"Is there a cure for humanity?"

"I don't think so. I don't really even think there's a cure for depression," came the reply.

"Oh," I said, sniffing viciously as my fingers brushed my nose as a makeshift Kleenex. "That sucks."

My voice squeaked. God, I hated that. You can only wear sunglasses for so long before your tears slip past your cheeks and reveal your secrets.

"Because I don't really know how much longer I can deal with this," I blurted out. He hadn't asked me for any explanation. "This fucking 'sadness' thing. I don't like getting angry, I don't like thinking about it. I want to push it out of my mind. And I was so good at it for so long. You could have put me in fucking Cambodia and I would have smiled at Pol Pot. It was that easy. But it won't go away, damnit."

"You're just human," he said, plain and uncomforting.

"That's exactly the goddamn problem!"

. . .

I feel like I am on drugs. Maybe I feel that way because I am on drugs. I don't remember taking any, and in fact, I can't remember taking drugs ever in my life. But it would sure be nice to know if this is what they felt like. Then I'd know they aren't worth it.

When you only have to drive five miles, your car doesn't have enough time to warm up. Any of it: the engine, the insides; and so you are left alone with a blank stare at a sunken sky through your windshield, which in all of the beauty of night and winter seems to be only cold. And the headlights blinding you per second per passing are just friendly reminders of this.

So your body tenses, and you can feel it beginning to ache even before you can relax. I understand muscles, but I don't understand the human body. Why were we designed this way? Why do I always get sore throats at the wrong time? Why does my neck long to be severed from my head just so it will stop hurting?

There is this hill by which I have named “the flying curves”. It is a hill that runs parallel to the one I live on, and if you take the back roads, you drive along it to get to my house. The flying curves are angled and sloping in such a way that it nearly takes your heart right out of your chest if you hit them going sixty-five (I wouldn't try any higher).

Every night that I chose to take that route, I reflect: “Would I be satisfied with myself if I died tonight?”

. . .

"Melody, what is your obsession with danger?" He asked, looking up from something as simple as his own hand.

There was simplicity to the way he would fold his hand over the end of a book, resting it there like it was the limp head of a cobra, slowly breathing itself into a life which would allow it to strike. There was something in the way his dark hair almost was unruly, and yet, became fashionable. His eyes were sunken but bright, and his skin, tightly pulled over his bones, made him look thin despite an average frame.

"I have no obsession with danger, sir," I straightened up in the plush chair I was sunken in, the cushions molding around me like a custard pudding. "I am a law-abiding citizen. I do not speed, I ingest no illegal substances, I physically harm no one, and I mentally disengage myself from everyone. I am afraid of blood, so god knows I'd never hurt myself physically, and we all know the reason I am here is so that I won't hurt mentally, so that can't be the case. Tell me, doc, why is it that you think I like danger?"

"That's quite the speech. I don't doubt a word of it. But, if you truly believed that you weren't obsessed with danger, why would you got to such lengths to prove it? The truly innocent are those convicted, after all," he said.

I admired him for being so cynically wise.

"I want danger, I just don't have it. That makes more sense, I guess?"

"You don't have to ask it," he replied. "If you think that is why, you may very well be correct. In my professional opinion, I'd say that it is."

"Have you ever thought that I don't have a chance?" I asked.

"Any answer I give you, you'll take it for the negative."

Probably true.

. . .

I understand now that if my life were made into a movie, my soundtrack would simply be the track to a preexisting flick. Because to every scene I'll have to say, "Wait, I know this song."

And god is just right in front of me saying, "Of course you do. You heard it before in the movies."

For all the mix tapes I have ever made, I can't have one that actually applies to my life. And if you just wait for the moment of silence between songs, the perfect conversion into the next, no matter how wild the genres seem to be, I know how to blend them. And I think it is this ideal blending which makes them unable to be aligned with life. Nothing ever blends together except coffee and cream.

. . .

He brushed my hair behind my ears, as unnecessary as it was for my short hair, as he calmly patted my shoulder. Had I scraped my knee on society?

"You just need to realize that people care that you exist."

"But they don't," I said pointedly. My voice was firm, no such thing as trembling.

"Fascinating," he drawled.

