I had gone to Dallas to look at a law school.  I had no hopes of actually getting admitted, but I was reinventing myself into something and was still deluded enough to think I could change my life dramatically.  My mentor in college had gone to Southern Methodist University and got her law degree there.  I was her star student in college.  But she didn't know my history, my litany of things tried and unfinished.  I became in my imagination the thing I presented to her -- focused, driven, oozing potential, the top of the class.  And I flew to Dallas as an imposter with a plan, an impressive school, prestigious degree, a fancy office, an elegant brick house full of china and children.  

And what happened was.......

I spent an afternoon shut in my aunt's Dallas bedroom.  She asked me for privacy while whe was on the phone.  Someone on the other end of the line was making arrangements for her to be admitted to another treatment center.  I sat on the bed.  Where else was there to sit?  I waited for her to come and get me.  I was afraid to open the door, afraid she would want to confide something to me, afraid the weight of it would collapse me.  And what is there to do in someone else's bed when you're not tired?  There was no t.v.  No books.  Just a bed and someone else's things.  I started opening drawers.  I found needles.  Syringes.  A mirror to see myself in.  

Utter quiet is no consolation to an imagined life that exists only in plastic masks of fake memories.