I wake to my alarm, violently. My body tingling, my brain on fire. I spring out of bed, into the shower. Something is different today. Something has…changed.

I stumble out of the bathroom to find my phone on the bedside table, calling to me, but it’s suddenly repulsive. Superfluous. A nuisance. I reach for the shades to check the weather and pause: not today.

When my partner walks into the room and sees me standing astray in my damp towel, he questions my indecisiveness. “What are you doing?” he asks, “how long have you been standing there?”

But I hardly hear him. I walk over to my phone and lightly stroke the glass covering. A thin protector of the intricate technology beneath. I turn to my partner, “What’s the weather like outside?”

“Check your phone,” he says. How trivial.

Of course, I could check my phone, like everyone else. Just refresh the little weather icon and I would have the knowledge at my fingertips. Anesthetized to the technological trap. I turn to my partner in earnest: “But,” I plead, “do you know the weather outside.”

He stares at me with confusion. He knows something is different about me but cannot place it. Does he know I have ascended to a higher plane of consciousness? It’s suddenly clear he hasn’t self-actualized. How sad.

I ask again: “Can you divine the essence of the outside parameters for me?”

He laughs and leaves to make coffee. Am I not speaking English? Does no one understand? He yells to check my phone. Always the phone. ENOUGH WITH THE PHONE.

I brazenly discard my towel against the wall. Technology be damned. Today will be different.

I grab what I want to wear. A sun dress with a high cut along the thigh and my chambray jean jacket. I am done with the weather dictating what I wear. I am tired of technology telling me what I can and cannot do.

Sure, I could look outside and witness the elements, but that’s so easy. It could be sixty degrees; it could be negative 20. Either way, I am choosing to bravely walk into the unknown.

I arrive in the kitchen, dressed for my expedition. My partner tells me I look nice. I pity him, a naïve soldier to the weather machines that run and inform our lives. I wish him the best on his journey, for we have splintered, and arrived at different branches in the fork of this forest of life.

He will continue on in this world as someone who checks the weather, but I will roam this world knowing that I was the only person on this planet who was brave enough to leave the house without checking the weather.

That’s right: ME.

History books will write about me, statues will be made of me in town centers. I will be the symbol of resistance and non-conformity. I will be the fucking Joan of Arc of this miserable world. Carrying my soldiers into battle on a belief that I alone know the answers they seek.

My partner goes to open the blinds, but I scream in resistance. “Don’t! Let’s be surprised.” He shrugs me off and goes back to the kitchen. He asks me if I want tea and I smile, knowing that once I exit the door, this is over. I’ll be too changed, too free for him to join.

“Come with me,” I plead. I grab his arm in earnest and he says he’ll be down in a few minutes, that he wants to finish his coffee. But don’t you see, I want to scream. But I know it’s too late. Too late for me to save him.

“I have to go,” I say. “I love you; I will always love you.” He smiles, gives me a kiss, and tells me he loves me. I take a moment to memorize his face.

And then I bravely step out into the world, fearless.