It was about 6 AM when I started to question my reality.
The puppies were barking. Usually that meant my only daughter was up and wandering about the house. Only, she wasn’t. There was no familiar thump, thump of footsteps, the click of the bathroom door, the snap and whir of the fan as she set up her space for examining her face, a strangely feminine morning ritual. I stirred painfully, shifting into my partner, the love of my life. Her skin was warm and compelled me to come closer, I did, touching her gently, probing for a response. She stirred. I knew then that she was already awake, thinking. This was her morning ritual, as familiar to me and opposite to her as my own habit of rolling over a few times, reaching for her, reaching for a gaming console, reaching for anything that wasn’t internal; any reminder that I was not alone in the dark.
I felt her move into my arms and I felt her warmth spreading across my skin like sunrise. I held her in my arms until the single bark grew into a chorus and that chorus threatened to shake the foundation of the house. How could seven tiny creatures make such a ruckus? I separated from her warmth, rejoined the cold of this world, sliding on pants and a hoodie. I left the comfort of our special space to enter a home that belonged to the rest of the world. The sounds of that world flooded in, but the smells did not tickle my nose. No taste flickered across my tongue. It was as if I was watching my reality on film and not entirely a part of it.
What then is reality? Is it the full sensory experience? Is it the idea of what is happening and how we react to that? Is it our choices? Our thoughts? Our imagination splayed out in front of us and crashing into what is happening like waves pounding the sands of a beach? My morning reality is scraping up puppy shit with a squeegee and a blue plastic dust pan. I load the not-quite-dogs into pen in the garage where the brick walls dim their thunder. I open the sliding glass door in the space where they are kept, expecting fresh air to fill my nostrils. Nothing.
I can feel the cold of the air but I cannot smell it. I cannot taste the rain falling lightly into the pool, but I can feel the cold of it on the back of my hands. I am here, but I am not entirely here.
So where is the rest of me?