How do I describe what’s been going on lately?
If I straight out say it, I don’t think you or anyone else would understand. It’s bizarre and no matter how I put it, I’m pretty sure I’ll sound like a raving lunatic. Let me try to talk around it, to explain this whole thing through an analogy.
I don’t know what your social life is like, but if you don’t have friends, let’s pretend for the sake of this that you do. Say one friend in particular is really close: they’re your best friend. You’ve known them your whole life and they are extremely important to you.
Have you imagined that scenario yet?
If you haven’t, that’s fine. This post isn’t going anywhere. Feel free to lean back in whatever chair you’re sitting in (if you are standing…. Why??? Please go sit down. Get comfy.), close your eyes, and imagine an ideal friendship. Make it a warm thing, so warm and bright you smile merely from being in their presence. Imagine that this someone has become your emotional backbone. They have weathered every single storm and stood by your side through your darkest hour…
Can you see them? Your best friend? I hope you can, because this little analogy will be lost on you if not. Either way, I’ll keep going.
So, for the past few months, your newly imagined friend has been going on and on about these baking classes he’s taking. His Facebook is flooded with recently shared Buzzfeed recipe videos, and he keeps sending you Pinterest boards titled things like ‘cake inspo.’
Even if you aren’t, pretend with me for a moment that you are a good person. You’re not necessarily excited by your friend’s new hobby, but you’ve decided to support him. You comment things like ‘yummy!’ or ‘can’t wait for you to make this for me 😜’ on his posts.
You think that this is another one of your friend’s random hobbies that have flared and fizzled randomly since childhood. It seems like a safe bet that he’ll abandon baking soon, especially since he doesn’t seem to be very good at it.
Maybe you think this is a mean thing to think about your bestie, but it’s really not. In fact, you’re being nice by merely thinking ‘not very good’ instead of ‘a scourge to kitchens everywhere.’
Your friend can somehow mess up box cake mix. He’s started grease fires from merely mixing the ingredients. It’s reckless endangerment to be in the kitchen with him, but, again, you have already chosen to be supportive. If it is important to your friend, then it is important to you. That’s just who you are.
So, you have chewed your way through a myriad of rock-hard cookies and cakes more salt than sugar, but no matter how bad his culinary art gets. No matter how much it makes you want to vomit, you always. And I mean ALWAYS in capital letters smile politely and tell him he’s done well.
Now, your friend has gained some confidence in his baking skills. He thinks he’s gotten pretty good. Confiding in you, his closest friend, he said he wants the world to be able to taste his creations. There’s a tinge of regret in your heart. Maybe if you’d told him his food wasn’t quite five stars, he wouldn’t be pursuing baking quite as hard.
He’s not trying to sell his baked goods to the public yet, but he has invited your friend group to a taste testing. You’re not sure what he’s baked, but he’s expanding beyond English to call it things like his baking ‘coup de gras’ and ‘magnus opus.’ Until this point, it’s only been you sampling his food. He’s really building up the quality and, as you hear word of the group’s growing excitement, the anxiety in your gut starts to spill out into a panic. You know that what goes up must come down.
Your friend group… let’s say you like them, but they don’t share the same soft spot you do for the hobbies of your friend. After all, you’ve known him longer. You’ve developed a patience for his shifting attention span that the group hasn’t. They don’t know that, while his interest is fleeting, your friend pours his soul into whatever hobby he has chosen.
You worry that they’ll crush your friend’s heart as soon as they bite into whatever bubbling concoction he’s cooked up. You try to prevent it, but the day of the taste testing rolls around. You’re on your way to your friend’s house and you think the dread in the pit of your stomach feels far worse than whatever cramps you’ll have after tonight’s ‘’meal.’’
When you show up, your mouth falls open in shock. Standing before you is the largest cake you’ve ever seen. That includes all the #everythingiscake tik toks you’ve subjected yourself to. You know, the ones where something unexpected (like a ladder or a burrito) is sliced open and. BAM! It’s cake.
