Every time I wake up, I am lost to a space and time I do not understand. I am unfamiliar with so much of the familiar… These worlds I traverse are the same, yet they are different… They are the same as the one which I know, but they are different from the one which I know because their events, their peoples, their versions of my loved ones are distorted, they are extrapolated from the ones I love, the ones to which I am beholden.
I am filled with dread and with fear. I am never going back to my timeline, nor am I ever going to reconcile with those that lost me. This is a version of my world, but it is far from where I was born.
There is no easy way… Truly no easy way to portray what I am saying without hard evidence that cannot be provided. I wake up, I interact, I go to sleep… I wake up, I interact, I go to sleep… I wake up, I interact- I am lost. Moments true to my being, to those with which I interact, are foreign. Their outcomes are so vaguely different, yet so perfectly, asymmetrically, unfamiliar.
My mind is a steel trap. I describe the events with which I’m familiar to those that should already know their outcomes. However, upon delving into serious conversation, I am lost to learn there were sparse differences – differences just enough to dismantle my inner-self.
I watch as the world burns before me. I witness news stories I feel I’ve already seen. I wonder when the end will come, when I will be returned to the proper place from where I’ve come. I don’t believe it will ever be made so.
My anxiety seems to rupture my confidence on a daily basis. I shake. I smoke. I drink more coffee. I sit at my draft table, where I keep my laptop and my currently-used art supplies. I feel the world around me shake enough to cause me concern.
My cats all look the same. My dog does, too. They don’t feel as foreign as the people who inhabit my world. I am able to move freely through my home, without the fear my furballs have become spirits both familiar, yet so distant, unfamiliar from the ones to which I’ve grown accustomed. They are constants. Yet, they carry certain aspects of their characters that make me believe they are not used to the inherent smell exuding from my pores. I am fearful they are the only remnants of my former-self.
Growing up has this affect, this effect, this whatever-the-fuck-it’s-called… But growing up bears not this kind of weight of knowing events have played out differently in this realm.
It’s almost as if a nightmare has grabbed hold of my soul and thrust me into Hell. I feel the heat of my lack of air conditioning every night. I sleep upstairs – my home is equipped with two floors. I am lucky. The upstairs, where my bed resides in my bedroom, is never cool at night. It seems the heat from the day finds a way to stay, to bury itself within the walls and the sheets. I am so confused, perplexed as to how nature has forgotten how to breathe. It makes me worry physics have shifted.
I recall certain moments, as I talk with my closest friend. He asks me what I mean, when I say the things I say to him… I tell him he was there; I ask him how he could forget such plights. He tells me, with a brazen chuckle – I’m sure a smile, too – he cannot recall what I’m saying.
I shiver.
The upstairs heat bears down on me, so I move back downstairs.
COVID wasn’t kind to me, but I am to understand it wasn’t kind on anyone. The self-centered nature of our closed-off lives carries heavy weight. We are all lost to forgotten memories, to some extent or another. Yet, this is not that. This is not a case of forgetting how to interact with others.
I mention to my family members various moments from my youth. In turn, they each tell me they have no idea of what I speak. I remember telling my sister, then asking my mother… “We used to do ‘family hugs,’ where we’d all hug together in the kitchen.” No one has a clue about this maneuver. It’s minute, tiny, a small inconsistency in everyone’s memories, so I let it pass…
It has been so many days I’ve forgotten how to count. I’ve not kept up with a proper tally mark system to keep my mind familiar enough with where I am to remember from where I came.
These instances are so simple and so minuscule, I don’t keep them in a journal, like I should. I just know. I just know, in the moment, for hours – even days, weeks, months – after that I’ve just shared an inconsistency with someone who was there, someone who should know, someone who should be on the same page as me.
I used to joke with my closest friend, “I’ve woken up in a new timeline… I’m not from here.”
It’s never been more true than today, as I send the last bit of texts to him, to tell him we’re no longer friends after he lacked the dignity to stand up for me to his best man, to put the child in his place, to explain he can have multiple good friends. The way everyone looked at me, it was as if I was a foreign entity, that my past does not equal this current future-present.
My oldest cat is sick. A series of random events plaguing me, all breaking down my current state of mind. These are moments that can happen to anyone, at any time. I fear they are happening to me because I’ve entered the darkest timeline I could’ve experienced.
