I stepped through the door and the hallway was gone.
Everything was gone.
No walls. No floor I could see. No ceiling. Just white — not blinding, not harsh. Soft. The kind of white that is not empty but full. Like it had been holding something and I was that something. It was like I stepped into the inside of a thought.
I stood still.
I walked slowly not knowing what I might find. Would I be back in my room, on my own sofa, with my instant noodles? Well, that was what I wanted though I hoped the bills wouldn't be there anymore. Even here, they haunt me.
There was ground under my feet. I could feel it. But I could not see it and that gave me anxiety. The anticipation was making me restless. The air was not warm and not cold. It was just — air. The way air is when you stopped noticing it. Yet, I noticed it. I noticed everything.
I did not know what to do with my hands. The old habit. I put them at my sides. Then I put them behind my back. Then I let them hang. Even my fingers were restless as if they wanted to hold onto something real.
And the silence. It was here again. I was about to open my mouth to speak when -
Where do you want to begin?
The voice came from nowhere. It did not come from a direction. It came from everywhere. From the white itself. It wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It was the kind of voice that made silence retreat.
My mind went blank. Should I answer? Was the voice asking me? But before I could—
The flash of light came. Not in front of me. It was like a movie. It was around me and inside me.
My life unfolded, shown to me the way you show someone something they forgot they knew.
My mother's hand on my forehead. Checking for fever. The cool of her palm.
The smell of garlic frying. My grandmother's kitchen.
My daughter's first cry. Not the joy. The sound itself. Thin and fierce.
My parents. The argument. The one where I said something I could not take back. The silence after. The way my hands shook while I washed dishes.
The debts that kept piling up, the bills accumulating. Paper stacked like accusations, numbers that never stopped growing.
Then to the person I thought I needed in my life. The regret I hadn't realized I was holding. The tears at night regretting and wishing everything were different.
The weight I had been carrying for longer than I knew. It became a constant I mistook as part of myself.
"Then the flashes stopped. I did not need to say it out loud. The white got brighter. Not harsh. Just — more. Like it was completing something."
"I thought of one thing."
Not the crack. Not the moment I saw. Something smaller.
Eric's laughter. Holding a red crayon, saying "Grandma, look" at a drawing that was just only lines. The way he threw back his head when he laughed, full and unguarded. The sound of it when he didn't know anyone was listening.
I thought of that.
I closed my eyes.
The white took me