_{The End of Unseeing}

_{April 2026} 

_{I didn’t question how I’d arrived—or even why.}

_{Not because the answer didn’t matter, but because the way I was moving had already begun to answer it.}

_{I found myself in water.}

_{In a bathtub, out of place. I could see that it was dirty, and still, I had to get in. So I cleaned it. Not completely—just enough. Enough to cross whatever internal threshold would let me enter without resistance.}

_{This isn’t something I naturally trust. Even in waking life, I avoid bathtubs. There’s something about them that feels unclean to me—contained, close, holding everything in one place. I’ve always preferred water that moves.}

_{And still, I entered.}

_{As the water settled around me, I could feel where I was. The backseat of a car. Contained within a structure that doesn’t support what it’s carrying.}

_{I stayed there long enough to notice, then looked out the window and saw where we had landed.}

_{As I stepped out of the car, my attention was drawn to a dark mass draped over the sidewalk bars.}

_{I walked toward the beach.}

_{This place has followed me through years of dreaming. I wasn’t searching for anything in that moment. I was just there, moving through it.}

_{I caught sight of what, at first, looked like seaweed—something heavy draped over metal bars, left behind by the tide. But as I got closer, I could see it more clearly.}

_{An octopus.}

_{Large. Still. Dying.}

_{The recognition landed in my body before anything formed around it. And grief followed. It moved through me while I was still somewhere between sleep and waking. I could feel the weight of it press me deeper into my bed, into that scene.}

_{Two men came forward. Familiar, though I couldn’t place them. They moved toward it, hands working with intention, trying to bring it back.}

_{I was frozen, held in that moment.}

_{There wasn’t a pull toward resolution. Just a quiet knowing that whatever they were reaching for had already crossed its threshold.}

_{The grief stayed. It didn’t shift or resolve. It just moved, like a current behind me filling the frame.}

_{Later, I found myself farther down the opposite end—the black and white intersection from my childhood. It was spoken to me that I had been sitting in filth without awareness, that I had adapted to conditions I hadn’t fully seen.}

_{It didn’t land as new information.}

_{I had already felt the truth of it.}

_{Not just that I had been in it, but how I had made it workable. How I adjusted what I knew didn’t feel right, softened the edges, crossed my own thresholds, and remained there.}

_{The recognition landed through a familiar voice, and I received it.}

_{There are moments where something outside of you reflects what you’re already beginning to see, and the reflection lands without resistance.}

_{I can see how much of my life formed inside that pattern. Adapting to what was in front of me. Staying in structures that didn’t fully hold me, but could be made to feel sufficient.}

_{There’s grief in that.}

_{Sometimes sharp. Sometimes overwhelming. Always present beneath the surface. A quiet recognition of something that carried me for a long time and no longer does.}

_{The shift was subtle, and I allowed it to be what it was.}

_{The landscape feels different now. Not because anything changed externally, but because I can see where things hold and where they don’t. Where something is supported, and where it’s simply contained.}

_{I don’t feel the same pull to adjust it.}

_{I moved through something without marking it at the time. Entered it, stayed in it, stepped out, and saw something that couldn’t be brought back.}

_{For me, that was the end of unseeing.}

_—NC—