A memory prompt written for “Creative Clusterfuck,” a memoir-focused writing seminar taught by the legendary Molly Guy.
When I was in the seventh grade my mom made me get acupuncture a few times a week to help alleviate my anxiety. She tried every natural remedy possible in the hopes that afterwards she could say, “See? It wasn’t as bad as we thought.” I have also done yoga, various paleo and vegan diets, and introduced certain scents and natural vitamins into my daily life. One time she even wanted me to meet an old Chinese man who didn’t speak a word of English but specialized in ‘ancient medicines’ and after looking at me he would just know exactly how to treat me. If I were to go through with it, he’d lull me to sleep, wave his essentially-oiled hands over me to inhale, and after 45 minutes, ask my mother for a few hundred dollars. That option was a last resort.
I met with Ms. Taffy in her small, dimly lit office that could only fit a stiff, raised board covered in a sheet I laid on. Calling it a bed would be generous. It was like what you sat on at the doctor’s office for the type of checkups where they turned off the lights and made your eyes follow an object in the dark or used a weird pointed tool to tap your knees until you twitched. She played music that sounded like rivers flowing through cavernous mountains, so high up that there were also whipping winds and very few animals to benefit from the land’s abundance. During my first visit with her she told me to ‘go to my happy place’ to ease my mind and make the needle’s insertion less harsh. It was a saying I thought was a joke because the only other time I heard it was in Happy Gilmore when Happy couldn’t focus on putting his golf ball into the hole to win prize money to get his grandma out of her nursing home. I always watched movies that were much too inappropriate for a six year old because I had an older brother and hippy parents who ‘cool’ and ‘not like other parents.’
Ms. Taffy explained an alternate definition that didn’t have half naked women serving piña coladas. “Imagine a place where you feel completely relaxed. I want you to imagine it in vivid detail. What sounds do you hear? What does it smell like? Is there anyone else around?” My mind landed on a foggy lake with a singular chair waiting at the end of a personal, backyard dock. The sky wasn’t clear enough to see across the water or to make out the shapes of the houses on either side of me. I had a very fond memory of visiting a lake house when I was younger, but I couldn’t remember if it was real or in a dream. It was dark the day I went, like a storm was about to pass through. The house was planted in the middle of the woods with a winding, pebble driveway. It wasn’t a commercial lake with big boats going by and kids being flung on tubes behind them, or college kids partying at a distant relative’s cozy nook.
My ‘happy place’ was eerie, a characteristic that would generally scare me if I were wandering alone at night. Yet, all I wanted was to be alone where no one could find me. Sitting out on that lake I was void of any unwanted interactions from my family, friends, teachers, or coaches. It was the only place my mind was quiet. And it was fictional.