This morning I went outside for the first time in three days. I stepped out my door and locked it; I saw no one in the hall and went out of the front door of the building. It was still very early in the morning; I had just woken up after 13 hours asleep, cleared the fog in my head with two cups of coffee, showered, shaved and brushed my teeth. And I stepped outside for the first time in three days, saw the rising sun brightening the eastern sky beyond the row of houses that stood crowded beneath, the cool blue of the early morning sky. Somehow I expected none of this to be here; somehow I thought that when I stepped outside I'd realize I was still asleep and dreaming, that there would not be that row of houses before me, there would be no street with parked cars lining its edges, there would be no pavement, sidewalk, high rise apartment buildings. Somehow after three days I expected all of it to have been removed and dissolved, to have become some sandy place of tough-skinned serpents and tumbleweeds and cacti and field mice. The thought hit me that I must still be asleep; that any second now the fabric of the sight before me would dissolve into the wasteland hallucinations of dreams; that should I close my eyes and rub them clean, I would see the truth of my surroundings and state, and would no longer be under the pleasant illusion that I was awake. But I was not sleeping, and the rows of houses did not dissolve away; this chilly air was real, the crisp blue of the sky was real, the cars and concrete were real. I was just awakening from under a sea of white unconsciousness, just awakening to the idea that perhaps there was something good in this world after all; and I took my redemption and accepted it, having been, despite all my protests, finally forgiven.