I'm asking why I sit down at my desk with anything in front of me at all.

I write becuase I can do whatever I want. I write because it sets me free.