A full belly, an empty head. Growing up, blocked calendars and obligatories, my father’s salary. With song and game, Skype calls and Costco runs, were we rich in things to do. So I made common my busy hands, and with them whittled a deep tick in the doorway, day by day. When the grades came home, when it came time to show for the minutes in my practice log and their liberties, time and time again I’d feel capable, sometimes more. Enough to savor, not quite enough to taste.

I won’t speak lofty of my career, writing code for corp. Enough to enjoy the process a few times per quarter, not quite enough to boot my editor past five. Hobbies die fast, hard, inexplicably. Your boulder is not yet optimized for productivity. Your hill’s color scheme needs tweaking.

Thought I’d live the dream, the small one, thought I’d climb a wall, not figuratively. It’s amazing, oh the places where your brain can shut off. Fifteen feet up? Enough to fear, not quite enough to find purchase.

Thought I’d encroach on a disorder. Enough to feel unable, not quite enough to convince you. Psych testing: half a month’s rent to forget long division. I didn’t know my doorway ticks measured in math problems! The wellness center’s lovely intake confides in me, he too is in disorder. In fact, he is its prototype, and by his measure we differ just a little too much. Wishing me well, he recommends that Jenny choose med school instead. Jenny is currently at work.

Your favorite sitcoms dull, at approximately the eleventh rerun. Your talents grey at the first taste of praise. Your body’s center shifts and your legs sink down. You stare up and welcome this muffled sound, you find the floor and perceive the ceiling. You follow your counselor’s words for once, turn to your ears, and listen. Enough to love the sound, not quite enough to feel its warmth.

Junkie, dissatisfied, attention-seeking, attentively bankrupt. Your prescription reads “bootstraps, once a day.” Your second opinion is self-fulfilling. Why can’t you just be happy with the same riff, everyday? Aren’t you so lucky?

Enough to be enough, not quite enough.

I floated downstream to the clinic with good Google reviews. They tasted my blood and challenged my stillness on sturdy seats. Referenced, cross-referenced, making me curse a high deductible. I’m not really sure it meant more than long division. In our morning telehealth, the doctor makes her confirmation. I exit the Zoom meeting, open my work laptop, check Slack, then emails.

Oh, to titrate, watch the pharmacists at CVS come and go. The dealer hands me my paper bag, and Jenny returns from her frequent aisles, palette palms with skin-tone splotches, aerosol fragrances. Maybe, just maybe, a few milligrams more and this racing heart will elicit my true potential. Maybe, just maybe, I won’t be able to pee.

In years to come I will expense these receipts and recall a year’s worth of orange bottles. The chills, the wayward appetite, weird moments in Irish bathrooms. Non-stimulants, thank you for all your sensations.

It’s hard to put into words how it feels to finally feel able to put things into words. The grocery store feels doable. Programming can be exciting. I can hear Jenny, I can bake focaccia.

I think I first felt belief a few months ago, after passing a technical screen. I had been studying for a month at that point, and while proud for a moment, conceded to preparing for the next hurdle. The nights did not fly by, my highs did not high, we were calm, lucid, and opinionated. A month later I cleared the onsite.

My mom asks, “why now?” Why not back in Boston? Why not back in grade school? When your hands spanned fewer keys, when you lived long enough by the same doorway to measure yourself growing with each passing year?

I can say it did feel dishonest to stand on my toes, but maybe the brain I was born with, burdened with, blessed with even, hadn’t given any thought to posture. A bend in my knees, a slouch in my back, looking down, arms not reaching, torso not turned, fingers furled, nails clipped. I hope to make it home before we sell it, to give another notch to the door. I hope to make those rooms feel something they’ve missed. I’ve always been home I guess, I’ll believe it so.