You lose count trying to calculate the tiers on this cake that seems to ascend into the heavens. The colorful frosting is neatly applied and smells sweet, like buttercream. There are sugar flowers of varying sizes decorating the tiers.
It’s so large and beautiful that your first thought is: “This can’t be real.”
You almost say this out loud, but then you hear your friends. They ooh and ahh at the cake. One steps forward and runs his index finger along the icing, popping it into her mouth with a pleased look.
“It’s good!” She exclaims.
“Well,” your friend says. “The rest of you. Do you want to try some?”
The friend group eagerly swarms the cake, they take small handfuls, chewing in delight. Thoughts of plates and forks seeming to not even cross their minds. It looks wrong. You notice that, even though they are taking handfuls, the cake doesn’t seem any less thick. The integrity of the cake isn’t compromised despite the way they gnaw at the foundation.
You almost say something, but then you see your best friend bashfully kicking at the ground, trying to hide how delighted he is with the group’s approval. You look up, strangely unsettled by this thing he somehow created.
Why do you feel this way? Everyone is happy, right? Why are you so apprehensive about trying the cake? Aren’t you supposed to be the supportive one? This trepidation in your heart is unfamiliar.
You take a step backwards, your eyes still searching desperately to find the final tier. To see where the cake finally stops, but you can’t find it. The cake seems to extend forever. Another step back. You want to turn and run, but-
Your friend nudges your arm. “Don’t you want to try?”
It feels wrong to say anything other than yes. Even asking for flatware or something to slice a proper piece with doesn’t feel right. It feels like doing so would be the same as reaching into your friend’s chest, ripping out his heart, and then trampling upon it. This is what you were terrified your friends would do but-
“It tastes so delicious!” a member of the group cries. “I have to have more!”
It seems the only one who might break your friend’s heart is you.
You take a hesitant step forward. Everyone is still chowing down with only their hands. You wonder when the last time they washed their hands was. This eating method is unsanitary, but the longer you watch, the less you think about plates and forks.
Then it clicks.
This cake isn’t supposed to be eaten the way that it should. It purposefully goes against the conventions you are used to. The group got that instantly, it just took you a moment to understand. You take another step forward.
“Are you…” your best friend sounds apprehensive. “Are you going to try a piece?”
“Yes,” you tell your friend. “Yes, of course I want to try it. It looks…” terrifying “lovely.”
So, you take a decisive step forward, feeling like an ant in the shadow of a skyscraper. You reach out your hand while your friend stares with keen anticipation and you carefully scoop out a handful of cake. The frosting feels gross beneath your fingernails.
You turn back to your friend, forcing yourself to smile and then take a bite.
It’s straight flour. There’s no sweetness to the cake. Beneath the frosting is only dry powder. You choke down a cough, trying to swallow the ‘cake.’
As you do, you hear all your friends saying how yummy it is and the smack of their lips as they take handful after handful of cake into their mouths.
Could you have just gotten a bad piece? Maybe the batter had been uneven and you’d just managed to get a clump of flour.
“It’s good,” you lie. “You’ve really outdone yourself.”
Your friend looks unsure. Maybe something in your body language or voice had given it away. You feel your heart plummet.
“Really,” you say too quickly. “It’s so good… so good that-“ Everyone else is enjoying it. You’d just gotten a bad piece, right? “So good that I need more.”
Your friend lets out a puff of air, as if he’d been holding it, waiting for you to give him your approval. “Go ahead,” he smiles. “Have some more.”
You take a few steps to the left, wondering about the diameter of the cake. It must be at least 40 feet. Around you, your friends continue to eat, icing all over their faces.
You settle on a spot and then reach up to a higher tier. Grabbing a handful, you are relieved to feel the spongy texture of cake. You had just gotten a bad piece after all. You smile at your friend, genuine this time, and then take a bite.
