The Tourist

It happens in dark hallways. It happens in the car and at the beach too. I felt it in Paris, in Greece and San Francisco with you and you and you. It’s a feeling, a sensation that used to have a name but these days I can’t blame it on a diagnosis, my parents or heartbreak; I’m just like this.

A tourist in my own life who is perpetually searching for a tour guide. I merely feel like a visitor who is afraid of the water but not death, yet I am still amazed that we can see the moon in the morning. Do you feel it too? Swarming thoughts and contradictions like a plague that never gave me a fair head start in this life. I need everything and everyone but want nothing at all. I’m constantly changing and changing my mind, but why is that?

I try to follow the good feeling but it’s lost on me. I could say I’m trying my best, but that implies there is a destination, some finish line where all of this uncertainty finally pays off. The truth is I spend most days translating myself to myself, searching for a language that explains why I can love a city and still want to leave it, why I can crave intimacy while keeping one foot out the door.

Maybe this is what adulthood is: carrying opposing truths without forcing them to agree. Maybe there is no cure for longing, no grand revelation waiting at the end of the tour. Maybe there is only the constant negotiation between who I am and who I keep imagining I could become.

And still, despite it all, I wake up. I notice the moon hanging stubbornly in the daylight. I fall in love with strangers, places, ideas. I buy the ticket. I take the trip. I keep looking. Not because I expect to find an answer, but because something in me still believes there is beauty in the search itself.

Something, Someone, Simulation

If I follow the notion that we live in a simulation, which I often do these days then it would be obvious and expected that I am in control of my fate. Perhaps that’s contradictory because fate has no place in a simulation I suppose. Nonetheless it would be ideal that my actions would ultimately lead to favorable outcomes however I’m still trying to work that part out. 

What interests me isn’t whether we’re living in a simulation. It’s why I want it to be true. If nothing else, it exposes a contradiction in me: I desperately want freedom, but I also want a script. I want complete control over my choices while secretly hoping someone—or something—already knows how the story ends. I want to improvise and follow directions at the same time.

In the simulation, everyone and everything is a reflection of you. For me, I feel like I’m in a county fair hall of mirrors where everything looks familiar but is distorted and warped. I can make out the faces but the names escape me; something like a dream you forget seconds after waking up yet somehow you remember days later. If my universe is programmed then surely my efforts should be rewarded and suffering should eventually reveal its purpose. 

I test this with people although I probably shouldn’t. I’m on a fourth floor balcony, I’m smoking a cigarette with tall, dark and handsome. It’s been a long night albeit a fun one. I take a drag, I peer over the ledge and before I know it the words escape me: if I jumped, do you think I would die? I’m asking Simulation directly. He pauses and realizes my question actually warrants an answer. Yes I think so, or at the very least you would be paralyzed and I don’t think you’d be a pleasant paraplegic. 

Gravity never misses its cue and neither does the simulation. So. Why do I need it? It feels like a map, in the way that both don’t guarantee I’ll end up anywhere meaningful or even pleasant but at least both let me know where I am. These questions of death and mortality appear when reality begins to feel too thin around the edges. I could thank God that they are merely fleeting musings these days but he has no place in a simulation. I thank myself. 

I find comfort in entertaining this idea that I’m living in a simulation. That I know the architect behind every wrong turn, missed flight or failed relationship. It’s scarier to think that there is an unseen force responsible for all of these things pleasurable or not. But if there is any lesson hidden in the code, I suspect it is this: meaning is not something waiting to be discovered. It is something we author ourselves.

So whether this is a simulation, a divine plan, or a series of accidents stitched together by memory, I find myself arriving at the same conclusion. I am both the player and the witness. The architect and the audience. The map and the person trying to read it.

For now, that is enough.

am i living here?

When we met I was dipped in tragedy  and wrapped in remote solace. With a cherry on top of course. Now in my brief intermission of objective perspective I find I have the same reservations. Is this where I begin? Or should I start with when? I told my daddy I loved him and he told me to go to bed. I told my mother I wish I was dead, she held her head. When grandpa died, I pinched him so hard my fingers bled. I don’t remember much from my childhood and I’m not sure I want to, yet everyone else seems to think it’s important. So every week I’m sitting on a blue sofa searching for what went wrong but it’s me, I’m what’s wrong. My mind is a dialectical coin constantly flipping and where it lands isn’t up to me but I have the solution to stop it. I have the same clarity I had one fateful afternoon ten years ago, right around this time. Summer solstice you’re a gentle reminder of what I failed to do, what a poor planner I  was. Now I have insight and insurmountable suffering. Pair this with proving to be a disappointment to you all and I’m left with grit and fortitude to finish what I started a decade ago. Am I living here? Yes but the reason is unbeknownst to me. 

Everyone here is exhausted with me. I am not offended, it feels good to have a break, to have some distance. Ketamine kisses have shown me a lonesome future, but it’s okay. I see my books, my pen and Paris. I awake from my drug induced slumber and I’m in a sterile medical office and suddenly I’m reminded of my reality: I’m a  big time bummer, I’m a loser. So I make my way home and crawl into bed. Time to self medicate and drift off to oblivion but it’s no use. My old tricks don’t work the way they did before, back when I played it fast and loose. I ran the red lights and stood on the bridge at two in the morning and laughed at the stars while the fog consumed me. Is that what it meant to feel free? Now I’m scared to leave the house, my words escape me and I don’t remember yours and the wheel trembles from my tremors so I pull over and hang my head. Is this the existence you all wish for me? Am I living here? Yes, but my real estate has no value and I’m headed for the auction house. 

I take my meds and I’m cold all of the time. One, two, three, four, five, six and so on and so forth. I live my life in shortcuts and quick fixes. I just need to get through the day. I’ve learned early on that my mind is an unreliable source much like a Wikipedia page that anyone can alter as they see fit and I would believe anything you wrote about me. My memories are unreliable so my past and present can be edited as anyone sees fit. My brain will never change. Interventions can help abate symptoms and delusions but in my day to day life my condition will always have some control. What an interesting revelation. To have a fatal disorder, well not one but two which are both compounded with disillusion, delusion and chaos but also a quiet and isolating existence yet each will inevitably shave years off my life. And it feels like they already have. After revelation comes acceptance and then resolution. Am I living here? No but I couldn’t live elsewhere either.