I had decided, after the last afternoon class that I would head to the top of the parking structure, where there’s a tiny little ledge, designed clearly for me to comfortably perch, and read a bit of my current novel, and download firmly the previous hours’ material.

Swiftly as the wind blew through my hair, so took with it my plans. Instead I found myself lighting up a cigarette from my stress-pack, inhaling each drag with self-admonishment. Each puff filled my lungs and mouth with a guilt-ridden plume, but a relieving one all the same. I looked down, across the entire western side of campus, seeing thick, foamy-grey clouds gathering and a bit of joy washed over me.

Looking across the lot, the daycare center caught me, alive with the yelps and hoorahs of small people yet to encounter pain (or so I like to let myself believe). All the students, all my peers traipsing, herds of disparate gazelle and deer, going this way and that, but somehow following a strict routine they’d each planned for themselves, for this day. And I realized that from up here, all flaws melted away. The girls with inappropriately applied eye-liner, twisted belts, too-small cardigans, they all appeared suddenly and utterly perfect. All the men’s clothes fit so fine, their shoulders all broad and heads up high.

No worries can travel up five-stories to where I am. I had, at some point during this day-dream, set down the novel and extinguished the cherry, and found myself wrapt honestly in this world where no one would look up at me. I felt, for a second, like what any number of gods over countless centuries felt when looking down with some subdued pride at their creations. I, of course, didn’t create these people, but I created these perfect facades, accepted as a temporary reality. It reminded me that there was something more to me before this illness took hold of my brain, and that the world really is a wonderful place. And now as wind picks up, so do I, leaving behind a bit of ash and gaining a bit of ease. My tension has subsided.