the way my brain felt back then, before the crash and burn and resurrection, felt like a very well-organized filing cabinet, everything in its place, labeled, categorized, cross-referenced, and now… now it feels like cosmo’s toy bin, that overflowing mess of squeaky things and ropes and half-chewed tennis balls, a jumble of bright, chaotic, utterly inexplicable joy and the way i used to think that was a problem, the mess, the disorganization, like my value was in how neatly i could contain myself, and now i think… maybe that’s the point, maybe the real aliveness isn’t in the filing but in the… spilling, in the letting it all run together, and the guilt, god, the guilt, for not doing this sooner, for waiting so long to… unplug, but better now than never, right, and the mango stain on my fingers is still there, faintly, like a promise, like a reminder that even the sweetest things leave a mark, and maybe that's okay too, maybe the marks are the point, the evidence that we lived, that we dared to taste the sun.