I began to walk as a caricature of a blind man. Feeling my way. Tapping my foot cautiously in front of me, finding nothing but emptiness. After what seemed hours, I touched the cool, smooth hardness of the painted cement wall. Thinking I had found an anchor, a landmark of familiarity, I relaxed somewhat. I rested for a moment, thinking myself foolish for being frightened earlier, but I soon realized I was still lost. The wall felt alien to me. Porous and somehow obscene. I followed it and followed it and followed it, loathing the foul feel of it, but still it led me nowhere. Panic rose in my throat, tight like a clenched fist. I played my fingers over each painted pore of each cinder block in the wall. It felt as though I had been transported to some crater-blasted alien landscape. A certainty grew in me that soon, my searching hand would touch something cool and wet and elastic. Something alive. I gave in to my fear and forgot my pride. I called out for my brother. “Monty! Monty! Monty!” His bedside light clicked on, and my old familiar world swam into focus. Monty blinked at me and asked what was wrong. I felt like a fool. I was standing alone, in an unlikely corner, like some piece of unused furniture pushed out of the way. I felt shame, but also relief. I stood dumbly caught in the light, my outstretched hand less than an inch from the light switch.

Now I find that I’ve fallen prey to this unlikely phenomenon once again. I was living my life as I always had, as I believed I always would. I did not stumble blindly toward death; rather, each step of my life seemed preordained, as though it had been planned out a thousand years before I was born. And I took each step with complacent pleasure, knowing I was taking the right path. I strode proudly, if predictably, through my life.