You almost gag. Your mouth is full of something decidedly not cake. You discretely move the strange texture lurking within the cake to the side of your mouth and spit it into your hand.
It’s a wad of hair the same color as your friend’s.
It takes all your focus to not vomit as you stare at the wad of hair covered with frosting and little bits of cake. You hear your friend clear his throat behind you and your stomach lurches.
“So, how was it?”
Pocketing the hair, you keep your back turned to your friend. There’s still some cake left in your mouth, but your throat is closed up. You don’t think you’ll be able to force yourself to swallow.
“Do you…. Not like it?”
You manage to gulp.
“It’s good,” you say. “You can see how much everyone likes it. Listen to our friends.” You try to direct his attention elsewhere, but…
“But what about you?” He asks. “Do you like it as much as them?”
The group is still loudly chewing and a chorus of yum is all that escapes their lips.
“I,” you stutter. “I do.”
And it hits you the only way you can prove it is to keep on eating. Something within you says that you shouldn’t, but you must. You would be a horrible friend if you didn’t.
You take handful after handful. You make the same noises as the rest of the group until you notice your friend is smiling, happy to finally have your approval.
Every handful turns your stomach. Each bite is more disgusting than the last. Hair, bones so small they must belong to a bird, and a chewy substance that smells like rotten meat fill your pockets as you try your best to both please your friend, and refrain from ingesting anything that would lead to illness or worse. You don’t know how much longer you can keep this up. Around you, the group still eats, smiling and pleased. Do they not know?
You are starting to feel like you should warn them. You think you should tell them about the hair and toenails you keep finding, but each time you open your mouth, you feel your friend’s happiness and instead of speaking, you shove another handful of cake into your mouth.
….
See, I told you, this doesn’t make much sense, does it? Even through an analogy, it sounds so weird, but let me try to help you understand.
I’ve been noticing things lately. A lot of things.
It started with simple stuff. Stuff I could ignore, like the possibility of uneven batter in a huge cake. Weird events that could have plausible explanations.
Like…I’d set something on my dresser and then I’d turn only to find it wasn’t there. Just me being forgetful, right?
Or I’d be driving to work and notice that every car I passed was red. Just a weird coincidence; red is popular.
Then it got worse. Alarming like hair in your food.
The walls of my room used to be purple, but over a period of weeks, the color slowly shifted to blue. Could it be the sun fading them? Maybe, but it’s too strange to write off.
Then the landscape shifts sometimes. Houses in my neighborhood pop up without ever being constructed and then are deleted just as fast along with the residents therein. The streets change like a moving labyrinth to the point that I use google maps just to get to the grocery store. I try to tell myself: “Silly me. Can’t even remember the directions.” But I do. Each day I notice the changes, but no matter how hard I try to ignore it, it’s still there.
Sometimes days repeat. Not in a deja vu sense, either. I mean I’ve went to sleep, and the date has been March 2 and when I wake up the date is still March 2. Every single event that happened plays out in the same manner… and worst of all… I know, but I react exactly the same.
But wait, I haven’t even gotten to the worst part. Hair in the food is still at least somewhat explainable, right? It’s disgusting. It can’t be ignored, but you can see how it happens, right? I can tell myself I am going crazy. That the walls had always been blue. I’d halfway convinced myself that maybe I was just having prophetic dreams. Days can’t repeat like that, right. The street doesn’t just change.
But…
I’ve had friends, acquaintances, even my younger brother seemingly wiped from existence. No one remembers them, despite their still being traces.
There’s photographs of my arms wrapped around nothing. A room with decorations only a teenage boy could choose, but my mom just calls it dad’s man cave. How can she not remember? She still has a scar from his C-section. My dad is still paying off his braces. My brother. We’re five years apart and, honestly, he could be a shithead, but I think about him every day now. Where is he? Where has he gone? I-
I could talk about this all day. I could ask questions all day, but I doubt that you have the answers.
