Challenger Deep

by Neal Shusterman

It makes me think of a friend I once had, who thought that north was whatever direction he was facing. Now I think that maybe he was right.

I conclude it would be a good place to be alone with my thoughts, but I should already know that my thoughts are never alone.

So what happens when your universe begins to get off balance, and you don’t have any experience with bringing it back to center? All you can do is fight a losing battle, waiting for those walls to collapse, and your life to become one huge mystery ashtray.

Forget solar energy—if you could harness denial, it would power the world for generations.

There are many ways in which the “check brain” light illuminates, but here’s the screwed-up part: the driver can’t see it. It’s like the light is positioned in the backseat cup holder, beneath an empty can of soda that’s been there for a month. No one sees it but the passengers—and only if they’re really looking for it, or when the light gets so bright and so hot that it melts the can, and sets the whole car on fire.

The fear of not living is a deep, abiding dread of watching your own potential decompose into irredeemable disappointment when “should be” gets crushed by what is.

Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.

The question is, what do you do next? The world stops, and looks at you lying there with your wounds bandaged, or your stomach pumped, and says, “Okay, you have my attention.” Most people don’t know what to do with that moment if they get it. Which makes it definitely not worth the cost of getting there. Especially if that failed attempt accidentally succeeds.

We are, however, creatures of containment. We want all things in life packed into boxes that we can label. But just because we have the ability to label it, doesn’t mean we really know what’s in the box.

But it’s not going to happen today—and there is a deep, abiding comfort in that. Deep enough to carry me through till tomorrow.