Without fail, every time I step into an elevator, I am immediately consumed by two dark thoughts. The first intrusive idea that pops into my head is thinking that the machine's cables are going to break and I’m going to plummet to my untimely death, the second is the fear that the last time anyone will ever see me will be under atrocious overhead lighting. I can envision it so clearly: My friends and family are presented with the elevator’s security footage — I pray that I meet my demise in someplace that’s at least classy enough to have a working elevator camera — and see me standing there, washed out under fluorescents. “Are you sure that’s him?” they’ll ask. “I don’t remember him with such deeply set undereye circles and massive pores. He always had so much joie de vivre, and you’re telling us that this man, who has clearly been so beaten to a pulp by life’s cruelties that it wears on his entire face, is our Coleman?”
It’s a monologue so incessant that it has kept my thighs in great shape by convincing me to take the stairs whenever possible, but lately, I’ve been trying to trace this loathing for terrible overhead lighting back to its source. When I think about it, I’m blinded by memories of “the big light,” the dreaded overhead fixture in our family’s computer room that I sat under for hours, rotting away playing Neopets on a hefty desktop PC. That light droned down on me for years as I moved from computer games to MySpace, illuminating whatever sins I was committing as a guinea pig in the days of early social media. If I were to undergo EMDR therapy, I’m sure that all my mind would conjure would be images of an atrocious light fixture that looks like one single boob hanging from the ceiling.
