I’ve been hurt for days now. I come home in the afternoon from scuba diving lessons, undress, run a bath, and lay in it. I let the water rise slowly around me, eclipsing my nipples, my eyes, and the tip of my nose. When I’m just covered I try to keep my eyes open for as long as possible. The sheen of water over my body is a boundary between life and death. It continues to move even when I try not to.

I get out of the tub and dry myself, but not completely. I like to keep myself somewhat wet to remind myself of where I’ve been. With two towels covering parts of my body I go into the kitchen and make a bowl of cereal—I choose LIFE. The towel feels like a pad of wet grass and is too tight around my right ear. I can hear everything that’s going on inside of my head—I have made a hole in my head and a city has grown there. Voices, sirens, Adderall, flip-phones, and decadence laced with expectation.

My mother took me to buy turtles somewhere near El Toro. A lot of ex-military people lived out there and set up amphibian stores in two-story open plan buildings with glass facades. They’d approach you with a neutral demeanor, shirt tucked in tightly around the belly button, as if to highlight the bulge. You could tell that they were sad to see the turtles go—the lack of eye contact, the slowness with which they finally handed over the carton—an attitude I’d always considered the sign of a lackluster salesperson, too attached to the product they are selling. The turtles were black, coin shaped, and had spots on their backs that seemed to change like a mood ring. When I first held them the spots were teal, and when they were put in the container finally, beet red. I named one of them Charlotte, after Charlotte from Sex and the City. I can’t remember what I named the other one.

Usually when I got fish, turtles, or frogs, they came in a bag or a temporary plastic cage. But that day’s purchase was put in a fresh, white Chinese take-out box with a dragon on the side. I carried the two turtles to the SUV in the container that would normally be reserved for dim sum.

We did not go straight home, but to my mother’s dentist appointment. We decided without consultation that the dentist would not allow turtles in his office, so we left them in the box in the car. I sat in the waiting room while my mother had her mouth worked on. On a TV they were playing You’ve Got Mail. I knew that the turtles were dying—I could feel their kicks bulging against the container’s white sides. But I couldn’t stop watching You’ve Got Mail. It’s not that I enjoyed the movie, I didn’t. Even as a child I couldn’t help thinking “What is this shit?” When we got back to the SUV, the turtles were fine and they lived a happy life—Charlotte, and whatever the other one was called.

My moods change. They are not small changes, but changes that are so extreme and lopsided that they constitute violence. One minute I lay in forced torpor. The next I sit at the table with my head down screaming into oblivion. I can taste the smallest amount of blood in my mouth. But isn’t that where it should be?

I get up before falling asleep, put a hoodie on, and grab my car keys from the wooden bowl next to my Ativan. It starts to drizzle a little bit on my way to Rite-Aid. The rain sounds like people scratching at my car. Then it sounds like whole bodies. All I want is to do is get to Rite-Aid because they have an ice cream bar that looks like one from the 50’s. I wasn’t around then but everybody in my family and the media tells me that that is what it was like back then. I should have checked the weather before I left because you’re not supposed to take Ativan when it rains.

I’m watching the customers buy ice cream in front of me. The entire store smells of group therapy. I don’t know who these people are. I’ve had entire conversations in the guise of someone else’s head. They are on my phone and to people I know, but they are not from me, though from the final message I glean that the conversation was pleasant, emotional, and that me and the other person bonded.

My mind, like most, has been decimated by content with help from the constant blurring of my synapses. They need to blur for me to be able to walk in a mildly straight line out of this Rite-Aid. My house is the other way, up the hill. I knew I would never get there. My nose is filled with grass and it’s getting wetter. I don’t necessarily want it to stop. My mind wanders.