DISCLAIMER: i think we’ve been through this.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: took me a nice long break from writing fanfic, but i’m back! continuing the series with Mimi.

A Happy Medium
by kaydee falls

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I wonder if any of them really believe my story.

Not that they’ll ever challenge it. I’m back. What more do they care to know?

No, that’s unfair. Collins believes me, or at least he wants to. I can tell by the way he closes his eyes slightly, in silent struggle, voiceless prayer. I know what he’s thinking. He’s envious. Beyond all reason, he envies me. Or does he pity me? If he was in that tunnel, would he let Angel push him back? I don’t think so. But we have different desires, Collins and I. Mine has his arm around me, and Collins’s is beyond this world.

But the others don’t believe me. Hallucination, they’ll say, dream. Not real.

What is real?

I’m real. Roger’s arm is real, wrapped around my shoulders. Roger is real. Joanne is real. Maureen may act fake, but she’s also real. Mark is real. Collins is real -- for now at least. He’s fading, but real.

Do all people who have near-death experiences think about these things afterwards?

What do I believe?

I was raised Catholic, and for a very long time, I believed. I believed in everything the Church told me to believe, with unquestioning faith. I didn’t even understand everything they set in front of me, but I believed it anyway. A good Catholic girl.

When I was thirteen, I made a horrible mistake. I actually thought about all the things I believed, and realized that quite a few of them didn’t make any sense to me. So I asked my mother how the miracles came about, and why Jesus could rise from the dead, and who God really was. My mother didn’t answer my questions. She yelled at me instead. So I asked my father. He didn’t answer my questions, either. He called me blasphemous and a few other names, and then he hit me.

I realize now that this is no indication of the behavior of most good Catholics. Most good Catholics would have filled me with Bible verses, and sent me on my way. Or would have at least been kinder about reprimanding me. I was only thirteen.

But when you’re thirteen, you think that your family, on the whole, must be the norm. They are the only normal you know. So I never asked anyone else these questions, but kept them bottled up inside of me. Inside my head, they multiplied until there were thousands of questions bouncing around, banging against my skull, trying desperately to worm their way out. But I would not ask them. Instead, I gave up seeking answers entirely, and I gave up trying to believe in mysteries that had become painfully confusing.

I finally banished the questions by coming to the firm conclusion that because I didn’t believe, I didn’t care. They went away after that.

My parents felt certain that if I wasn’t a religious girl, I would fall into wicked ways. So, because I stopped believing, I decided that I might as well prove them right, and gradually fell into ways that they would definitely classify as wicked, although they seemed all right to me. It was fun to dress in clothing that made all the boys stare. It was cool to escape reality by smoking or sniffing or injecting whatever I could get cheapest. It was more interesting to hang out on the streets than to go to school. I had found something new to believe in, a wild life in which nothing mattered but today. I believed in living for the moment. It was a concept I understood, that I didn’t have to ask questions about, and I believed.

Then one day when I was sixteen, my father decided that my anti-Catholicism had gone too far. He called me a slut and a few other names that didn’t really have anything to do with my lack of religion, and then he hit me a few times. So I left.

Once I was on my own, I didn’t give much though to what I believed anymore, except for maintaining my “no day but today” mantra. When I was high, I believed all kinds of fascinating things that, when I hadn’t just shot up, seemed pretty damn ridiculous. When I was at work, I believed in the money all those dirty-minded men could give me. I didn’t bother believing in love; that was a notion that was mutually exclusive to my profession. Cheap whores don’t love, they fuck. And I was damn good at it.

And when I contracted HIV, I believed in AIDS. Because I had to.

Then I met Roger, and for the first time in my life, I believed in somebody; in a person, not an idea. And I believed in love, because I felt it. It had suddenly become something tangible, something I could see and smell and touch. So it was real, and I could believe in it.

When he left me, when he went off to Santa Fe -- I stopped believing in anything. The world was a blur that I didn’t particularly care about. There was nothing left in it for me to believe. So I gave up.

I should have died. I believe that.

But I didn’t. Instead, I was found, and I was brought back to the only person I had ever believed in. And then I did die, but somehow I didn’t. Because I was headed down a tunnel, and I was stopped, and turned back.

What did I decide? What do I believe?

Everything. I believe everything.

Because you don’t have to believe just one thing or another. I believe that I died and that I lived. I believe that Angel is dead and that I just saw her. I believe that there is no day but today and that I have a future and past. I believe that I love Roger and that he loves me.

It’s easy. I’ve found my balance and my perspective. My death and my life gave me the open-mindedness to just see and accept. Because there’s an up and a down, a high and a low, a bitter and a sweet, a life and a death, a Roger and a Collins and a Mark and a Maureen and a Joanne and an Angel. And a me. Me, me, Mimi.

Belief is no more than discovering the happy medium in life, and accepting it.

Just believe me.
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i had no plan for this fanfic/chapter. i wanted to see what would happen if i just took mimi and started writing a train of thought for her. this is the result. it’s a little weird, and maybe even a little clichéd somewhere, but it was a fun experiment for me anyway. i hope you liked it.