A Fully Realized Person, A Guide
Step 0.5 – Optional Conclusion
There is no one to be aware. It remains that way. Cessation.
Step 1 – Creation
Nurture the development of the one-day person you might be. Create yourself molecule by molecule, with winding veins and a wrinkled brain to match the papillary whorls upon your hands and fingertips. In three weeks, you will have a heart. In six weeks, a brain. As you grow distant voices will name you stupid little things like blueberry, grape, walnut, and then by real names. Though most of those won’t stick some will become favored. Some you will hear until your death. Be lulled by the muffled melodies those voices sing, and the warm hands resting against the walls around you. Come to in brightness, wailing.
Malfunction – Option 1.A
Though an exact measurement is unknown approximately one in one hundred and seventy five pregnancies result in a miscarriage or still birth. If this occurs return to Step 1 until optimal conditions are met to proceed to Step 2.
Malfunction – Option 2.A
Something is not right. Something is unusual. Someone, somewhere, takes notice.
Malfunction – Option 3.A
When a fetus is developing it receives both nutrients and oxygen through the placenta from the mother’s blood. Once the heart develops the fetus begins pumping blood through the body. However, there exists a hole in the atrial tissue referred to as a shunt in-between the chambers of the heart. This allows blood flow to bypass the lungs until birth. Once born this hole naturally seals itself closed in order to direct blood flow exclusively to the lungs. However, for approximately 30% of people this hole does not naturally close and remains some degree of open. This is referred to as a Patent Foramen Oval, or PFO. This hole itself does not pose a great risk to health. Though, it does allow a minimal amount of unoxygenated blood to cross over to the other side of the heart. Develop a PFO.
Step 2 – Early Childhood
Grow older, slowly. Learn first the art of rolling, then crawling, then wobbling, then walking, then running. Learn you have hands, then a mouth, then a throat, and then how to make sound. You will learn to compose those sounds into messages. Experience everything for the first time. Develop a sense of fear and a sense of adventure. Develop teeth and lose them. Learn that you love your parents and learn what it is like for your friends who don’t love theirs. Age, one year at a time. It will feel like an eon if you bother to notice. Enjoy swimming, dancing, piano playing. You may have siblings, in which case learn to share everything always. You may be an only child, in which case learn that what is yours is yours and no one is owed another’s anything. You may be the first born of multiple children, in which case learn to absorb your parents love undivided then the subsequent absence of it. Learn that you are capable of anger and what happens when you bang your fists against the faces of those who induce it. Learn what blood is, what bugs are, how the sun makes plants grow, why the sky is blue.
Malfunction – Option 1.B
Children are often unobservant of their surroundings. This often results in injuries, illness, and other mishaps. Run into the street chasing a toy without looking. Trust a stranger even though you were told not to. Swallow something you shouldn’t because it looks shiny and tasty. Return to Step 1.
Malfunction – Option 2.B
Someone is somewhere in a place unknown to most. They are patient. They find you suspect in a way you remain unaware of. During appointments and what you are told are developmentally appropriate checkups the doctors take one blood vial more than they are supposed to.
Malfunction – Option 3.B
The deoxygenated blood crossing from one chamber to another via the PFO proves to be an undiagnosed issue. It causes fatigue, shortness of breath, and cardiac rhythmic abnormalities exacerbated by prolonged physical activity. Learn to hate P.E. Learn that it somehow shameful to do so.
Step 3 – Late Childhood
In Step 2 you will have learned how to develop teeth. Do it again, but this time keep them. Struggle as schooling becomes more difficult, cry over a math assignment you claim the next day you lost because you’d rather get a failing grade than risk the teacher noticing that the smudges of smeared ink are tear drops dried on the page. Try sports, try archery, try fencing, try karate. Fake a crush because all the girls say it is impossible not to like someone, and you do not want them to think you are weird. Realize that most of your time is dedicated to desperately trying not to be weird. Lose a friend when they tell you the next day you cannot be friends if you like the same person. Feel angry and like you’ve been cheated out of something because you are certain that you have been. Learn to read and write and scribble with abandon. Learn that grass stains are hard to remove from clothing and that bugs are yucky. Spiders especially so. Become friends again the following week when they have forgotten about the crush entirely. Ruminate on it for a year. Wonder if you are bad at being a person.
