I closed my eyes because someone told me the answers were inside.
I thought that was bullshit.
Most advice given to people who don’t know what to do with their lives eventually involves breathing.
Breathe deeply.
Be present.
Clear your mind.
As if the mind has ever agreed to be cleared simply because someone asked nicely.
Still, I sat there.
Hands resting in my lap.
Eyes closed.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Again.
The room slowly disappeared.
Then she was there.
A little girl sitting cross-legged in the darkness.
No floor.
No walls.
No ceiling.
Just black.
She looked about eight.
Maybe nine.
Old enough to know things.
Young enough that she shouldn’t have known the things she apparently did.
She smiled.
“I knew you’d come back.”
I recognized her immediately.
Not from her face.
From the feeling.
Something ancient wearing a face I remembered.
“Where are we?”
“Nowhere.”
“That’s impossible.”
She sighed.
“You got very serious.”
I opened my eyes.
The room returned.
I closed them again.
She was still there.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Leave every time something doesn’t make sense.”
Fair enough.
“I came because I need to know something.”
“I know.”
“How?”
She shrugged.
“I was here before you were.”
A chill moved through me.
“What does that mean?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“I have questions.”
“You have fear dressed like questions.”
I didn’t particularly like her.
Which probably meant she was mine.
“I think I made a mistake.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about.”
“Neither do you.”
That shut me up.
“I mean my life.”
“Oh.”
Decades of decisions, grief, work, relationships, endings, beginnings and things I still couldn’t decide whether to call lessons.
Oh.
“What if I chose wrong?”
“Then choose again.”
“What if it’s too late?”
“For what?”
“To change it.”
She looked around the endless darkness.
“Do you see a clock?”
“No.”
“Then stop inventing one.”
“But some decisions can’t be undone.”
“I know.”
“Some things change everything.”
“They’re supposed to.”
“What if I lose everything?”
She tilted her head.
“You mean the things you didn’t arrive with?”
I stopped.
There was something cruel about how easily children dismantled adult problems.
Not because the problems weren’t real.
Because children hadn’t yet learned which illusions they were supposed to protect.
Something moved above us.
Paper.
One sheet.
Then another.
Hundreds.
Thousands.
They drifted through the darkness.
Some yellow with age.
Some burned around the edges.
Some written in languages I couldn’t understand.
Names.
Dates.
Places.
Promises.
I reached for one.
My name was written across the top.
Beneath it were words I somehow understood.
A person.
A relationship.
A promise.
Pain.
Departure.
Return.
At the bottom was my name again.
“This is mine.”
She said nothing.
“It’s a soul contract.”
She rolled her eyes.
“What?”
“You really like paperwork.”
“I’m serious.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
I turned the page toward her.
“My name is on it.”
“Your name is on lots of things.”
“That means I agreed to it.”
“No.”
“I chose this.”
“No.”
“You just said we choose.”
“You chose to come.”
She pointed toward me.
“You didn’t choose every wound.”
Another page floated down.
Loss.
Another.
Love.
Another.
Betrayal.
Joy.
Grief.
Fear.
Someone I had spent years trying to understand.
Someone I had spent years trying to forget.
A lifetime reduced to paper.
I grabbed another.
My name.
Another.
My name.
Always my name.
“Where is my signature?”
She smiled.
I searched.
Nothing.
I went through another.
Nothing.
Another.
Nothing.
There had to be one.
Surely somewhere there was evidence that I had agreed.
That every person belonged there.
That every painful ending fulfilled something written before I arrived.
That there was a reason.
People love reasons.
Reasons make suffering easier to carry.
If something was destined, perhaps it wasn’t wasted.
If someone was a soul contract, perhaps staying too long wasn’t a mistake.
I kept searching.
No signature.
“Then what did I agree to?”
She looked at me.
“This.”
“What is this?”
She spread her arms.
And suddenly the darkness filled with moments.
A baby’s first scream.
Cold grass beneath bare feet.
Birthday candles.
Someone laughing.
A first kiss.
A hospital room.
A funeral.
A dog sleeping beside someone who thought they had all the time in the world.
A woman alone in her car trying not to cry.
A hand being held.
A hand being released.
Sunlight.
Rain.
Music too loud.
Bodies aging.
People arriving.
People disappearing.
Ordinary Tuesdays.
Terrible Fridays.
Life.
Beautiful and horrifying and ridiculously temporary.
