text: There is so much hollow fury inside me. Hollow because the lights are out. There used to be lights inside of me but I short-circuited, and they all went out. Nobody knows how much fury I contain because there is no way to express it. A year of my life has dripped down the drain before it even had a chance to start. It happens, during power outages. Things break. Things fall. I am still falling. I was going to spend a year in Germany. I was going to work, I was going to meet new people, I was going to gain independence and I was going to learn. So, so much. But I had an epileptic episode coming off the plane, and all those lights went out. I thought I had only fainted, from lack of sleep. It didn’t feel like it usually does, with the tingling and the light plays behind my eyelids. But it was a five-hour seizure and an induced coma. I convulsed like an overloaded toy no one can turn off until it runs itself out. So they told me-I wasn’t there for any of it. For me, all the lights went out. They took me to a hospital. They put a tube inside me and took my clothes off to do it, and I have no idea how many people saw me naked. I have no idea who they are and no one expects me to ask. The corners of my mouth are still cut deep and I put calendula cream on them every day. My throat hurts from the ghost of the tube and I can’t talk, really, only rasp. I worry that I won’t be able to sing like I used to. But I’m not supposed to worry. I’m supposed to get better. I am no longer that independent adult going to work in Germany, I am once again my parents’ daughter, expected to do what is good for me. For my physical wellbeing. My limbs tremble every time I move them. I am dizzy, all the time. The nurses are French. They are wonderful people. There’s no one else I’d rather be with, now that all the lights inside me are out. Kind, sensible, considerate strangers. I wish my parents weren’t here, taking my powerlessness as a matter of course. I wish I could run away from them and take my powerless self to Germany, where all the sockets are. Where am I suppose to find other sockets? Back home? Waiting while everyone else I know is in college? Scrambling for a job my parents will have to drive me to? Polishing the language I worked so hard to learn, knowing the chances are slim to none, that I’ll ever get to use it? Always out of the loop. I wanted so badly to make that a good thing. There are two female nurses who take care of me, who joke and laugh and help me polish my French in the best of ways. Talking. Trying to understand. There are a couple male nurses who check up on me once in a while who are hella cute. I wish I could stay awake and spend more time talking to the nurses, but then again, I have never enjoyed sleeping so much as now. I don’t feel like listening to music, don’t feel like watching tv, like eating, or writing. Nothing. Just watching the nurses, listening to their talk. When I first woke up, one of the aforementioned female nurses took me to the bathroom and wiped my butt and helped me bathe with baby wipes. I was too tired to care-my heart is an open, busted wire with frayed ends. I don’t know if my dad saw me naked. He took a picture of my face with the tube in it, pale skin and punctured mouth and the impression of near-death. He refuses to delete it. My mom says I should leave him alone, that it’s part of his ‘process’ to have, to look at, to possess the power of deciding whether or not to delete that sickening thing. It’s my face, I want to say. But I am powerless. He isn’t. He should never have taken that picture-fathers take pictures for the sake of remembering beautiful moments. Why did he take that picture? To agonize over, in case I bit it? Out of horrified fascination? What made him pull out his camera while I was lying comatose, breathing through a plastic trachea? What was he thinking? I say nothing. I don’t ask. Because it was they who went through hell, not I. The least I can do is be considerate. I wish I wasn’t so fucking considerate. I am a broken object in a workshop. A tiny world revolves around me-I am acted upon. I go outside in a wheelchair, to a little bistro inside the hospital. There’s this delicious orange juice and delicious salad order that I know I won’t get anywhere else. And I can order them every day. I polish my French with lovely people...God, the French are so diverse. They dress so differently-dress so well. Every shade of skin color, every style of clothing in every color imaginable. All in impeccable taste. Pale, sun-brown, dark, tall, petite, skinny, curvy...they all know what works for them. I have not seen a single person who isn’t worthy of a runway. I am an object, an invalid, so I am allowed to stare. And there is so much beauty to stare at. Outside, the hospital is filled with flowers. The sky is Disney-movie blue. If I could stay here and stare my whole life long...I wouldn’t mind it. Driving a wheelchair is fun. Being driven, by my parents... I get too tired, too often, to mind. And there is so much more to mind about. But to act-I am deadly afraid of acting, of having to act again. What a frightful effort, that is going to be. My friends threw me a goodbye party. My grandmother told me, as I left, “I didn’t think you’d make it. But you have.” I still have the gifts in my suitcase, meant for my host family. A pen for Uschi, a palm grill fan for Miguel, books in Spanish for the kids, Albert and Nico. My favorite books. I wanted so bad to read with them. I made an Instagram account just to document this year. Just to share it. I wouldn’t have minded dying. Wouldn’t have minded at all.