“I’m ugly. I’m powerless. I’m fat and gross. Everyone who looks at me only sees a worthless slob who has no self-esteem, no self-control, and no self-confidence with a habit of self-destruction and self-deception.” Carol looked at herself in the mirror and repeated the honest facts out loud. Self-actualization was important after all, at least that’s what her therapist told her. “I eat too much. I work out too little. I hate myself and I hate the world for making me feel this way.” She wasn’t supposed to hide her feelings. It was best not to ignore them or else she would internalize it and go insane like all those other fat people who were worthless members of society. She couldn’t be afraid to face facts.

This was supposed to be a better world, one of purity and faith but even the number of expanding churches across the city, churches from everything to paleo-nature churches to aggressive video game cathedrals, Carol couldn’t decide who she was meant to be, how she was meant to be.

She put on her coat, despite the warmer temperature of the city, and covered up as much of the skin tight body suit as possible, wondering why she bought the suit. To look cool meant to be adored by bystanders. But as she walked out of her building, and onto the street, she found only cold stares and lifeless tuned-out automatons, in place of the pedestrians. They didn’t look real. A man wearing VR goggles gave her a glance and kept moving. But it was the way he sneered that made her stomach churn. It was a snobbish, selfish expression. Inhuman, coming from another human. Supposed human. A daughter walking with her mother laughed as she walked by. The girl could’ve only been laughing at Carol. She looked down at the sidewalk, keeping her head down. She felt like a circus freak.

Their stares were like poison. She couldn’t bare it. They had become so engrossed in what beauty was supposed to be. Media had pushed the idea of the perfect woman and it wasn’t her. They didn’t seem like people at all. They had become alien, treating her like an alien. Without hope or kindness behind unnatural, bland expressions. She wondered if they were even human.

Restaurants lined the block. Her stomach growled but she ignored it. Across the street was a new church that she hadn’t noticed before. She was hungry but felt empty inside with no desire for food at all. Instead, she wondered whether she would even be accepted by a church or if she would be welcomed at a restaurant without stares. She became curious when she read the name on the building, “The Church of Self.” As a kid she never liked the idea of early Sunday morning mass but this placed seemed different, with empty window fronts and a simple door that said, “Come right in. We’ve been expecting you.” A place that would serve the self, in this day and age? It was too good to be true. She couldn’t help ignore the beckoning and crossed the street, entering without a second thought.

There was a small vestibule inside with a sermon already taking place with many people in attendance along the nave, sitting in classical styled pews. A mirror stood in the vestibule but she passed by it without looking. She kept her head down and walked down the aisle. Everyone was dressed casually, spanning the disparate techno-obsessed culture, from teens with their hover boards to the elderly who had to wear glasses to see straight. Most of the pews were taken as she quickly tried to find a place to sit, hoping she wouldn’t be noticed by the middle-aged man giving the sermon at the dais.

“Yes, that’s right. Positive self-esteem is a lie, directed by the corporate owners of this country to make consumers feel good enough about themselves, enough to embrace individuality and buy niche materials to satiate their need to embrace the self.” This sermon didn’t sound like it belonged in an experimental church that wanted to provide good self-image.

She turned to leave; her head bent to the point of hurting when the preacher called her out. “Ah, you’ve arrived. I felt your presence before you entered.” He was loud and fast, like he knew exactly what he wanted to say. As a man he was lanky and wiry, like he could be used as a paperclip if he wasn’t so bent in odd places, hanging over the dais so nonchalantly. He waved his arms around like they were barely attached. “I know you’re new. I know your nervous but don’t be. This is a place of acceptance. Acceptance in,” at this point the entire audience joined in, “Believing that the world is not responsible for your failures. Accepting that you are not powerless. And finding the faith of positivity in all of life’s stories.”

Carol stood, shaken by the sudden chant, and rubbed her neck in awkward paralysis. Her neck started shaking and she wanted to run. Back outside to the people who were numb, to those that hate the self. “There is no one else in the world right now. Only you.” Said the skinny preacher. “It’s just you and your thoughts. I am here to tell you that you are in control of your life. And behind those sad eyes is a goddess waiting to break out.”

She looked up, stiffness in her neck, a spark inside her made her heart beat faster. It was warm and comforting. The congregation had smiles on their faces, except for her. The preacher beckoned her with a wave of his hand. The spark, the warmness grew as she walked up the steps leading to the dais. “Only few of us here have reached the transcendence which you are capable of. I feel it now. You feel the goddess inside trying to come to the surface. Receive your sacrament and become born again.”

It was then, as she stepped up, that she saw the body-sized table, resembling a table that a coffin would sit on, but there was a sunken middle filled with blue liquid. Nanobots? She hesitated but the preacher’s words turned the warmth into a hot explosion of energy. “We’ve been waiting for your arrival. For a woman to come to us who has been lost for so long that her awakening will show us how we can become even better, teach us how to focus on positive energy. Only you can show us. So show us.”

That nagging feeling of not belonging was gone. Her fingers trembled, as if they knew what had to be done. This wasn’t fate, like the preacher suggested. This was inevitable. All eyes were on her and it seemed normal. She was expected to lie in the coffin of strange liquid. That was obvious. But she questioned how she knew this and couldn’t find an answer. The heat was palpable. She was drawn to it. The preacher helped remove her jacket and she climbed in, feeling the warm of the liquid over her skin suit. He held her head and suddenly the crick in her neck was gone.

“Thank you, goddess. We commend you to the waters of enlightenment and admire your strength.” The preacher kept talking as her head went under, the chemicals engulfing her completely. His hand remained on her forehead as he continued but she couldn’t hear what he was saying.

But it didn’t matter. She had never accepted who she was before but now there was hope that came with the warmth, a knowledge that as the chemicals seeped into her pores, that her body was a temple, a temple to herself, her mind, her being. The heat rose and it was glorious. It cradled her like a warm embrace. Her skin started to burn. She wasn’t afraid. The pain felt good, knowing that her body was always only temporary and that the time she spent inside of it needed to be appreciated. Life was short. At least it seems that way if she if she wanted it to. It was all about perspective. Life lasted a lifetime. A time period that could be extended if her mind wasn’t so focused on being chastised, pitied –negative thoughts.

Her curves were broader. She wanted to cry, as the clarity came and the nanos heightened her perception about reality, but not out of sadness. All of the barriers that prevented her from being happy were shattered. The shipwreck that she was before was replaced by a magnificent ship docked in a harbor of wonder and possibilities. Calm clarity instead of despairing illusion. Fulfillment instead of heartache, depression, anxiety, hatred, self-medication, self-sabotage, self-destruction, self-compulsion, self-indulgence, self-consumerism. She, the individual, the face in the crowd, the goddess, was free to experience the world in a new light, a new beaming radiance. But it all began with her. With a choice to take a step forward into the unknown. She came out of the pool. She lifted her head and smiled with only one word left in her mind: Positivity.