And if you do, would you even give them to me?
So, I alone remember my brother and the slew of souls that followed in his steps. There have been so many now. I try to remember them.
There was a girl who sat in the cubicle beside me. She had blonde hair and always wore Barbie pink lipstick. The only evidence she’s left behind are a few empty frames that once contained pictures of both her and her fiancé and a tube of lipstick.
There was my neighbor. An old guy with a prosthetic leg and more hair in his ears and nostrils than on his head. He went out every morning to fly the flag, always coming out to lower it to half-staff the minute that one was issued. Now the flagpole stands barren. His wife of sixty years says she never married and I saw her sell his leg in a yard sale last week.
There was my goldfish. A cute little thing named Gil. I’d won him at the state fair. Gil had a nice tank and some pretty interesting decorations. I liked talking to him. I know goldfish don’t always last very long, but I woke up one morning and poof. No fish. The only reason I know he vanished as opposed to being sucked into the water filter is none of my friends remembered me winning Gil when I told them about my distress.
And there were many others. People just cut out of reality, leaving behind traces that only I can see.
I should try harder to point this out, shouldn’t I?
I should not keep playing along as the days repeat. I should not look at the evidence of people being erased and turn a blind eye. I should not keep telling myself that there is nothing I can do.
I should not keep in the words: ‘this can’t be real.’
I look around and I see everyone enjoying reality. I see them accepting it, despite all of the repeating faces and discrepancies in memory. I see them smiling at glitches. Eating up whatever it is we’re being fed by the handful and seeming to enjoy it. It feels wrong to do nothing. But. It also feels so very wrong to act on it There’s disgusting bits and pieces in the cake, but everyone eats with such purposeful voracity.
This reality that we consume, I don’t see how you swallow it with such ease.
Do you think I’m crazy yet?
It’s okay if you do.
Anyway, think back to my analogy. You should kind of get it now:
The group eating the cake = you
The cake itself = reality
The flour, hair, toenails, and all other disgusting ingredients lurking within = the glitches in reality that only I seem to see
But now that I’ve explained that part so plainly, maybe (if you’re not thinking about what a lunatic I am) maybe you’re looking back at the best friend. At the person I stressed how much you care for in the context of the analogy. The person I paused and asked you to creaete a warm relationship with.
And.
Well.
How do I elucidate them?
How can I lay out a simple: the friend = (insert meaning here)
The truth is, I really don’t know how to explain that part to you.
Seeing through reality, every time I glimpse through the cracks, I feel incredibly guilty. It’s like I am letting down a good friend. It is almost as if there’s this incredibly simple task, something that should take almost no effort and it would make someone that I hold dear feel secure and loved, but I just can’t do it.
I grimace and cannot hide the fact that I know that there is something wrong.
So, now I’m writing this. I don’t know who it will reach and honestly, I’m sure that all it’s good for is eliciting a few laughs at my expense, but I can’t keep pretending to stomach this. I can’t keep walking past empty rooms and cubicles, pretending that they are supposed to be like that.
The feeling of my gut turning has finally grown stronger than this overwhelming sense of failure. I know that I’ve let someone down by thinking this, by writing this, but I just can’t do this anymore.
There’s this sense that this existence isn’t right. That there’s a better, more natural way of existing. That there isn’t a need to eat the cake with my hands. That there’s an existence as evolved as sitting at a dining table with flatware and cutlery in comparison to how we currently live.
I get the feeling I’m not supposed to know that. That I am supposed to accept whatever this life I have been given at face value and to not look at the messy parts, but they are all I can see.
Whoever made this. God, maybe. I feel nothing but warmth for them. Their interest I feel is a fickle thing and this reality that they’ve made. It’s cracked, it’s flawed.
And I’m sorry, but no matter what happens to this plane of existence we inhabit, I have to tell the truth.
It is too broken to exist.