"We are, as a species,

addicted to story.

Even when the body goes to sleep,

the mind stays up all night,

telling itself stories."

- Jonathan Gottschall

(The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human)

Goya . I

(Prologue)

"Everything will be alright" Those words were like a rock that was holding me steady. I always took those words for granted. A reassurance that washes over me like a blanket, whenever I heard my mother say those words to me as she held my hand in a grip. Those words were whispered over and over into my ear as if she was chanting a prayer.

"Once you close your eyes, all the bad stuff that's happening now will go away and when you open them, everything that seems scary will disappear. Everything's gonna be alright baby girl"

February 6, 2020

The mind has always been a rare and sensitive subject to any medical cases much like mine. I've known- scratch that, we've been taught to understand that human knowledge of life starts with the mind. Our brains function our 'senses', 'emotions', and 'thoughts' without them we'd be nothing more than hollow mindless shelves, but what doctors and scientist can never experiment on how to deceive the mind from the truth. Things like lies or things other try to keep away from us. The mind works in strange ways, that when you least expect it, connections start forming and missing links slowly try to put everything back. It unravels the huge web of lies that was formed. The truth comes out, even truths that we could not comprehend. Yet the main unanswered questions lingered in my mind that just wants to scream out at them.

"What are you hiding from me?"

St. Jude Hospital, Tennessee

(May 16, 2008)

When I was six, I had climbed my first tree. It was a giant oak tree that stood out like a sore thumb in the middle of the playground. Its branches were dead and dried up. That stood out like angry arms, ready to snatch its prey at any given moment. You may ask yourself what a six-year-old would be doing climbing a tree or something along the lines of my aunt Cecilia words "heaven's sake, that's dangerous". Well, I'm pleased to inform you that she was right, it was.

I tried climbing it up, trying to get a stuck kite from one of the tree branches, but as I keep hiking up higher and higher, it became more difficult to push my weight up when gravity was telling me that I had to go down. I made it up quite high and could probably keep going until I stepped on a torn up branch that gave out from under me. My foot slipped and I came crashing down.

I remember the feeling of the wind hit your back and the free fall suddenly seemed like it was passing by in slow motion in your head. The first thing I thought to do out of instinct was to close my eyes and held my breath, just wait for it. It was painful from what I could remember. My back took most of the impact, but since the height was just about half way up, there wasn't enough damage that was done. Other than a terrible bruising on my forehead and a stiff neck from the whiplash that traveled down my back. The ground had hit my neck and then the impact when to my back, no cracks for broken bones but scratches and cuts at most from the side of my back. Once all the pain and achiness in my body just suddenly came all at once, rushing at me. That's what made me screech out a painful cry. Then when I heard rushing steps of my cousin rushing in towards me and all went blank from there. It was all just mixed up pieces that I couldn't place.

When I woke up from my dreamless sleep, a day had passed from what I gathered. I ended up in the hospital where they had to do varies of checkups which is why they were waiting for me to wake up from examinations to a blood test and even trauma therapist. Why would a six-year-old need therapist for just a shortfall? Everything just seems funny, but If you would have seen the bandages that were wrapped around my whole back that react over from my neck towards the back side and ended at the tip of my bum. I would have thought I was waiting for a movie role of the mummy. The bandages were tight that it felt as if it would cut circulation but as I moved my neck, I wince. The feeling of stings that burned went down my back. That I just went stiff and froze, not wanting to move or even lay down on the bed without the help of some pain killers, numbing me down. I had landed in a rocky area, which would explain the cuts and bruises, which is why I believe they send me a trauma counselor. If anyone would have needed a trauma counselor it should have been my cousins. Who kept look at me as if I was a ghost when they visit me. They all bombed me with question thinking that I had died or that I just looked dead to them, but were really only kid really who had no idea about stuff like that. All I did was just laugh at them and apologize for scaring the pee out of them for the rest of the visitor hours.

The only person I hadn't seen was my mother. Even when I woke up she wasn't by my side, only my dad who had my brother sleeping on his lap in a chair waiting to be given the 'okay's' for my departure from the hospital. I was just waiting to hear the lecture or even be yelled out or cried at for doing such a stupid thing, that I should have asked a grown-up for help. Instead, I just got vanilla pudding and chicken soup that was brought up to me as the nurse informed us that I needed to have more blood test before I was done.

"Where's mom?" I had asked dad, waiting for him to give me a spoon full of soup. He decides to help me eat when I told him my arms hurt. The painkillers must have been wearing off. "I don't know sweetie, the doctor called her up just before you woke up. She hasn't come back since" he said dipping the spoon into my mouth. The day just kept on getting weirder.

It took two nurses to do my checkups and a medicine change, only then did my mom actually came into the room. Her hair tossed into a messy ponytail with strands of hair wildly sticking out to framing around her face. Her face looked pale, sickly with worry that it made her look as if she was more of the patient instead of me. What really caught your attention were her eyes they were so swollen and blood-shot red that you'd wonder if she was either crying or just decided to jump into a pool and dived in with her eyes open widen to get the Clorox water to make her eyes that bright red. My father had gone to her side and whispered to her making it hard for me to hear their conversation. It seems my mother couldn't respond out back as her eyes started to well up in tears again. This made me curious because my mother wasn't the type to cry, she often said she hated crying because it ends up giving her the biggest headache of her life, that would last for days. She hated it! So who was this woman that every time she glances at me, tears would well up at the corner of her eyes and trail down without much self-control to stop them.

"Hello baby girl, h-how are you feeling?" She reaches over to press her hand on my forehead, as she let her fingertip smoothly caress my face in a soothing matter, it made me relax. A smile tugged over and curved up, with cheeks raised high as I aimed it over at her, hoping it keeps her troubles away "I'm fin-n-ee mommy. Sorry, I made y-o-u-u wor-ry" I had said to her in a sleepy tone as her touch kept soothing me into sleep, making my eyes drop down and exhaustion over taking my body to a dreamful slumber. "It'-t fine-e baby, we-ll-l talk later" she said to me with a kiss on my forehead.

I kept feeling there was something wrong, mom kept on stuttering in her words and she never let me meet her eyes once that whole day, but with all the craziness that happened, I haven't really noticed. If I've been at least a bit attentive to the actions done around me, I've would have noticed. Life changes in a matter of seconds, sometimes it catches you in a blink of an eye.