Malfunction – Option 1.C
Children often develop a larger sense of independence before a matching sense of self preservation. Leave your helmet at home because you feel like it makes you look silly, which becomes more important than the safety your parents assure you it provides. Try to balance standing on a moving bike without holding the handlebars. Hit your head hard on a high curb while your friends scream. Return to Step 1.
Malfunction – Option 2.C
Watch Matilda, Narnia, childhood fables. On a day you are playing make believe give it a genuine try. You will not expect anything to happen, but then something will. A flash of light, a floating object, a gentle unzip of space or time or stone. Someone, somewhere, will see, will come, and suddenly somewhere is your own home. A knock on the door, a flash of a badge, cold stares, and black vans. You will leave your home that day. Realize, later, that it will never be allowed to be your home again.
Malfunction – Option 3.C
Roughly 18.1% of the nation’s population suffers from Anxiety. Common symptoms include, but are not limited to: nausea, irritability, stress that is disproportionate to the true impact of events, and an inability to set aside a worry. These symptoms are often expressed as: bouts of panic that result in shortness of breath, cardiac rhythmic abnormalities in response to triggers of stress, and an aversion to activities that individuals fear will cause embarrassment (P.E. for example). Develop anxiety. Attribute any strange symptoms to this disorder, leaving the PFO undiscovered.
Step 4 vs. 1 – Early Adolescence
Middle school does not agree with you. It is loud, bright. Angry children will make you an angry child. You brute force your way through classes and tests and the years spent there with sheer force of will. Take electives, learn to paint, learn you hate acting, learn to make best friends and how to be discerning. Become a bit jaded, a bit independent. Learn you are not like others in some way. If that way is neurodivergence learn what a meltdown is, what sensory overload is, and what your own blood tastes like when its coming from the bits of shredded flesh you tore off the inside of your mouth with the teeth you developed in Step 3. If that way is sexuality learn that children are not forgiving. That cruelty is as easy as breathing and kindness is a chore others don’t find worth doing. Learn to avert eyes, to discourage rumors, to try dating someone you don’t like. If that way is gender learn what it means to befriend those of the gender that you feel you are, and for those friends to like you for the gender that you aren’t. Learn that the way to fix it is money and parental support of which you have neither. Learn that you are considered fat or ugly or in some other way unworthy. Learn that you will feel this way always, even if you are popular, and beautiful, and beloved, and good at everything. Go to dances with friends and love it. Try horseback riding, photography, guitar. Pick up a language and realize you are not good at memorizing. Try ASL or morse code instead. Find a note left on your desk meant for someone else, learn from that not what a ‘quickie’ is and throw the note away. Learn curse words and form ideas of who you want to be in the future.
Malfunction – Option 1.D
Try to make friends with the wrong people. Realize one day that you know what drugs are, what withdrawal is, what it looks like when someone overdoses. Do not find the opportunity to learn what Narcan is. You will find friends who are good influences who you tell none of this too, and you will make friends who will hand you a bottle from the fridge that tastes chemical and sour and burns. Find you feel floaty and disheveled, too hot inside the house hosting the party and step outside. There will be a pool with the cover half on. Fall in, and realize you can not tell which way is up. Return to Step 1.
Malfunction – Option 3. D
The PFO does not pose much risk. However, a blood clot does. Typically, when a clot forms in the body the body can detect it and release something called ‘an activator’ which breaks down the clot and disposes of the platelets. This does not cause any harm and happens in most individuals frequently without notice or issue. A common location for blood clots to form is in the legs, where they may travel along the blood stream until the activator destroys them. However, if the clot is too large and the activator cannot take effect in time the clot may travel along the blood stream, through the heart, and reach the lungs. This is called a Pulmonary Embolism. Do not have a Pulmonary Embolism. Instead, the blood clot will pass through the chambers of the heart via the PFO and bypass the lungs. It will lodge within the brain and cause an ischemic stroke. Wake, draped across the floor feeling wrong, unable to walk.