I sit, with a bottle of whiskey on the counter, a PBR in my hand, another cigarette lit… I ponder the events that brought me to where I am. I approach every moment with kindness, a smile; I share jokes and laughs with everyone around me. Yet, as I leave these conversations, they turn into slander. I’ve not held a job, nor have I held many relationships together. Logic dictates if everyone is happy in the moment, everything is fine.
This is not the case. It’s as if every big event in my life has twisted itself into non-conformity. Contorting itself, my life has become a mess of missed moments. Always when I sleep.
Every morning, as I wake, I check my phone. I see what blasphemy could be scrawled across my timelines. It’s never that easy. Nothing’s that easy.
As my days go on, I find myself living inconsistently – I find myself a whore to time and space. Space and time. The continuum. It creaks. It cracks. It corrupts me.
I am losing sanity. I find myself on the edge of breaking down too often. Everyone is scared.
There is no way to truly explain the feeling. I have these conversations, then I have these broken-home romantics. I’m romancing a stone of poisonous led, seeping into every aspect of my life.
When I think back to the various moments I usually point to, to make my case, I cannot remember a single one. Hours of conversation, hours of journal entries, hours of research… All lost, now.
I’m sitting at a computer, at a table, in a place where my parents live. Yet, this home has an eerie sense to it, a terrifying glow no one can see, but only I can feel.
I think this home has pulled me through an unseen warp, plunging me into a darkness lit by familiarity, in every sense of its aspects.
I’m confused by what this means.
As I let YouTube play… As I write more about my stories… I feel flutters of instances to support my case flying through my fried mind. There were videos, from creators I adore and those I don’t, suggested to me about various memes and memed events, most recently, where I had to stop to read their titles. Handfuls of videos causing me to pause… “Why are they talking about this, now? That happened weeks ago…” I would posit, to my cats and dog, yet to no one at all.
Researching these previously-covered topics only brings me more shame. None of these events happened before the moments when I saw the videos covering them. I mention these events to people. Not just people I trust, but random strangers… Truly random strangers, not just people inside the coffee shops, the museums, the bars, the places where I frequent… I ask, nay, I beg, random passersby… I must know when these innocuous moments first occurred.
The worst part of it all? I’ve found when they don’t know and they check their phones, they tell me they’ve never heard of these instances, until the moment they see them for themselves. They tell me they remember when these faint instances of my past world happened… These random passersby remind me: “I saw it all unfold, I was following this two days ago, when it happened.” I gasp for air, clutching my chest more often than I walk away cool, calm, and collected.
Have I managed to force my way into the future? I don’t believe this to be the case. There are days where I focus on the clock, to make sure I’m not wasting time… There are other days where time destroys itself to press on – “Onwards and upwards, my dear boy,” I tell myself.
There is war. There is always war. This is not a good, let alone good, way to decipher where I am.
The government has released declassified information about ufos and uaps at least four or five times, now. I remember when it was a big deal, when I saw it happen for the first time. So many years ago…
So many years ago…
So many years ago… I once asked my mother about the Nazi flags I remember seeing in the neighboring towns and counties where we used to live. I remember being so struck by the news reports about the homes displaying such hate… In the 90s! In The North! All the reports and reporters were so baffled by their disdain for the future, they couldn’t fathom why someone would want to be a part of the past, of a trampled people. My mother has no recollection. Yet, I… I remember this so starkly because of just how young I was and just how insanely terrifying it was for a young, impressionable Jewish boy growing up in The North.
Today, I remember so many moments when I’m not drinking. So many moments I’ve experienced in passing… Moments detailing how I’ve moved, I’ve shifted place. This body always feels foreign, it appears so unrecognizable, when I see it in the mirror at the right angle. It’s mine, it me… But it’s not the one into which I was born.
My heart races… The cigarettes, the coffee, the Adderall… The booze. The weed. I cannot stabilize.
Everyone has the same face, but their inner monologues are so different. I can’t decipher clones from carbon copies, nor can I tell which one of my persecutors is the one sending me across existence. It’s easy to chalk it all up to bad luck, for me to jokingly say, always with a smile, say: “If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no fucking luck, at all.”
But if they only knew… There is a misplaced soul, a spirit away from its tethering reality.
Have I gone crazy? Or have I just been born anew, somewhere away from where I was born to keep me safe, to keep me breathing? What of Heaven, what of Hell? For them, I care not… Life is so precious, why would I want to forego it?
Simulation, or not, I doubt it cares much for String Theory.