“I keep having this reoccurring dream," I began. "Incessant knocking on my door, the barking of a dog, sometimes a child screams, but there is always a noise loud enough to get me out of bed. In the dream, you see, not in reality. And when I get up, I am face to face with a burglar, all in black. But it’s him; nothing has changed. And he spins me around as though we were waltzing, and I can feel him. Like a goddamn earthquake, I can feel him. And I want nothing more. This is funny because I’ve never had sex, and to tell you the truth, I find the man downright repulsive. I don’t want him in my home, but some how I want him in me.”

"And you know why that is, don't you?"

"No," I replied, firm again.

"Because you have a repressed desire for anyone to enter your life, as long as that person is alive."

"Oh, good one!" I said, astonished.

. . .

I lock all the doors and windows to my house now, just in case. I live in a rural neighborhood where every lot has at least an acre to the plot. This is a friendly, watch-each-other’s-back kind of place. I could leave a million dollars in a suitcase in my driveway overnight and it’d be there in the morning. I lock all the doors and windows in my car, too.

And I think I know why I left the lights on when I left today. It wasn’t to keep the burglar out; it was so I could drive home to a place that already looked lived in. So I didn’t have to spend that fraction of a minute alone.

. . .

"I have no where to go from here. It's all an endless road," I whispered.

"You have your whole life ahead of you," he explained.

"Judging by the way I've spent the last twenty-two years of it, I will only be adding more problems and unveiling more things that I can't get over. Digging myself into impossible holes. Because we are all just imaginary people carrying out impossible conversations." I looked over to him, across the endless couch.

"God, you're right."

. . .

I remember this story; I think I might have made it up myself. A boy was sent to military school because his parents found him to be rather against the grain, them being strong conservatives and him being a liberal, pacifist, pot-smoking teenager. He was on his way to reform alright, under a drill sergeant and other rebellious youth. And they did pushups, and they ate bad food, and they took harsh words from their adult staff, and they knew they were seeing the light. But that kid? He did one hundred pushups everyday when no other kid would, because he refused to say the pledge of allegiance or hold his hand over his heart during the national anthem.

And I think to myself, why the hell would a pacifist put himself in pain over something he swore was not worth the pain?

. . .

"I think that in a past life, I was a man. I really mean it. I have all the hellish emotions of a woman, but I think that I was a man," I began.

"How do you figure?"

"I am attracted to myself, and other women, but not in way like I want to have sex with them. In a way like I want to be them... like I have a desire to be as beautiful as possible because I am not already a beautiful woman."

"Newsflash, Mel, but you are a beautiful woman."

"I know; I'm not in denial. That's why I think I was a man. But wait, there's more- you know how it is not uncommon to hear guys say 'God, if I was a girl, I would touch myself all the time'. And they say that just because they're guys, attracted to girls, want to touch them, and therefore would do so if they were placed in the right body, right?"

A pause, "Right..."

"Well, I don't feel like I need to satisfy myself sexually, but I feel like I need to admire myself."

"That is peculiar," he said, puzzling.

"It is indeed. And furthermore, I have always wanted to do male things, be one of the guys, and have a male lifestyle. However, I have never wanted a male body."

"I'm still caught up," his eyes were not looking at me.

"Have you ever had sex with one of your patients, doctor?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"What?" He fell out of reverie.

"So Kale, do you think I am ready for real therapy?"

"Hmm," my friend thought for a moment. "I would suppose so."

. . .

Even though I have navigated those flying curves many times in practice to get the perfect speed for safety reasons, I still know that I could die. A deer could run out in the road, or I could be hit by a drunk driver, or my hand could slip off the wheel and miss a crucial curve where staying in your lane is a priority. You see, I keep my feet off the pedals for the flying curves, because it’s best if you don’t accelerate or brake. So how could I brake?

And every night I answer myself, “No, your life is still meaningless. You need to keep living.”

And I fly anyway. When I run “Only In Dreams” by Weezer on my car stereo, I have to make sure that I hit the first curve right as the song reaches six minutes and forty-three seconds. But I can’t fast forward; the musical build up is half of the suspense. Nevertheless, it must reach the breakdown right on time. And tonight, with my headache, my heart stayed up in my brain for five miles it was so thrilled with the rush. I had to pause the music after the song and live in silence for the rest of the night.