the remedy

He looked at me and said these words: "You are cured."
He was the same person who threw a truck at my heart and told me to drive it while I was down, fake-heaving, asking for one more minute, one more chance, one more shot at cleaning myself up but-may-I-first-take-a-break after years on break.

And I glanced at him in return and said, "How?"
Because my future was no different from the dirty clothes in my bedroom, behind a closed door. Hanging on a chair, under the bed, in plain sight, on my desk on top of my Bible to hide it from my atheist parents. I want to be a teacher, a lawyer, a federal forensic science research associate with an emphasis in phonetics. I want three kids, but I want the least of my worries to be money, which will either result in a strike through the possibility of becoming a teacher or convincing two of them to avoid college. Or not having three kids. But then I remember that all kids have dads, and hopefully theirs will stay. And speaking of teachers, who talk a lot, I need to talk more, and write less, or I might as well become a mute struggling writer who loves writing until I end up on the streets with not a dime, much less three kids to raise.
I fear forgetting to pay my rent, when I haven't even moved into my apartment.
I fear that break sucks all the productivity I have in me, and maybe that's why every time I transition to the next step--middle school, high school, college--I don't know what to make of my summer to prepare and end up making the biggest mistakes my first year. Then I don't know what to do with myself after the first year, before the second year, so I flip a coin, heads for change, tails for change.

And that's when he pointed to the trash can of my mistakes and said, "I can show you how to learn."
The trash can is under my desk, on its side, contents half-spilled out. I can pick up my clothes, I can throw them in the laundry basket, but the trash can is too dirty to touch. Sometimes I'll have to resort to throwing things away in another room's bin, which my parents oversee. Other times, I don't want to get up so I'll just throw them in the lopsided trash can with an overhand instead of an underhand, because I forget, and that's why I miss so often. And even if I make it in, the trash can is still lopsided and I can see everything in it without having to walk up to it and peer down.

After all these years, I still didn't know how to learn. You pick it up, it falls back down. You try to ignore it, and it shrieks for your attention. You do learn, but you don't get how you got there, and that right there is the problem. You can't just go to sleep in a sea of your clothes and wake up to find them washed, dried, and folded neatly at your feet. You can't get rid of your trash if the trash bin is on its side. You can't live with your parents forever. You just can't.

So I said in reply, "I'd like that."
And then: change. He didn't tell me to clean my room. He didn't ask me to uncover the Bible or find my missing sock, and he didn't advise me that forensic science with an emphasis in phonetics is not the best path for a person of my eccentricities. He left my trash can alone, and I didn't think to pick it up. But I knew then what I never knew before, and that was that I was cured.