I am always trying to make sense of my Self. Like if I stare at myself long enough, I’ll suddenly become clear. Like if I fit every moment into the next moment, neatly like a jigsaw puzzle, eventually a complete image will appear.
I am always looking for answers to questions that haven’t been asked. Like I can find a portal to another world, if only I really look. Like there is still hope for the unspoken to be made legible.
This is all an obsession. An incoherent, meandering, non-linear obsession.
I look back on my life, and it doesn’t make any more sense in hindsight. But when I look, I do see something…something blurry.
An apparition floating through moments, obsessed with understanding them, but getting pushed back and forth through time before it can.
It’s the deja vu. It’s the depersonalization. It’s the delusions.
It’s the whispers I hear at night. It’s the dreams with an obvious break in the film. It’s the empty spaces. All of the empty spaces. There are so many empty spaces, and they fill me with dread, because I want to fill them in.
I feel this when I approach people whom I’m sure I’ve met before, but I don’t recognize them. It’s just a feeling. I can’t trust my own timeline anymore.
Is any of this true?
Can we accept that this fear of existence—this unsureness—is the truth of humanity?
I check the mirror constantly because I need proof of totality. I get as close to the glass as I can, and look directly into my own pupils, to make sure that I am in there. I step back and reassess. I never quite recognize myself.
I know you, I’m sure of it.
I get too stuck trying to mold everything together into one unified conglomeration of existence. But that is just my compulsion towards narrative, my greedy search for clarity. It is my fear, hoping to make sense of everything before I jump, but I will never have full sight. Existence will always be opaque.
I am the blurry apparition. My sight glazes over because it hurts to look. I cannot focus on the outer realm when I am so unsure. My pupils constrict when I try to gaze in, blocking my ability to see. There are flecks of green around the center of my iris. I step back again.
It’s me, it’s me, I repeat. I exist, I am, I whisper.
Time doesn’t end, it loops.
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