I had one job. The doorway had other plans.

Okay. Focus. I need one thing. Just one simple thing from the other room. It’s the charging cable. The good one, the long one that actually works. My phone is at 4% and I have a call in ten minutes and this is fine, this is totally fine. I am a capable adult on a simple retrieval mission.

I walk. My feet are moving. I am successfully ambulating from the office to the bedroom. Don’t think about the email you forgot to send. Don’t think about that weird thing your cousin said last week. Don’t wonder if plants feel pain. Just cable. C-A-B-L-E. I am a champion of single-tasking. I am a laser beam of intent.

I step through the doorway, arriving at my destination like a conquering hero, and… nothing. The thought is just gone. It didn’t fade, it was surgically removed from my brain by an invisible laser at the exact moment my foot crossed the threshold.

What was it? It felt important. Life-or-death important. Was I thirsty? Hungry? Was the house on fire? No, that seems unlikely. I’m just standing here now, in the middle of the bedroom, staring at a pile of laundry that is silently judging my entire life.

My brain is a snow globe that’s just been violently shaken and now I’m waiting for the little plastic flakes of my last coherent thought to settle, but they never do. I’m just stuck here in the glittery, beautiful, absolute blankness, a stranger in my own home, while my phone quietly dies in the other room.