CHAPTER 17
Outside Katie’s bedroom window, the day is flat, colorless, grim, a perfect reflection of her mood. She checks the calendar on her phone. Today is September 30. Katie could’ve gone to her second genetic counselor appointment two months ago, but she blew it off. Eric Clarkson just called. His voice mail was gently casual, as if coaxing a shy child hiding behind her mother’s leg, reminding her that he’s still there and available to talk if she’s still wrestling with the idea of genetic testing. He didn’t need to call. She thinks about Eric Clarkson probably more than she thinks about Felix, which isn’t good for many reasons. She knows he’s there and how to get in touch with him. She deletes the message.
She’s avoiding pretty much everyone right now—Eric Clarkson and her second appointment, her dad, JJ and Colleen, Meghan, the other yoga instructors, even Felix. She’s been going to three yoga classes a day, but she’s all business about it, getting in and out with as little eye contact and chitchat with the other yogis as possible. Her body is wicked kickass strong from all the exercise, but her mind has been completely disconnected from her practice. Her mind is junk.
She has no self-discipline, no control over her thoughts. They’re like big, hyper, untrained dogs chasing foxes into a dark forest, and she’s holding on to their leashes, tethered to their reckless decisions, being dragged everywhere they go. Meditation should take care of this. It should rein in the wild dogs. Heel. Sit. Be the fuck still. Good dogs. But she can’t seem to stay focused.
Alone in her bedroom, she sits on her meditation pillow and reads the strange, beautiful graffiti on her walls. She’s scrawled many more inspirational quotes in black Sharpie on the walls from floor to ceiling over the summer, hoping her exterior world would seep into her consciousness and perk things up in there. Her mom isn’t too pleased that she’s been marking up the walls, but Katie can’t see the harm in it. She’s never been crafty and doesn’t want to waste money she doesn’t have on buying posters or painted boards. A two-dollar Sharpie and her walls are all she needs. They can easily paint over everything if she ever moves. When she moves. When. Someday.
She reads the three quotes directly in front of her.
“The pain that you create now is always some form of nonacceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is.”
—Eckhart Tolle
“Life is a near-death experience. Stumble around in giddy gratitude while you still can.”
—Jen Sincero
“What we think, we become.”
—Buddha
She thinks about HD. All the time. Constantly. The creepy, dark forest is teeming with it. HD. HD. HD. She’s a skipping vinyl record, and she wishes someone would smack her.
“What we think, we become.”
—Buddha
She’s becoming HD. This self-sabotaging, obsessive habit has to stop.
She settles into a comfortable cross-legged seat on her pillow and closes her eyes. She begins Ujjayi breathing, creating an ocean wave rhythm through her nose, in and out, in and out. On the next inhalation, she mentally says the word so. On the exhalation, she mentally hears the word hum. In, so. Out, hum. So hum is actually short for the Sanskrit So aham, meaning That I am. She’s breathing in and out, so-humming. That I am. That I am. So hum. So hum.
The mind loves words. Feeding it a restricted script of So hum keeps it focused, absorbed in essentially nothing, holding it still. When thoughts and sensations arise, when the dogs start barking, she’s supposed to notice them, let them float by her like wispy clouds on a passing breeze, and then return to inhaling so, exhaling hum.
At first, it’s working. So hum. So hum. Her mind is a clear glass of water, empty and clean. But then the dogs get a whiff of something scrumptious and take off for the woods.
HD. HD. HD.
She should call Eric Clarkson back. It’s rude to ignore him. But she’s not sure whether she wants to know. What if she’s gene positive? What if she has HD like her dad and JJ?
And so the storytelling begins, a hallucination of a fictional future starring Katie and the O’Brien family, her mind an Academy Award–winning screenwriter, director, and actress. There are no romantic comedies or Hollywood endings in here. These epic tales are always extremely dark, invariably playing out the worst imaginable possibilities. And her sick, addicted mind loves every gruesome, dramatic second of it.
Her thoughts time travel, trying on a future wardrobe of Katie and Katie’s life, where nothing is pretty. Her dad and JJ are dead. Her mom sells the house because she can’t afford it alone and moves in with one of Katie’s uncles just before having a nervous breakdown. Patrick is a heroin addict. Meghan kills herself. Katie has HD.
She breaks up with Felix to spare him. He marries a perfect woman and has two beautiful, perfect children, and they live in the penthouse of one of those fancy condos in the Navy Yard. Katie imagines sitting on a bench alone, watching them walk and laugh and play in the park.
She never opens her own yoga studio because she waited too long and then became symptomatic. Her balance was the first to go, so she lost her job right away. She ends up homeless.
People are disgusted by the sight of her. She’s mistaken for being drunk in public and gets picked up by the police. It’s Tommy Vitale, her dad’s best friend, but instead of helping her, he locks her up. He says if her father were alive, he’d hunt her down and kick her ass for not fighting to live, for giving up and letting HD ruin her like this. He says she should be ashamed of herself. And she is. She’s ruined and ashamed.
She’s a thirty-five-year-old homeless, unloved woman with HD.
She’s a forty-five-year-old homeless, unloved woman with HD.
She dies alone, ruined and ashamed with HD.
Wait, she’s not breathing. So hum is gone. She’s forgotten to breathe, and she’s sweating, and her heart is bathing in a pool of adrenaline. Shit. This is what happens. This is why she’s a mess.
She needs to get a grip, get present. Let go of the leash. No more getting dragged through the creepy, dark forest, lured into a future that may never happen. The future, good or bad, is a fantasy. There is only this moment, right now.
Right now, she’s a twenty-one-year-old yoga teacher sitting in her bedroom, and she doesn’t have HD. She has an amazing boyfriend and a decent apartment, and her dad and JJ are still alive, and Patrick isn’t a junkie, and Meghan is fine, and none of the drama she just experienced in her head is real.
None of it was real. She takes in a deep breath and lets it go, softening her panic-squeezed ribs, calming her anxious heart. She straightens her spine, places her palms on her thighs, and tries again. No more dogs. No more madness. This time, she begins by setting an intention.
“I am here now. I am healthy and whole.”
Instead of So hum, she repeats her intention in her mind over and over. Inhale, I am here now. Exhale, I am healthy and whole. Inhale. Exhale.
The dogs are gone. The forest dissolves into a sunlit meadow. Inhale, I am here now. Exhale, I am healthy and whole. The meadow brightens until there is only white light. There is white light and breathing in and out. And then there is nothing, and in that still space of nothing, there is peace.
Peace. Peace. Peace.
And then she thinks, I’m doing it! And with that thought, she’s instantly ejected from that blissful, empty place. But that’s okay. She smiles. She was there. It exists.
A space inside her where there is no HD.
She opens her eyes. Felix is sitting cross-legged in front of her, grinning at her face.
“Are you real?” she asks.
He laughs. “As real as they get, baby.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About ten minutes. Your sister let me in.”
And so Secret Invisible Mr. Martin is finally revealed. She wonders what Meghan is thinking right now, whether her mind is as blown as Katie suspects it is. She’s sure to hear an earful as soon as Meghan gets her alone. She feels nervous, beetles scattering in her stomach.
“So how was meeting Meghan?”
“Fine. She seems nice. It was just for a second. Good to know she actually exists.”
“So, ten minutes. Really?”
“Yeah.”