“Happy ever after” doesn’t mean forever.

It just means time.

I feel like I keep dying.

And I don’t really know how to communicate that to anyone else. I had hoped it would stop happening, but it hasn’t. It’s only gotten worse.

I keep having this feeling, like I’ve somehow died; yet instead of the blackness of unconsciousness there’s just… this.

Once upon a time I went to Philadelphia to visit my friends. One of them flew in from Amsterdam, and we slept on the floor — two air mattresses laid next to each other; a coffee table moved out of the way. In the evening, before our hosts retired to their bedroom, we took turns playing YouTube videos, and we watched a movie about the arrival of a new perspective on time. As we inflated the mattresses, I argued back and forth with one of them about the film’s theme — about its compatibility with the non-existence of free will, and about its existentialist undertones — while a different friend got sheets out from her closet.

I feel like I keep dying.

And I felt this way before I even knew what was happening, or the why of it. Years and years; you can trace the feeling across my writing and my journal entries.

But now I’m older, and despite the fact I’m mostly not wiser, I do understand what’s been happening to my brain; at least a little. And it’s mostly not getting better. Though at this point it’s mostly not getting worse either, and so I’m mostly not sure what to do.

Once upon a time my Grandmother died. We held a funeral, and everyone cried, because she was dead. The day before, my aunts and uncles came from the other states where they live, and we all had dinner in a restaurant I’d never been to before, forty-five minutes away from where I live. My brother sat in the back of the car, and while I helped my Mom navigate Google maps, one of my friends told me I should buy a camera, and that we should amend our writing pact. While we ate, the AC vent above began to leak, maybe from the rainstorm twisting itself outside, across the evening dark, and so I shifted my chair a foot to the left. At the other end of the table, my cousin took off her sweater because the restaurant was too hot. Two days later, the day after the funeral, we all had bagels at a different cousin’s house. People shared stories from their childhood, and I learned a little bit more about all of them. The last time all of us had been in a room together must have been at least a decade ago, maybe more.

I have persistent feelings of unreality.

It’s interesting, actually, what the human brain is capable of experiencing. It’s like this pressure sets in, almost like being at the bottom of a pool.

Total silence.

A weight to everything — and yet my brain can’t see how anything actually exists. I feel something bearing down on me, and it smothers any conception of understanding I ever pretended to have, and despite this sudden lack of reality it feels like being crushed — enveloped in nothingness — an ever present reminder of what’s happening; everywhere I look; even if I try closing my eyes — I can still hear this metaphysical lacking thrum inside my head.

It’s claustrophobic.

Maybe death is just lacking — this certainly feels like a crushing sense of lack. And yet the world becomes so big and empty. There’s this tension between the weight of the silence, and the infinite expanse of the aloneness.

And I mean this as literally as I can. It really does feel that way. Like standing in an endlessly open field in the dead of night, while your ears are clogged from water pressure.

Once upon a time I went on vacation with my family to New Hampshire. When I was young we would always go up there, sometimes with my Grandmother. The last time my family was all together it was here — each of us renting a cabin around this crescent shaped lake; all except for one of my aunts, who lives twenty minutes down the road, on a street named after the dairy farm her husband owns. A decade or more later, in the evening, we turned the TV to a classic movie channel. I drank prosecco we had bought at the supermarket, and my dad lay — eyes half closed — on the couch, while the rest of us sat in chairs and watched some old film. It was in Spanish, and about an eight year old girl who believes her attempted assassination of her father, with baking soda as the poison, to be a success. After the movie I went outside and sat on the dock, by the edge of the lake. My mom came outside and we stared up at the stars, and the half lit cabins across the lake — all reflected in the dark water — while we failed to correctly identify any of the constellations.

Often when I’m like this I listen to music.

The sound doesn’t breathe any texture back into reality, but it helps distract from the silence. There’s an almost familiarity to the way the cords progress — the same pleasing pattern playing out exactly like whenever I first heard a song — even though I can’t actually feel the feeling of recognition anymore; only intellectually understand that I’ve been in this place before, or heard this song at least a hundred times.

I hate when I have to stop, and I’m forced to sit with the full silence of my situation.

