Have you ever had a moment of intense clarity, where something you've been struggling to understand just clicks into place? Or maybe you look at something you already knew from a different angle and you just get it, only to have what you got slip away in the seconds that follow, unable to express to anyone what you felt for sure was an astounding revelation.
Well, whether or not you have, I have, and let me tell you, it can fuck with your mind, especially when you lose that flash as your mind reverts back to its normal, befuddled state. My best example is once when I was walking to my car after school, recalling an interesting conversation my AP English class had had on modernism and postmodernism, which led to the limitations of the human mind, and I had this thought: Why can't we think beyond our physical limitations? And then I had one of those moments of utter clarity.
"AHH!" I screamed, clutching my head as an intense, mind fucking spike of pain split my brain in two. At least, that's what it felt like. Except, maybe it was more like a spike from my brain, broke out? Either way, I was in a mind boggling amount of pain (pun intended), and I have no idea how long I blacked out for.
When I came to, a crowd had formed around me of curious and mildly worried bystanders.
"Maybe we should call the paramedics?"
"You think, dipshit?"
"Well, why didn't you do it then?"
"I thought you were doing it!"
Internally, I sighed. Obviously none of these kids had paid attention in health. Externally, I groaned, getting up onto my hands and knees, my muscles stiff from contracting and curling into a tight ball due to the pain.
"Oh, he's awake!"
"Great, then we don't have to call the medics!"
"Are you an idiot?"
"Hey!"
"Of course we still have to call them!"
"Why, he's up, isn't he?"
"Yeah, but people don't just collapse like that and don't need medical attention."
"Oh, I guess so. Then who's going to call?"
"I'm fine," I croaked. My family couldn't afford an expensive hospital bill, and besides, I was fine, I mean, I felt fine, just sore. "It was just a sudden migraine, that's all."
"A migraine?"
"I didn't think migraines worked like that?"
"See, I told you he's fine!"
"Are you sure you're fine?"
Bored that there wasn't going to be any drama, most of the crowd started dispersing, and went back to their daily lives, leaving me be.
See, I was the definition of the quiet kid. I never spoke in class. I never spoke to anyone if I didn't have to. Hell, I've had people try to start up conversations, and I just said nothing until they gave up and walked away.
I was so insignificant to everyone's lives, I wasn't even bullied. I wasn't intelligent enough to be a nerd, I wasn't into games enough to hang with the gamers, I had no talent with music at all, and sports were even worse. I was by no means fit, or even skinny, but I wasn't grossly overweight. I had enough fat where no one would call me thin, but no one immediately thought I was fat. My face was so plain no one ever looked at me as if I was attractive, but no one was repulsed by my looks either. In essence, I was a true background character, except not background like all the average joes that make up most of high school.
And when I say insignificant to everyone's lives, I do mean everyone at high school. I didn't have friends, and I didn't really know how to make any. And despite living in the same town for all my life, I did not have a childhood best friend. None of the teachers took notice of my presence, or treated me like a pain for being so silent. I'm fairly certain if I walked into the guidance counselor's office, she'd spend a good ten minutes making sure I actually went to this school and wasn't some weirdo who just liked to pretend he did.
Up to this point in life, my destiny was to be the kid in the yearbook that everyone looked at and said, "wait, I went to school with him? But I don't remember him at all!" That is, if I was even remembered to be put in the yearbook in the first place (it has happened before, and I was much too shy to try and fuss about it).
I sighed. It was a lonely life, but I wasn't particularly sad, just not happy. I stared after the retreating crowd and saw Brent Johnson, the running back for our football team among them, laughing with his friends. A pang of envy went through my heart. I wanted to be him.
If only I was more like him, I thought. Maybe if I had a six pack, I could be confident enough to talk to people.
But that was never going to happen, since I was too lazy to ever work out consistently enough to lose weight, let alone get a six pack.
Still, as I hopped into my car (a literal piece of trash that I was astounded still ran, but hey it was a car), I couldn't help but dream of myself with a six pack.
That's when I felt it. It was like that little wisp of thought, that dream, left my brain. I froze, and the wisp vanished. I know, most of you are thinking that I'm paranoid and that what I felt doesn't even make sense, let alone is anything to worry about. I mean, how can you feel your thoughts outside your body? And to most, yes, that is just a nonsensical notion like "dream grass blue fastly."
But I know what I felt. It was as if I was in a particular frame of mind, I had the right gear of concentration, or like I had just discovered a new appendage, and still hadn't quite figured out how to send information to those neurons to move it. The question that rang through my mind, then, was what could I do if I figured out how to control this new appendage?
All through my drive to work, I focused as hard as I could to try and get it to move, but still as I pulled up to the Dave's Groceries, I still hadn't been able to replicate that feeling.
"Dammit," I said to myself, banging my head down upon my hands on the steering wheel. How could I move an appendage I was never aware I'd had? I mean, I can't force my hand to move by thinking move, I just move it. But I couldn't just move my thoughts, could I?
I grabbed my work shirt from the passenger sheet, and changed quickly in the car, heading in for a mind numbing six hours of stocking canned vegetables and bags of sugar. Who knows, maybe getting my mind off of the problem would let my mind flex its new muscle.
"Hey, Rodney," Brittney, the cashier greeted me as I walked in. She was pretty-ish, meaning she didn't suffer from a lot of acne and had a nice looking face, but not anything that would make men take especial notice of her. Her hair was a dirty blonde that was a little dry, and while she was thin, she also had hardly any breasts or butt.