“You chose the experience,” she said.
“Why?”
“Because knowing isn’t the same as being here.”
The images disappeared.
Darkness again.
“So there was no contract?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then there was?”
“I didn’t say that either.”
“You’re annoying.”
“You made me.”
I laughed.
“What about destiny?”
“Maybe.”
“Karma?”
“Maybe.”
“Fate?”
“Maybe.”
“Soul contracts?”
She shrugged.
“Maybe.”
“That’s not helpful.”
“You’re looking for rules.”
“Rules tell me whether I made the right decision.”
“There.”
She pointed at me.
“That’s what you’re doing.”
“What?”
“Trying to win.”
“Win what?”
“Life.”
“I’m not trying to win life.”
“You absolutely are.”
She began counting on her fingers.
“Choose the right people. Leave at the right time. Make enough money. Own enough things. Build something impressive. Never waste time. Never choose wrong.”
She held up her hands.
“Congratulations.”
“For what?”
“You turned being alive into a job.”
That landed harder than I wanted it to.
“I have to take my life seriously.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s my life.”
“Exactly.”
Things began appearing around us.
Houses.
Cars.
Money.
Job titles.
Perfect bodies.
Perfect marriages.
Numbers in bank accounts.
Numbers on scales.
Numbers measuring followers.
Everything humanity had collectively agreed would prove we had done this correctly.
Buy.
Earn.
Become.
Prove.
Achieve.
Protect.
Compare.
Don’t lose it.
Don’t age.
Don’t fail.
The little girl covered her ears.
“Very noisy.”
Then everything disappeared.
Silence.
“Those things matter,” I said.
“Some do.”
“Which ones?”
“You decide.”
“That’s the problem.”
“No. You thinking there is one correct answer is the problem.”
I looked at the papers beneath us.
“What happens to everything I build?”
“You know.”
I did.
Eventually someone else sleeps in the house.
Someone else opens the drawers.
Someone donates the clothes.
My name disappears from wherever it was written.
Photographs survive longer than the stories behind them.
“So none of it matters?”
She frowned.
“Adults always do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn temporary into meaningless.”
She took my hand.
“Temporary things matter because you got to experience them.”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Stop trying to be graded.”
“I expected something deeper.”
She leaned closer.
Her voice changed.
Older.
For one second, I wasn’t sure there was a child standing in front of me at all.
“Stop sacrificing the experience of being alive trying to build proof that you lived.”
Silence.
Then she was eight again.
Or nine.
Whatever she was.
“What if I’ve already wasted too much time?”
“You’re doing it again.”
“What?”
“Leaving now to think about then.”
I looked at her.
This little person I had spent years calling wounded.
Something I needed to heal.
Maybe I had misunderstood her.
Maybe she wasn’t waiting to be rescued.
Maybe she had been waiting for me to become quiet enough to hear her.
“I need you to answer one thing.”
She waited.
“Was this a mistake?”
She knew what I meant.
The decision.
The ending.
The beginning.
The years.
The people.
The doors I closed.
The ones I was considering opening.
The entire ridiculous mess of being alive.
“No.”
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re trying to make the experience mean something before you’ve finished experiencing it.”
I looked down.
Thousands of contracts surrounded us.
“Then what happens when I open my eyes?”
“You go back.”
“To what?”
“Your life.”
“And do what?”
She looked genuinely confused.
“Live it.”
Then I noticed the paper in my hand.
The words were gone.
I turned it over.
Blank.
I grabbed another.
Blank.
Another.
Blank.
Every contract scattered around us was empty.
Thousands of blank pages.
“Where did everything go?”
She watched me.
“It was always blank.”
“No. I read them.”
“I know.”
“I saw my name.”
“I know.”
“I saw what I was supposed to do.”
“I know.”
“Then why could I read it?”
The room began returning.
The distant hum.
My hands.
My body.
Her face began disappearing into the darkness.
“Wait.”
She smiled.
“What did I sign?”
“Nothing.”
“Then why did it feel like I did?”
“Because you said yes.”
“Yes to what?”
Her voice was barely there.
“The experience.”
The darkness folded inward.
One question remained.
“Then who wrote everything on the contracts?”
For the first time, she didn’t answer immediately.
I could barely see her.
Just the outline of a little girl who somehow seemed older than I was.
Then she smiled.
“You did.”
My eyes opened.
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