The Day My Subconscious Betrayed Me - Chapter 1

Scientists say that the brain chemistry of infatuation is akin to mental illness—

which gives new meaning to "madly in love."

--Lauren Slater, National Geographic

They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then . . . an entire lifetime to forget them. 

I don’t know who “they” are, but they must be serious about this information since, at the end of the forwarded email, the instructions said to continue the message chain by forwarding the email to at least ten people I loved. The email cautioned that if this message of love did not get forwarded, I would have bad luck.

I deleted the email.

That explains everything else.

The assumption that a boyfriend would complete me came easy. Boyfriends are the end result of every happy ever after; some even go on to the sequel where the boyfriend turns spouse. Hollywood has ruined more women by purporting said happiness than any other thing. I’m thinking class action lawsuit, but am too busy to organize such a movement because I, too, am in pursuit of the elusive happy ever after.

I do have a boyfriend. His name is Jack. I think he’s serious, but it’s tough for me to really commit. It’s the name issue. My name is Jillian . . . Jack and Jill . . . I just can’t get past it.

But Jack—he’s solid. He really loves me and I really love him. At least that’s what I told the technician at the “Love Study” we were taking part in.

The woman had hair cut so short, it spiked on top. It was dyed a weird sort of blue-black. Her short black skirt and army boots classified her as goth and I can respect that. Goth is still cool in my book. “So how long have you been dating?” she asked as she squinted into her computer screen.

            “Seven months.” I say this with pride. Seven months is a long time to date the same guy. In all my twenty nine years, most relationships didn’t make it past the second date. It’s a serious milestone for me.

            She looked up with a half smile and typed in the information. The smile unsettled me. I shifted slightly in my seat.

            “Do you ever think about anyone else, or are you entirely committed to the relationship.”

            “Oh, I’m committed.” I wondered if she caught my hesitance as I stamped down the image in my mind of my boyfriend from back home. My hands started to sweat.

            “Right. I’m sure you are.” Her half-smile looked outright cocky now.

            “We ready to go?” Jack entered the little office where I was being drilled by the gothic sergeant.

            “Yeah. We’re all ready.” I tossed a glare in the direction of the Goth still smirking at her computer screen. Her black hair looked dumb on her too-tan face anyway. To be a true Goth, your skin needed to be pearlescent. I flipped my own natural brown hair in defiance of her fake black and stood.

            Part of the love study is they take scans of your brain while they flash pictures of strangers at you, and then they flash the final picture of your beloved. The point of the study is to find the neural pathways to love.

            Jack loves this sort of thing and begged me to take part in the study. He’s begged for participation in all sorts of studies, but this is the first time I agreed—and only after he accused me of being afraid to find I don’t really love him after all.

            After a statement like that what choice does a girl have? So that was how I found myself hurrying to dry my palm off before my boyfriend could take my hand, and walk down the hall to find the neural pathway to our love.

            The adjoining rooms  were split by one of those one-way windows. The kind where it looks like a mirror on one side but a window to everyone else on the other. Jack was on the window side.  I blew him a kiss and offered over a wink in case he was watching as the nurses wired me to their machines. The doctor conducting the study was named Michelle.

Jack would be getting wired up in the room next door.

            Very little was expected of me, which is how I like things. All I had to do was look at the pictures. My subconscious did the rest.

            “Okay Jillian. Here we go.”  The doctor used a high pitched voice as though she were speaking to a child about to embark on the merry-go-round for the first time.

            I tapped my foot impatiently and muttered, “Oh goody.”

            I felt myself relax after the first six pictures. The guys flashing through my vision were strangers after all. Obviously, my feelings for Jack superseded anything I felt for random people I’d never seen before. I sighed somewhere after picture twenty-four and felt overcome by outright boredom by picture forty-one.

How I wish they’d have stopped there.

My mouth dried up as my slackened jaw hit the base of the chin strap holding it from further plummeting to the floor. I tried to swallow. I tried to look away, but knew that would solidify any suspicions. I tried to think of people I hated to alter whatever path my neurons were taking.

            I’ve never been a good liar. I have an errant eye that twitches whenever a lie passes my lips. Plus guilt overcomes me when lies are told. Even in high school I ended in dramatic confessions about cutting cooking class when my mom inquired after my school day.

            If I couldn’t lie to my mom, I knew I was helpless to lie to myself and so my neural pathways wiggled their way to the love spot in my brain.

            The problem was—the picture staring back at me wasn’t Jack.