The mind is a strange thing.

One day, you can’t get out of bed. The next, you’re all peppy and make your best bad jokes.

The transition is not as sudden as I want to make it sound.

Nevertheless, the surprise is still surprising.

Why am I in a good mood? What has changed?

Let’s forget the rhetorical questions. I know what’s changed. But I don’t understand why it’s taking effect today. Why not yesterday? Or last weekend? These changes have not quite happened overnight. So why now?

The momentum had been building up for a few weeks.

Maybe because I reached some sort of intangible peak?

It didn’t look that high.

It felt natural.

Yes.

It felt natural.

That’s the point.

When keeping at it is not a struggle, you know?

And the veil is lifted.

Just. Like. That.

Like it was never there to start with.

Stuck in bed? Forlorn and sad?

How stupid that sounds.

That didn’t exist.

It will never happen.

Isn’t it funny how the mind so easily forgets?

And, yet, it remembers so well and so deeply; the smells, the colors, and the taste of this world.

Memories entrenched in the synapses of the grey matter.

A detail you’ll never forget. Or something when you were just four.

A food your dad used to make on special occasions. Or a creepy doll in the attic.

It remembers it all.

But, for now, it is bliss.

…Gaslit by my own brain.

I was always happy.

Don’t think about it.!?

Look how well you’re able to focus your attention.

It was always like that. You never, ever struggled reading a boo–

I-It was hard to write, too?

Nah. Not at all, I say.

You’re as healthy as a…

As a…

I don’t know. You’re super healthy, that’s all.

Huh?

Bro, c’mon. Trust me.

It’ll always be like that.