Centerpoint

After checking Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok for the 200th time that morning, she decided she needed that new miracle drug. Ozemplic for the brain. She needed to take control.

Yes, the injection started out as a cure-all for another terrible disease: obesity, which was a detour from the original intention to treat diabetes. But researchers had discovered that it also curbed one’s use of the Internet by taking away all interest, as it were, slacking the appetite. The addiction to constantly checking, then after checking the endless scrolling, the doom-scrolling where one sucks up all the bad news like a vacuum cleaner in a black hole. The obsessive looking at the screen of her phone, actually not letting go to put it down, holding it as if it were a talisman against . . . What?

She didn’t know, but she would Google right away. What am I afraid of?

Sometimes, late at night, she’d awake or—more often than not—she’d been unable to fall asleep—and type into her Kindle Fire by the bedside: Tell me the future. Once she asked the universe, more specifically: What is that blurry thing off in the distance that looks like trees waving in the wind? And the ChatGPT came up with an answer: You’re off your rocker.

That’s how it felt. Askew. Does anyone ever use that word anymore? Yes, bounced the bot. 9006884 times a day.

It was her phone that recommended Ozemplic.

The rectangle dinged one morning, and she jumped out of the shower to see a message. She quickly toweled off and sat on the couch wrapped up with nothing else on, rivulets streaming from her head and onto the device screen. Finally someone cared enough to reach out and help. Or something. Never mind.

When did it start? Was it after the unexpected passing of her mother at only age 54? One day she was great, the next she was in the emergency room, and two weeks later dead. Didn’t the universe know that even though she—a college graduate in an only okay job but more importantly with health benefits—perceive that she still needed support. To be able to call her mother up and complain. If her mom called her, she’d complain that she was calling. “I need space, Mom,” she’d say. Well, guess what! She got space and so much more. Loneliness. Now no one calls.

Not even her brother, who disappointed the relatives and her biological father by coming out trans and wearing a dress to the graveside service. He’s got his own fish to fry (according to Grandpa). Her family was too busy with their own stuff to ask what’s up with her. She was considering getting a rescue cat, except she was allergic to fur.

This drug was her chance to get back her life, seize agency, move forward. Despite the side effects.

Dry mouth.
Dry eyes.
Dry vagina. (Oops, maybe this one, but no—there were creams to fix that)
Dry heaves.
Weight loss.
Loss of interest.
Love loss.
Lost (the TV series)
Streaming.
Stream of consciousness.

This was a partial list. She made an appointment

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No longer storming out of the shower to the sound of her phone, no longer binging on social media, she was dry. Empty. Her days devoid. From, you name it. Packages of Perfectly Pickled Pups from Trader Joe’s, bread rolls with flakey salt, take out from Ms. Egg Roll. The freezer and coffee table were wiped clean.

The desire for coffee suddenly diminished. She lost the remote for the TV. No more Lost.

Her mornings were a blank slate with only the sun peeking, peeping, creeping across the length of the floor. Toward the bonsai garden, where she daily rakes the tiny pebbles with a miniature rake. Her Word-a-Day calendar introduces palimpsest. A manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain. Truth, she thinks. There are traces, but, at the same time, room for new. She ruminates, Life is every bit like this. Palimpsest.

There’s the morning walk to her car which she never noticed before. The birds that gather in a tree adjoining the bank parking lot. The tree itself, changing according to the seasons. She remarked to the new guy at work, the one glued to his phone in the break room, that the tree was aflame with autumn gold. And he said, What tree?

But later, after work, they both stood in the parking lot and watched the leaves dance the mazurka in the evening breeze. And, even later that month, they drove to the forest preserve with lawn chairs to catch a late afternoon symphony.

Nothing happened. Nothing at all.

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