Sunday, February 12th

182.)

I slept a little bit, but I had a bad dream. I felt claustrophobic, like the blankets weighed a thousand pounds. When I woke up, I kicked them off and looked up at the blurry ceiling.

There was no use fighting it. I wasn't going to fall back to sleep, and I wasn't going to do anything else. So I got up and snuck out of the room with my glasses.

I stood in front of the kitchen counter, like I was squaring off against an opponent. Stephanie wanted me to try paying more attention to cooking. Not to let my mind wander to the past or the future, and not to let it turn off completely. Feel the things in front of me. See the sights. Hear the sounds. Smell the smells. Things were just things, with no judgment. I took a deep breath.

I could do this.

I couldn't do this.

It all felt like a dream. I remembered the feeling of the flour on my hands. The cold glass of the mixing bowl. And then... the sharp burn on my finger and the sharper cold of the water from the tap. My hand hadn't been covered properly when I took out the tray of cookies.

I took a deep breath. I felt like I was underwater. I felt like the currents were pulling me away from the kitchen. I looked around for my phone and opened up my texts with Stephanie.

She sent me an image after therapy. A mindfulness technique, one of the ones Kione used in Academy K to get through her hallucinations.

Five things I could see. My phone. The countertop, covered in flour. The couch, just a silhouette in the dark living room. The stairs, quiet and empty. The tray of already-baked cookies on the stovetop.

Four things I could touch. I reached out and ran my hand along the smooth counter. Then the soft flour. My finger still hurt from touching the hot tray. And my clothes felt heavy with cooking stuff.

Three things I could hear. The hum of the fridge. The rumble of the heater. The wind outside, a low far-away whistle.

Two things I could smell. Freshly baked cookies. More freshly baked cookies? It was an overpowering smell.

One thing I could taste. Sugar. I was probably sampling, even though I'd made chocolate chip cookies more times in my life than any other food. It was habitual.

I looked around the quiet kitchen. I didn't set the timer, because I usually did that after putting the cookies in the oven, but I hurt my finger instead. I didn't know how much time had passed. So I went over to the oven and turned on the light. The cookies were melting a little, drooping on the sides. But they weren't cookie-shaped yet. Only a few minutes? I set a timer.

Then my feet took me back to the counter to start on the next batch. But I didn't. I stood there for a moment and took a deep breath. I was so tired.

As I washed my hands in the sink, I couldn't stop thinking about the past hour. How I couldn't pay attention. How I failed so quickly. How something about me was broken. Incurable. Unfixable.

But I remembered what Stephanie said about things not being good or bad. Look at it objectively, and state the facts.

I tried to stay present. I didn't. I failed. No, failure is bad. I just... didn't. I baked two trays of cookies. I hurt my finger. I did some mindfulness stuff. That was good, right? No, good isn't important. Just the facts.

I woke up from a bad dream. I went downstairs. I made cookies. I tried... was tried a good or bad thing? It didn't seem concrete enough. So I started again.

I woke up from a bad dream. I went downstairs. I made cookies. I hurt my finger. I rinsed it. I did mindfulness stuff. I checked the cookies. I set a timer. I washed my hands.

No failure, no success. No good, no bad. No judgment. It is what it is.

There was still a pang in my chest, the kind of pang you get when you have to run really fast. That was the feeling of a thought running around in circles in my head. I did fail.

But that wasn't important right now. It could be important later.

The timer went off and I took the cookies out of the oven. They were a little overdone, a little too bronze on the top. But they would still taste good.

What next? When I was little, I sat on the couch while the cookies baked. My mom took them out of the oven. So, in some attempt to mimic habit, I turned off the oven and sat on Blossom's couch in the dark. And all at once, I felt like my head weighed a thousand pounds.

I put my head down on the arm of the sofa. I just wanted to rest for a moment. But I fell asleep, and I didn't wake up until morning.

Blossom Brixley slept the way that Blossom Brixley often did: she didn't make a peep in her unconscious state, and she didn't wake up even once before it was time for her to do so. When she did wake up, she woke up the way she often did: looking flawless, like Hollywood wanted people to believe women looked when they woke up. She yawned and wandered down into the living room, where she found Amanda the way she often did: not asleep where she ought to be. And there were a lot of cookies where there weren't before.

Blossom elected to order a pint of ice cream from a local delivery place and to make ice-cream sandwiches with some of the cookies to surprise Amy when she woke up.

When I woke up, it was because the mid-morning sun was shining through the windows. None of the sunbeams made it far enough into the living room to hit the couch, but the whole place was bright and happy.

I was not bright or happy. I sat up with a groan and patted around for my phone. It took me a while to find it. 11:11am. Make a wish.

I wish I was a normal person.

"Oh, you're up!"

Blossom was at the top of the stairs. She was already dressed and prim for the day. I tried to flatten my hair.

"I always struggle with if I should wake you up, because it's like a… quantity of uninterrupted sleep versus quality kinda thing, you know? But I put your cookies away in containers, and I made something with some of them. I hope that's okay."

"Uh, yeah... that's fine." I was hardly processing anything Blossom was saying. So I pulled myself off the couch and went to the bathroom. One, because I had to go to the bathroom. And two, because I was sure I looked like trash.

Sure enough, I looked like trash. I looked like someone who had been baking and then fell asleep on a couch. I cleaned up my clothes a little and brushed out my hair with my fingers. By the time I was done, I was a lot more alert. So I went back out to the kitchen.

"How'd you sleep?" The question had an obvious answer, but Blossom wanted to be polite and friendly.

"Fine, once I got there. I didn't mean to fall asleep on the couch though. Like, I don't know if I hurt your feelings..." I was going to clean the kitchen, but the kitchen was clean. The trays were put away. The containers of cookies were by the stand mixer.

"You didn't hurt my feelings at all, I promise," Blossom reassured Amy, while she opened the freezer to fetch her creamy cookie collaborations. "Do you wanna talk about your thoughts and stuff?"

"Oh uh... no. I just figure you wouldn't like waking up alone to find me sleeping somewhere else. Like, in sitcoms, that's a bad thing."

"We'd be such an amazing sitcom. I mean, tailored to a specific audience, but… anyway, I made you an ice cream cookie sandwich thing." Blossom held out one of her creations, offering it like a third grader sharing candy with a girl she liked.

"Aww... that's so sweet." I reached out and took the ice cream cookie sandwich. Probably the least balanced breakfast ever. "But you know, you need special cookies for ice cream sandwiches."

"Huh?"

"You have to make the cookies a certain way, so they don't get hard when you freeze them." To prove my point, I bit into Blossom's ice cream cookie sandwich. The cookies cracked and dropped a lot of crumbs on the ground. Still tasted good though.

"Well, I was today months old," –a little ageplay joke!– "when I learned that little fact. Can you show me how to make the ice cream sandwich ones? Not now obviously, but eventually?"

"Yeah, no problem." I passed the ice cream sandwich to Blossom so she could take a bite. One of the cookies split down the middle and she almost dropped it on the floor. I wasn't used to seeing Blossom lose her composure. It was cute.