I am on this makeshift bed when we are gearing up for our third move, this time to Holland. I dream that I am at the foot of a row of gigantic water slides watching cobras writhe their way toward me. Their hoods flare and they sway as they rush downhill, a wall of slithering bodies. Their eyes are on me, and there’s nothing I can do but wait.
I wake up, terrified. My mother tells me that people dream of snakes during periods of change. “Because they shed their skins in order to grow,” she says, returning me to the foot of her bed.
Everybody pretends that you die only once. But that’s not true. You can die a thousand possible futures in the course of a single, stupid life.
A bucket list disguises a dark question as a challenge: What do you want to do before you die? We all want, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.” But is the answer to that desire a set of experiences? Should we really focus on how many moments we can collect?
Apparently, Corinne saw my problem as a personal challenge. We're going on a year now. It was nothing to be embarrassed of! Just, uh—if you can't ride a bike—she's gonna make damn sure you will know how to ride a bike. I don't know how to say this in a she-will-read-this-and-not-hate-me way, but Corinne is... determined. But aside from a comment here, there, or literally any time we were outside and Corinne saw a bike, I managed to avoid her cycling boot camp. Too snowy today! Too hot! Headache! Hemorrhoids!
Until The Trip.
For the love of god.
The Trip.