It's a damp, musky odor. The kind that's heavy, unmistakable, especially in the early summer evening heat. Somehow, my memories are always hot. Every scene is beading with swyeat, a rising fire from somewhere in the earth up you if you stayed outside too long. T here's no good way to explain heat if it isn't something you understand,much like the cold. There's a type of cold that stays in your bones. It hardens you.

The heat, on the other hand, doesn't. It softens you, liquifies you, and makes you pliable. It's always hazy, allowing things to exist in the shadows in a way they can't anywhere else. Maybe it's because people come out at night. Maybe it's because it's hotter in hell.

My therapist taught me to use my senses to ground me. Most people don't really think about their sense of smell as something they ought to use more often but there are a few things you can pick out if you take a few deep breaths.

Aluminum. The smell of time. Sweat. And maybe evil.

I'd thought about opening the storage unit for a long time, fantacising about all kinds of experiences. Especially the last few hours I spent travelling home to arrive face to face with my family's storage unit. I'd been here in my dreams, maybe in my nightmares. Maybe once in person. Maybe.

There are a lot of things that are hazy. I'm suddenly pulling the door back like I've been a farmhand, strong and able as I wrench it open. The air is stale and hot and heavy and solid with dust and memories, rendering me down to my knees.

I'm not standing there anymore - I'm on ,my grandmother's porch, sitting between her dogs and my sisters. The smell of the dust has me topsy turvey down memory lane, and like a child who sees a ghost - I lose rationality and conciousness all at once.

"Are you - hey, hey - you're okay," he's saying, and the familiarity of his voice touches me like his hands might if I were beside... and then I realize I'm sitting in my living room, looking up at the attic I was trying to get inside to get down our Christmas decorations.

The scent of memories is so strong. That old, certain smell. I shake it off, trying to smile at my husband. "I did not need to climb those stairs that fast," I say, taking a deep breath, trying not to worry myself. It's obvious he's worried for a moment, but it fades as if it's a normal scenario. I mean, it can be. I hit the floor pretty easily. So I sigh, take another deep breath, and grit my teeth when I can smell the nauseating scent of cardboard and what those boxes held.

"Do you mind helping me unbox things upstairs? I don't want to bring the boxes down so we it's not cluttered," I ask, hoping my husband doesn't ask any other questions. The taste of my past is too fresh on my tongue and I don't want to serve up any answers right now.

Have you ever wanted to hide?

I have.

Have you ever wanted to be in visible?

I have.

Have you ever wanted everyone to look at you?

I have.

Have you ever wanted everyone to see you?

And I can’t decide what I hate more: when they don’t see you, or when they do.

Ellen Hopkins writes in free verse and prose that connects with your soul or your unconcious mind. She writes to the human in all of us - seldom straying from the trials and tribulations of existing - with a tendril of intimacy as if she's speaking to each one of us.

In her book Burned, the main character suffers at the hands of her family in both physical and emotional ways. Centered around Pattyn - young, Mormon, and devilishly afflicted by human desires (don't boys want to kiss you?) - Burned tells the story of the realities of life.

Life does not treat us fairly. The things we want aren't always meant for us. We are not always who we think we are. The people we choose as family and those who raise us mold our perception of the world, but Pattyn doesn't let her father - the patriachal head of the family - tell her who she is or who to be. Because of that, she's shipped off to her Aunt's home for the summer (who also refuses to listen to Daddy-o). She falls in love under a hot Nevada sun and on the back of a horse with a cowboy beside her.

And though the whispers of love highlight their future like a pair of lights flashing over a Hollywood premiere, Pattyn's first love ends tragically and it is nearly impossible to consider what you'd do if you were her.

Losing the love of your life, the child and life you created with that love, and your family in one fell swoop in the passenger seat of a get-away pickup truck that tumbled down the mountain side. Plunging Pattyn into solitude, raped of love and family, stripped and raw.

I know there's a sequel that helps show that her hardship is not continuous. That's actually not a true statement. Hardship is continueous, but the waves of gentility, of calm, and the tides of contentment and happiness do exchange kisses with the shore. Her time comes, and Pattyn is happy and finds her place in the world, but I think it's so important to learn from her story that happiness is only a feeling. We feel it, and it leaves us, and we feel it again someday but it is up to us to find happiness, choose it, and chase it.

It's taken me a long while to realize I'm not the fairest of them all. I am selfish, I am impatient, I'm intense. But I am on fire and I am burning, burning - consuming and growing.

I am the levee. I hold the water back from those nearby, would-be victims to real-world experiences. I am not the fairest of them all, but I am.

I am. That's what matters. Standing here, looking into a face I struggled to recognize for so long.

I've become a familiar face.

I'll taste bitter at first. Dry, making you thirstier than you were before you took a sip of my favorite drink. It will come in waves, for everyone but you. I'm not sure anyone else would know though.

You'll turn the thermostat up, sleeping better when it's warmer. I always made you too hot, sweating through the shirt of yours I'd taken out of the hamper. I liked them better when they smell like you. Soon it'll get uncomfortbale though and you'll turn it down. The sheets will be cold when you stretch out, but the bed won't be. You fell asleep hand in hand with an amber scented memory of the first time we slept together in our bed in our house. No matter the temperature, you sleep in the warmth of every night we fell asleep in our bed in our room - no matter where we physically were. We didn't stay in that house forever.

Marrying you was a promise to give you everything. There aren't many people who have as much to give as I have, as I do, as I did. Marrying you was a promise to give you everything, always, forever.

And so when you cook my favorite recipe alone, it won't taste bitter. You'll remember to use smoked salt instead, always more - not enough - and it will taste familiar enough the sense of home we made together, the sense of taking a pause in life, the sense of devotion will overwhelm you for just a moment.

Your eyes will glass over, but you'll smile and the bed won't be cold that night.

Today, I learned you get nothing you don't ask for. Whether it's intervention of the higher-power kind, whether it's your insecurity or fear of being told no... You do not get what you don't ask for.

II.

Today I learned that I need help, and I don't now how to ask for it sometimes. Sometimes I find myself in a place of loneliness and despair when there is no cause for it is me that's forgotten to do something. I've forgotten to ask for help. In desperation to matter and be noticed I sink to a league of the sea where I'm starting to lose conciousness and I don't know how dire the situation is. I'm not a strong swimmer. Without help, what was a quick swim turned into a dark descent.

III.

Today I learned I must treat myself the way others would be treated by me. I want to feel the same inclusiveness they feel. I want to feel the tendrils of empathy where they feel safe in their vulnerability with me. Empathy comes with a price, it comes with interest due at a high rate. It's best to pay off debts and return to a place of security, saving. Today I learned I need to save myself for me.

Few things are in our can control but we try to control them all. And it's only us we're able to control. If we control ourselves, then our lives are up to us.

It's all a choice.

The average emotion lasts 90 seconds. It is a choice what you feel, beyond that. Whether within your concious or subconcious mind, you're making a choice to hold a grudge. You make the choice to cheat on your lover. You make the choice to fall in love with your husband or wife every day, all over again.

It's all our choice. We choose the life we lead.

You choose your family. You choose your happiness, you choose to be disappointed. You choose. It's all a choice, each and every thing. A choice to live or to survive, a choice to engage or disengage. A choice to love, to lose, to feel.