Breathe in. Breathe out. Blink your eyes. Was that too much blinking? Do I look like a psychopath right now? Because I feel like one. I feel like I’m lying to the world about who I really am, but I don’t actually know what that entails myself. Logically, I know I’m not lying or hiding anything; I don’t have a secret identity. I AM human. Flesh and literal blood, I swear on my dead homie, all that. But how is it that I can actively be engaged in a conversation and still feel so alone? This is becoming deeply upsetting to me. I find that when interacting outside of my circle of 5 people that I trust to unmask around, I sincerely cannot relate to the human condition. Not to be like, “what the actual fuck is wrong with people,” but… Not even wrong either. Just vastly different. I feel like I even love differently. I may hold on to my grudges like my life depends on it, but I am also loyal to a fault. I have the capacity for love the size of a blue whale, but shoved inside my shitty little 5’6 body that creaks like a house built 200 years ago. So please never ask me how old I am because at this point, I don’t know. I am an ancient being trapped in a contemporary form, trying to navigate this lifetime, just the same as you. I have loved a billion lifetimes worth of people in this single moment. It’s whatever, I guess.
Though that may be, I am a lonely person, and I have felt a sense of looming isolation my whole life. I’ve never quite fit in, even where, by all accounts, I should blend in nicely. In a room full of black sheep and outcasts, I still feel alienated. I had come to terms with this at an early age – I think I was 12 when I decided to stop trying to fit in with my peers, as it was tiring and mostly ended in embarrassment. However, around the age of 21 is when this began to concern me more. I thought I felt alienated before, but being honestly convinced that I was something other than human was not on my mental health bingo card. As an Aquarius, my first inkling was that I was an alien sent from space. This was soon disproved by the logical part of my brain, which told me that the idea wasn’t exactly plausible. That’s what brains are supposed to do, so while technically my brain was working, the ideas morphed into something more sinister and unsettling. Something I couldn’t disprove by myself, something Reddit had a lot to say about. I was part of a state-of-the-art simulation in a facility on a planet where the name “Earth” rang no bells. Duh. Of course. I’m being prepared for emotional warfare, or being taught a lesson in turn for something horrible I did in whatever reality I’m from. Or maybe this is some doomsday scare tactic used to urge voters not to elect fascists or throw car batteries into the ocean. I don’t know the specifics. That’s none of my business right now. Right now, my business is getting through another day of utter bullshit and madness and chaos and destruction. But at some point, I got so lonely that even those symptoms subsided. As I lay awake at 4 am the other morning, I had a craving so human I felt like I could vomit. I craved connection. I craved touch, the sound of a heartbeat, the feeling of a pulse. I need to hear someone else breathing, I want to feel their warmth (and I’m sorry if that sounds almost… parasitic… of me. I swear the egg-laying thing is a bit). It’s gotten to the point where I viscerally react when a stranger bumps into me in public. Very odd. All this drama and overreaction to simply needing a hug. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, however, it’s that one day I will miss this. I will miss my life the way it is right now. So for now, I cherish my loneliness. I welcome it into my home, I make it a cup of coffee, and we sit and chat. I make space for every ounce of dread and fear in my mind. We mingle, we sing, we dance, we scream shrilly into the light of a full moon. Share a bong and a package of gas station donuts.
Keep your friends and loved ones close, you never know when The Eternal Worm might devour your home.
Phrenectomy 