Step 4 vs. 2 – Early Testing
(In the instance Malfunctions 2.A, B, and C are true)
Life is strange for some time. Someone Somewhere is now Someone Here That You Know, and there is a revolving door of doctors, nurses, psychologists, black suits, adults, adults, adults. Needles pocking, prodding, testing, provocation to use your not-so-make-believe powers. Ask for your parents and be told you only have to stay just a little while longer and then you can see them again. Ask for your parents and learn that every time you ask it will always be ‘just a little while longer.’ Ask to write them letters and be given paper and pencils and write until your hand cramps. Learn that they are never sent. Learn the name of governments, of dangers. Learn the meaning of sacrifice and duty and think that neither of those are your responsibility. Say this aloud only once. Learn to not make that mistake again. Grow resentful, and hateful, and angry. See the way the men with guns begin to fear you and use it against them. Bid your time, years and years of it. It will feel like eons again, because you have no choice but to notice it. Struggle, and run, and get caught when you are almost gone. Bite the hand that feeds you as it wraps around your mouth. Taste the blood and wonder what it would take to kill or be killed. Wonder, horribly, how much blood you could drink before you drown. Spend a long time in the dark. A quiet cold room with the clicking of a lock. Someone Here comes by to see you, speaks through a peak hole in the door. Their hand is bandaged; their eyes are cold. Ask when you can see your parents and smile red when they tell you soon. Tell Someone Here you believe it to be true.
Step 5 vs. 1 – Late Adolescence
High school is good. You feel you fit better in your skin than you did in middle school. You find home in the art room, fingers buried into ceramic clay, slip gunked beneath your fingernails and paint smeared across your cheek. Classes are harder but the future feels closer, and you find it rewarding. You cling to good friendships and maintain them across district lines. Join a club, a different club, another and stick with this one. Befriend an upperclassman with a jeep, spend your afternoons and nights driving around the city with the top open to the air. It is the closest thing to a convertible you have been in. See movies at midnight and get pancakes at I.H.O.P in your pajamas at 2 A.M. Forget your younger years. Let the anger fade away. Everything is fine for what feels like a good long while.
Malfunction – Option 1. E
You live somewhere weather can be unpredictable. You do not yet have a license but your friend who does doesn’t mind driving you around. One night there is a storm, and they live near a mountain. They want to go watch the lightning and you agree to go with them. You will be the age that reckless things like storm chasing feel harmless and fun. You trust their driving skills and that they are not dangerous. What you do not know is that they had their brakes changed just the day before, and it was done incorrectly. It is dark, it is slippery. On a sharp downturn along a cliff the car brakes fail and the vehicle drifts. Return to Step 1.
Step 5 vs. 2 – Weaponizing
(In the instance Malfunctions 2.A, B, C and Step 4 vs. 2 are true)
Lobotomize your personality. This is a necessity of survival. Behave, practice, observe. A mistake will be made. Capitalize on it. Kill one of the men with a gun. Then another. Take the weapon. You will not have been allowed access to weapons before. You will not have any experience firing it, but you have grown accustomed to the sight of its usage, aimed with lethal intent and pressed against your temple frequently enough to understand the gist. Turn off the safety. Load a bullet into the chamber. You will not know what trigger discipline is, but you will not need it. Wince at the sound. Find Someone Here. They will also have experienced Step 3 at some point in their life and will smile with a mouth full of teeth. They will tell you lies. They will tell you truths. It is up to you to decide the difference. They will see the determination in your eyes and realize their words are not worth the time it takes to speak them. They will notice the absence of footsteps running. They will notice you are covered in red, red, red. They will beg for their life, beg to be spared. They will ask for mercy. It is important that you do not give it to them. Kill them any way you’d like, with bullet metal, flashing lights, a floating object, or an unzipping of space or time or bone. Someone Here becomes No One At All. Leave, standing on your own two feet. Soon has come and gone.