Once upon a time most of my friends from High School came home for the summer; all except one, who decided to stay on campus. During the pandemic, the spring of my first year of college, the new friends I made there got me to join a game of Dungeons and Dragons. A few weeks later I started running sessions for my High School friends, despite the fact none of us had ever really played before. Then, later, when almost all of us were home for summer, and vaccinated, we unfolded a table in the center of a friend’s basement — and tried to set up a microphone so all of us could be heard by my other friend, who had chosen to stay on campus. Then we played a tabletop rpg, for one of the only times I’ve ever actually played it on a table top, and I threw a box of tissues at someone in a vain attempt to bring order back to the session.

It doesn’t feel like there’s anything to me, I suppose because I feel as if I’ve died. And I can’t see why anyone could ever care about me, because I’m not real. I’m dead; just a delusion that’s somehow still moving, despite its status as non-existent.

I just can’t see how anyone could love that. Or even just care about it at all; find any enjoyment in its presence. Want to spend time with it — with me.

But maybe no one else can see that endless pressure that’s always ready to descend on our reality. Maybe no one can see the real me, or the real universe, because none of it is real anyways. Maybe I’m the only one with the eyes to see the truth.

And that makes me think I’m an imposter.

Somehow I tricked everyone else into thinking I exist, despite the obvious fact of the matter — if only they had the sense to see it.

Once upon a time I went to Philadelphia to visit my friends. One of them is in a band, and on Sunday we got into a rental car, put a guitar and an amp in the trunk, and drove several hours into Pennsylvania. It began to rain, and our phones flashed with various warnings. The highway flooded in sections, and at one point we pulled over by the middle of the road — where the two directions of traffic are subdivided by a no man’s land — and waited for the rain to subdue itself, if only slightly. One of my friends brought a book, and while they read I stared out the window and played twenty questions. On the way home, another of my friends turned around from the front seat to ask if I’d had a good time — since we drove three or four hours in the rain, there and back, to reach the show — and I’m not sure they fully understood why the answer was an obvious yes, even though all we had done that day was sit in a car.

This feeling of dying — or being submerged — it’s almost like staring into the void. If you do it too long it takes something from you.

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like my life is my own, even after I reanimate — even after I’m resurrected. If you sever too many connections, even by accident, the whole thing falls apart.

Dead men don’t have any connection to their memories. They’re dead. They don’t have anything. Stare too long into the void — into the silence — and it takes all that from you.

Once upon a time I sat at my desk, in the basement of one of the only dormitories that had air-conditioning, and the two of us called over Google Meet. It was winter, but I kept the window by my bed open, and the brickwork of the wall was cold with January. She didn’t have internet, so she used a hotspot to connect her laptop to mine. On the floor by my bed was a large — wide but shallow — cardboard box, full of Lego pieces I had bought as an adult or saved from when I was a child. Together we watched a TV show, hundreds of miles apart, as she lay in her bed and I sat in a chair at my desk, and I cried a little — despite the fact it was only fiction. I don’t like the way this memory tastes to me now, and I’m not sure I want to try repairing my connection to it, but it’s still the case I felt a deep sense of affection that evening.

I want to say I don’t deserve love anymore, as punishment for the sin of tricking everyone into thinking I’m real, but the truth is I don’t deserve anything — because nothing’s real, and so no one is owed or has earned anything whatsoever.

Once upon a time someone drove me to Boston. We spoke about civilizational collapse and constitutional liberties for five hours, and the resiliency of various infrastructure grids. In the city I met someone from my book club — started a year prior, through near random chance — face to face for the first time. Two days later, right before my trip back, I met a different friend face to face for the first time as well. I navigated a suitcase over puddles, and protected my shoulders and my backpack with the umbrella I always keep in it, to meet them at a cafe. I had some french fries, and they had a sandwich, and we slid into conversation amongst the Sunday bustle of a downtown lunch crowd.

I don’t know why no one else can see the silence.

Once upon a time I took a train to the city. Everyone claims to love New York, or at least it seems that way, but I think the crowdedness shoves me out of my own sense of self. I met two friends there and we sat in a park and chatted. While our conversation readjusted me to myself, we spoke about the risks from artificial intelligence, and what kind of clothes we dressed in during high school, and they sipped coffee — all before we navigated our way across the city to buy bagels one of us had seen in a TikTok. In the evening I took the train home with that same person. They slept on the pull-out couch in my basement before then taking a different train to the country’s capital the following morning. Another day after, I then took a train there myself, sitting next to the second friend I had visited two days prior in the city, and I read a philosophy paper — occasionally checking my phone — as we moved across the East Coast. The following afternoon all of us met up again, alongside several others, and we toured the cherry blossoms and drank until the late evening began to shift to morning.

