Waving Not Drowning

Seven, eight, nine sneezes in a row. It's becoming painfully orgasmic and the woman sitting next to her just got up and shifted seats, throwing Connie the most withering stare. It's the chocolate. Really good dark chocolate makes her sneeze. Repeatedly. Generally not this uncontrollably- three seems to be the magic number- so now she's wondering what the hell was in the bag of leftover chocolate chips she bought from the bulk store because this is insane. Peter used to make fun of her, taunting her with incredible hand poured organic chocolate squares that he'd flaunt in front of her like a carrot on a stick. His idea of foreplay. Get her all worked up then giggle wildly when she was tearing up and  sneezing a fit. Painfully uncomfortable. Connie never understood Peter's sense of humour and that was a major nail in their relationship's coffin. You're too sensitive, he'd say; so dramatic, so intense. His detached, emotionally disengaged observ...

And then, and then, and then- Heather stops to catch her breath. She starts choking on her own saliva pooling in the back of her throat. She stops and coughs violently, wheezes an intake of breath and tries to calm herself down.Whenever she gets worked up she loses the ability to speak in full sentences. Her hands start to shake and her feet get ice cold. She has a series of exercises she's supposed to do to quiet the noise and slow her brain down. Cognitive reprogramming, it's called. Her mom's obsessed with neuroplasticity, retraining the brain, so she makes Heather practice and practice and practice patterns and reactions so she can control her outbursts. She's a raw nerve; cries on a dime, becomes righteously indignant when the neighbour scolds her dog. It's too much. Heather's worn out, run down, depleted by the sheer effort required to exist. She feels everything full on, her dial goes up to 11 and then into overdrive. The other kids at school are freaked ...

She walks around wide open, a raw nerve, her skin peeled back like a banana exposing her inner workings to the world. Here's her heart, beating arrhythmically, sloppy valves out of sync. Ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thrum-thump swoosh. Her lungs inflate to the point of bursting, capillaries tentacling out, blood red spider webs blown out, grasping for air then tightening back up, compressing her organs against her spine. Each gust of wind, every molecule of dust, speck of pollen sticks to her like glue, synapses firing off at breakneck speed, each atom overwhelmed with the constant transformation. She feels too much. Mia is overwhelmed by the sheer force of her emotions. Empathetic to the point of immolation, her head and heart duke it out for dominance while her autonomic nervous system is at war with itself. Life is pandemonium. She is powerless to disconnect. Engage, engage, engage. This entropy of self is consuming her. Moments of exquisite ecstasy are too painful to live in. People ...