Step 5 vs 3. – Recovery
(in the instance Malfunctions 3.A, B, C, and D are true)
It will happen so suddenly. You do not have the words to describe it. When you wake, sprawled across the floor, it is to the feeling of someone’s hand on your arm. Flail and shove yourself up and away. Realize the hand on your arm was your own. Realize that when you stand you cannot place your foot beneath you in a way that does not hurt. Realize that you cannot control half of your body at all. The first word to pop into your head is ‘stroke’ and you know it with the certainty of a soul burdened. Convince your parents to take you to the hospital. The staff there will tell you it is rare. That it is unlikely. That you are wrong. Demand an M.R.I anyway. The machine will be larger than you are expecting. T.V. shows will tell you it is a small bed in a thin metal shell. The real machine will be a gargantuan, taking up the room, near-bursting through the ceiling with the opening in the center barely big enough to fit a person. The machine will shake and thud and sing an obnoxious mechanic whirl for forty minutes while you lie still like a corpse. After, the staff will return, sheepish, and tell you that you are one in a million. Spend two months in the local children’s hospital. First in the I.C.U. where you regain strength and coordination, then in the neurology inpatient ward where you are monitored and tested for lasting effects. Be told, over and over again, that you are lucky. That you are alive. That the pin prick all over tingling means your nerves are reconnecting to your neural pathways. Return to school in fits and bursts, make up the schoolwork you missed. Sit through the stroke portion of health class with your eyes pinned down to your desk. Become strong enough to not be considered weak, then become strong enough to be considered normal. Plateau at 90% returned sensation and convince yourself that as long as you don’t think about it you don’t notice that 10% absence. The following year have a wire mesh inserted into your heart so that the membrane of the muscle will grow over it and seal the PFO closed.
Step 6 vs. 1 – Results
You will go somewhere in life you expect, and somewhere unexpected. You will learn, and grow, and experiment. Sometimes you will try your best and still fail, and sometimes you will not bother to try at all and succeed. Sometimes it will be the opposite. You will fall in love and out of it. Find a home somewhere the plants have overgrown. Discover you hate gardening. Try baking, knitting, rock climbing, meditating. Talk to friends and lose them. Talk to friends and keep them. Talk to new maybe-friends and gain them. Get a dog or a cat. You will have made an identity, and it remains mutable. Find the things that make it feel stable without suffocating. Build upon your foundation going forward.
Step 6 vs. 2 – Refuge
(In the instance Malfunctions 2.A, B, C, Step 4 vs. 2, and Step 5 vs. 2 are true)
Grow your hair, then cut and dye it. Steal what you want when you want it. Forge an identity and disappear within it. Acclimate to the mundane civilian reality. One day decide it has been long enough to avoid suspicion and drive by your old home. See that it is empty. Look for your parents and find their names listed in stone within the wrought iron of a cemetery. Find that the final date is the same as the day Someone Somewhere became Someone Here. Leave flowers, but only once. Get a GED. Get a Job, something common. A barista, a server, a bartender. Become a glutton, accumulate and maximalize and pry the joy of life from every crevice you come upon. Become a regular at a coffee shop, a restaurant, a movie theater. Learn to breathe a little easier. Sleep with the lights on.
Step 6 vs. 3 – Rebuilding
(in the instance Malfunctions 3.A, B, C, D and Step 5 vs. 3 are true)
No one knows you had a stroke when they look at you. Kids heal too well for that to be a possibility. You learn to love fashion and insist on wearing glittery high heels to your graduation ceremony. Your parents roll their eyes but a local reporter takes a picture of your shoes and uses it in the article about the school. Feel insanely vindicated. Take a year off and travel around Europe. Fall in love with Scotland’s rolling hills and help a reforestation program plant aspen trees, the same shades of fire you can find in your backyard at home come fall. Drink whisky and wine and scotch and bourbon and realize it all tastes the same kind of awful against the back of your throat. Live, and realize that the one-day person you thought you might be is who you are right now.