I think I’m overdramatizing my experiences, because I can’t help myself.

People certainly have it worse. People who experience this regularly; or lose entire chunks of their memory. Maybe hallucinate voices or experiences. I just kind of have to deal with this, sometimes — but outside feeling like a timelord, there’s not much impact on my life.

Drowning in non-existence sounds terrible, but I think it’s significantly preferable to actually drowning — which hundreds of thousands of people actually do, every year.

The only real impact on my life seems to be me writing very indulgent, or poorly structured, essays for my blog. That’s not a particularly heavy burden; it’s not much of a boulder — more of a Sisyphean skipping stone, if anything.

Once upon a time I sat by my window, let the cool wind of a rainstorm wash over my face, and the sounds of raindrops filled my ears. I tried to express the confusion my brain forces upon me, just because I’m me, and I tried to explain what it means to express love. I’m not sure what I’ve accomplished — mostly I just feel like a storybook character; a wrapping of descriptive traits around empty pages.

What does someone who experiences persistent unreality have to teach us about anything?

Maybe once I’d have said “quite a lot” — but I’m not sure that’s true anymore.

Then again, what do I know about anything? I just know that I feel as if I keep dying.

I think for me, deeply so, love is about presence. It’s not even about attention — though of course that is often an important aspect too — it’s simply the act of being near.

That’s how I express love — and that’s something I appreciate from others.

Because I feel like I keep dying. And it’s calming when I get a few moments with someone I care about — before I have to die again. And it’s meaningful to me that I’ve chosen to give my very limited time to the act of being close to someone else, even if we’re focused on two separate activities.

Love is a choice. Because I feel as if I keep dying, and I’m acutely aware of the fact that none of this is real — not really, anyways.

Because nothing’s really there. It’s just energy and position values — evolution somehow tricked us into thinking it was meaningful.

Without warning the world could become empty, and alone, and you could be crushed by the weight of nothingness. Your brain can just feel that way sometimes, for no real reason.

Maybe most people think this sounds insane, to which I say “you should try bartending”. Though apparently most people don’t uncontrollably dissociate if they serve drinks after eight p.m. — so again, what do I know?

None of this is real. There was never any point to any of this, and I am actually going to die one day. Not just this make believe version of passing on — I’ll really be gone one day, and so will everyone else too.

And I just want to be here with you. For these seconds we do have. To make it as real as I can, even if it never actually will be.

Nothing is real, and love is a choice.

I decided to be present for those moments I could. To be near people I care about.

I chose to take memories that don’t feel like mine and keep them close to my heart; hold them so tight they burn my hand. Let that heat bring me back to the world.

Nothing’s really real.

And still I won’t let go. I think that’s love, in the deepest sense. To ignore the silence that’s always threatening to crush us, and instead be here with each other. Even if we’re all just absentmindedly on our phones — not even saying anything as the evening takes hold of the living room, or our basement.

We choose to make all the meaning that exists, just by letting ourselves live, or by deciding not to die. Some say that’s the only actual question within philosophy — though others would say that’s really more of a myth.

Nothing is real, and nothing had to mean anything. So it’s especially special to me that I chose to let these people be meaningful — and I’m not sure how to communicate that to them, outside simply being present.

Because I could have chosen to be alone instead. It would have been easy, the water pressure is always there, in case I wanted it.

But I don’t want that. I just want time — here with you.

Once upon a time… someone asked me what the meaning of life is. There isn’t a real answer, not really; instead we get to choose one — if we want to. Because the world is chaotic. Just atoms, and the space between them. And every chance I get I like to say that, and maybe that’s because every chance it gets my brain forces me to feel the weight of that truth. Or maybe I just like using vaguely scientific terms to sound vaguely poetic — who knows. But nothing is really real, and there isn’t an answer to any of our grand meaning making questions. Yet, still, I have found my own — and I like to hold it against my chest, or cupped in my hands, and allow the warmth of it to evaporate some of the silence’s weight. For me, what is meaningful is connection — love and friendship — and for me the core of such experiences are based in-

Presence

Sometimes I get into a weird mood and it all feels this way, anyways.