There has never been anything about Dani Greene’s life that would ever make her feel normal. For as long as she could remember she was the weird girl in the corner; the loud mouth who was awkward yet outgoing, shy yet wanting to be the center of attention, a nerd who liked mainstream music. There was always something about her that was just a tiny bit off because she constantly contradicted herself. That is exactly what made Dani who she was, though, and she didn’t want to change that now. She couldn’t really change it now because she had spent a better part of her adult life being that exact same person.

But there was nothing that was normal about the time that she had lost over the past couple of months. Alcohol fog or blacking out were part of life sometimes, in very small does, and Dani knew that she was wasn’t drinking so much that she would lose weeks at a time. She knew that something was off about those who were around her or she knew that her best friend had some sort of fancy contraption that she didn’t always have that could take them anywhere they wanted to go in a matter of seconds. It was weird and it was strange but Dani never questioned it because she liked weird and strange. Whenever times were like that she felt the most comfortable and most like herself. It was sort of weird to admit to that out loud but that was just the way that it was. Dani felt comfortable being in that weird state of being.

What she didn’t like, though, was the massive headache that had struck her and now she felt like she was dying. Maybe. Probably not but it was dramatic and it was Sunday night and work was coming on the other side of Sunday night. The time was just before midnight and she was sitting around, drinking beer and listening to music, as one would do. It was just when the next song started to play that she felt the headache come on and she sat her beer down on the table, grasping at her hair like that was going to make it any better. It was a dumb move and she ran through the scenarios of dying in her head over and over again. She had spent the better part of Friday completely hungover at work and now with it being Sunday night, she needed to be on top of her game on Monday morning. Now she just felt like death. It was a few moments of her fumbling around for a little bit, trying to find some aspirin and get a drink of water when she only had one thought. SQUIRRELS.

It was almost comical in the midst of the headache that her thought was squirrels because Dani loved squirrels. She would go to the park and feed the squirrels and just generally be around the cute little rodent-like creatures. She never really understood her obsession with them but maybe this had something to do with it?

Orrrrrr, maybe she had some kind of brain tumor. Ooohhh, yeah that would make sense too! But wait, that wouldn’t be good. No, that would be super bad. No one would ever cheer for a brain tumor and here she was hoping she had some sort of weird brain tumor because she had a headache and thinking of squirrels. Her life was so weird.

After a few moments, she was having more thoughts than just squirrels. She had thoughts of someone else… named Doreen or Squirrel Girl and Dani froze. She was enough of a nerd to put two and two together and she definitely knew who Squirrel Girl was. But Squirrel Girl wasn’t real. She wasn’t someone who she could remember off the top of her head and now nothing made sense. Why was life so complicated lately? It didn’t need to be this way.

She finally made her way to find the aspirin in the bathroom and she put her face underneath the sink to get some water to swallow the pill. It would work that she would also splash her face with some water to maybe help with the headache and with the thoughts she was having. When she lifted up her head, she was staring right into the mirror and she burst out laughing. “You need to get it together, Dani. You’re batshit crazy but you’re not this crazy.”