by: Ashley Cunningham
winner of encore’s annual Creative Writing Contest

Doc finger sorts through files with several other cases than mine; several other stories that have bled too heavily through cotton-white pages. I watch his breath fold unto itself while he picks out the right one for me to read myself asleep to. After all these hours disguised as minutes, he pulls my files out and sits them on his desk with a sigh that says many things at once. I can’t tell whether he regrets this whole operation, or he is as happy as I am to get the truth off of his chest.

Looking outside the window, the morning clouds billow into themselves too until I can’t tell the sky from the fog from the flock of birds disappearing in its temporary depth. I feel like I have been awake for years while I have been sleeping. The blur between dreams and reality has taken a firm toe-hold on everything I believe to be true about my world. Every truth that may or may not be dispelled by me reading this black and white definition of myself.

I reach forward with less excitement than raw terror; less enthusiasm and more sheer anxiety. I suppose the pills would help a lot at this point, but, then again, I’m sure they would candy-coat my vision like rose-tinted glasses—too pretty a view to possibly be real. He slides a small fortune of information toward me, and I know from this point on the treasure is mine to spend. The pressure of these vaulted secrets begins to weigh on me until I hear a familiar voice tell me that without pressure there would be no epiphanies; without heavy possibilities, there would be no relief lifted from my shoulders.

And so I cave in. I flip the pages over, holding my tongue back with my teeth so I can taste the moment in all its bitter sweetness. The top line rolls out like a red carpet, displaying “Laura Jordan” like a celebrity headline in one of those overly bawdy tabloids everyone fingers through like animals. My brain is a blank slate, a dirt road with no clear destination. I try to manage the wheels turning over and over inside.

Laura Jordan: Dual Personality Disorder
Attempted Suicide

I look up from myself to find Doc looking me up and down like this paperwork. He waits for a reaction as I try to piece together how I am supposed to act, let alone react. Everything plays like a domino game now, and we both sit stagnant, pausing for the next block to fall and knock down all the others.

I don’t understand what is happening, and yet it is happening all around me without my consent. The whole world spins above me, and I am paralyzed by its immediacy. I feel like I am coming out of a sleep that has driven me to complete stillness, and I see my own face struggling in the salty bell jar of the ocean’s power. Fragmented memories find their way back to me, and I try to place them together in logical order.

I guess the more you understand yourself, the tougher it is to disagree with whatever it is you are doing to yourself. In my case, I don’t understand one single thing, so the argument is quite skewed.

I watch silent picture slideshows of my life play out against the walls of Doc’s office. Everything crowds together and behind the screen showing several different lives in one face.

I am 11, setting the woods behind my house on fire and laughing up at the dirty clouds.

I am 15, posing for a camera I set on self-timer, and puking between the shutter changes. Each new frame is a chance for improvement, I always say.

I am 22 and driving alone in a piece-of-shit car, listening to the sound of waves talk me in and out of their collapsing embrace. There I am, looking over the side of the bridge for Catalina. Hands on the steering wheel, slipping more and more to the right, sliding more and more toward shifty aspirations that will bury me in a watery grave. I remember straining to see how far I would have to fly above the tide to get there. I remember playing tug-of-war with my human instinct for survival. This was a fight I desperately wanted to lose.

I can see the gear shift in third, which is slow enough to cascade through an empty sky and fast enough to make a statement through the cement barriers on either side of the bridge. I can hear myself calling for my father in the same voice that halfway peeks out while I am urgently trying to pull my body out of an immovable state. The whisper-yell of my panic strikes me as I hit cold water. My vocal chords lose their pull the further I sink into immeasurable darkness.

The world hands me a mirror, and I see through the other end of my eyes, watching every last-minute thought of mine race in slow motion. Before I ended up here, before I marched through these bullshit days, I was just a girl who didn’t know what to believe in anymore. I am still a girl who doesn’t know what to believe in anymore.

As the film runs on, I see my own expressions seep into the crevices of the sea. First there is a salty shock. Then there is a momentary exhale in time. I breathe out into the water, releasing bubbles that creep out of my mouth like silent screaming secrets.

I look in my eyes, and my eyes look back into me. For once, it finally makes sense. I am me. And I am Laura Jordan. It seems everywhere I am, my ghost follows, and the haunting memory of what I have turned out to be keeps me from waking up.