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“Because everyone keeps explaining why the gun is loaded. Nobody is telling me how to stop pulling the fucking trigger.”

She blinks.

I cancel the next appointment from the parking lot.

Fuck therapy.

I try meditation instead.

Aura finds me sitting cross-legged on the floor of my apartment two days later with my phone balanced against a stack of self-help books and a woman’s soothing voice instructing me to observe my thoughts without judgment.

“What are you doing?” Aura asks.

“Finding inner peace.”

“You look furious.”

“The woman keeps telling me to release control.”

Aura lowers herself onto the couch. “Maybe she means emotionally.”

“She needs to be more specific.”

The voice on my phone tells me to imagine each thought as a leaf floating along a stream.

I close my eyes and picture Ryan getting into the Corolla.

My imaginary leaf catches fire.

“Did your stream just piss you off?” Aura asks.

“The metaphor lacks adequate infrastructure.”

“You’re reorganizing meditation.”

“It should make more sense.”

The woman tells me to return my attention gently to my breathing.

“Stop telling me how to breathe,” I snap at the phone.

Aura takes the phone before I can throw it. “I think you’re done.”

“I paid for the entire month.”

“You’re aggressively meditating. You’re done.”

Meditation lasts four days.

During the third week, I order nine books about accountability, trauma, healthy love, anxiety, grief, boundaries, and breaking destructive patterns. The delivery driver leaves two boxes outside my door, and I carry them inside with the kind of determination usually reserved for building emergency shelters.

I underline until every page looks interrogated. I complete the exercises, answer the questions, and fill the margins with increasingly hostile commentary.

One author tells me becoming my best self requires beginning every morning with gratitude.

I write, My worst self doesn’t function before coffee.

Another insists forgiveness releases the person doing the forgiving.