I would often find myself lying around, either in my bed or on the couch, unable to convince myself to move. Even if I knew I needed to eat or piss or take a shower, even if I wanted to read or take a walk, I would tell myself “I’ll do it as soon as I sort through these thoughts.”

“These thoughts,” however, had no resolution. They would usually begin with me recalling some happy memory of my Queen, such as that lazy evening when, as I lay in her tendrils, she told me stories of how her people’s ghosts sometimes haunted ships and the ways a ghost’s presence could be identified. They would then move to guilt as I wondered whether I had done enough to make her happy as she had made me happy. Maybe I deserved to be abandoned. However, I would quickly realize, even if I hadn’t been good enough, it was wrong of her to just drop me on Earth without an explanation. I deserved better than that. Of course, I would then recall, I would be willing to forgive her if she realized her mistake and came back for me. After all, I needed her more than she needed me. Plus we had so many good memories together, like the time she had told me ghost stories.

From there the thoughts would circle around again and again until I could break myself free or something interrupted me. Regardless of the outcome, I would spend the rest of the day with the nagging feeling that I needed some sort of satisfying answer to a question I couldn’t quite pinpoint.

This languidness kept me trapped in the grip of the past, barely able to function in the present and completely unable to work towards a better future. I found myself faced with a question I hadn’t asked myself since I was a teenager; what do I want from life?

I wanted to feel important, I knew. Not necessarily important in the sense that I wanted to end up in history books or art classes. Just important in the sense that I mattered to someone who was more important than me. When I explained this to Bliss, she nodded knowingly, saying “Classic lackey feeling. You’re made for it, just like the rest of us.”

I considered looking for work as a vet tech. It was what I had been trained for, but the idea of working with animals now, after losing the menagerie, made me sick to my stomach, So I filled out a few job applications with liquor stores and chain restaurants, but quickly fell out of the habit. I knew I needed a job, but the idea of serving an organization which I cared nothing for and which cared nothing for me filled me with a sense of unsettling wrongness. I didn’t want to carve away pieces of my life in exchange for money. So I continually put it off, saying I would fill out another application in a few hours, or tomorrow, or after dinner, but never actually completing one.