I Could Be Anyone

Author’s Note:

This is a document of my thoughts during one of my frequent walks. I think there is such a thing as toxic positivity. I sometimes capture my unfiltered thoughts in uncomfortable moments as a practice in rudimentary mindfulness. This often helps me understand and resolve painful emotions.

I feel compelled to give a Trigger Warning for suicidal ideation. If you are thinking of harming yourself, I implore you to seek help. Depression causes us to see the world in grayscale. It’s not the true picture, but feels hopeless. There’s no shame in seeking help to find your way back to the true world.

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I Could Be Anyone

Fleeting rays of sunlight warm my shoulders then vanish as the patchwork of clouds lazily transits the sky
It’s late morning, warm with a gentle breeze
I’m walking through the placid streets of my complacent suburban neighborhood
I could be anyone
But I am me
And I want to die

I consider the many-worlds interpretation
An infinite splintering at the most granular level of reality
Each moment shattered into enumerable causal threads
What if I could unravel this string and follow it back to my beginning,
To the nexus of my existence and nonexistence and follow a different branch of reality?
Are there worlds in which I never existed?
Are there worlds in which I don’t wish I’d never existed?

Perhaps there’s a world where the vibrant boy-crazy girls I admired so impotently in my youth were irrelevant to my trajectory
Maybe I found purpose and meaning locked inside hidden talents I haven’t discovered in this world
Maybe I stumbled upon a way to avoid the deep wounds that turned to ragged irreversible scars in this life
Perhaps I’m not broken in another world

My partner knows nothing of this
She sees only a sliver of me
It’s a lie, but only through omission
I’ve given her a keyhole view
It’s incomplete, yet me nonetheless

It’s not that I haven’t tried to show her more of me
These thoughts are worse than unimportant to her
They threaten her relentless pursuit of practicality
They’re vexing and inscrutable distractions from what needs to be done
And I can’t blame her
Why can’t I simply roll up my sleeves and focus on the tasks at hand?
There are things that need doing

We don’t belong together
But this isn’t her deficiency
It’s mine
If not with her, then I’d be alone or else partner to any other equally ill-suited mate
The dark truth is that I don’t belong with anyone
And I don’t belong here at all

I’m mindful of the shame in these thoughts
Who am I to be unhappy?
I’m an ungrateful malcontent
Born with privilege many would envy
A straight white man
Able to ascend from working class origins
To a solidly middle class life with comparatively few obstacles
The moment of self-pity is nauseating

I pass two older women walking in the opposite direction
They’re talking, but I can’t hear them
I’ve insulated myself with headphones and sunglasses
I don’t want to experience this environment
I want to move through it like a shadow or a ghost
I’m reminded of a past infatuation
I moved through her world like a ghost
While she towered over me like a looming monolith
But she never really existed
I invented her to fill some void,
To be a worthy judge,
To withhold the validation I felt I didn’t deserve
She was just a person
And I didn’t see her truly
I saw what I wanted to see,
Either born of a misguided desire to redeem my past self,
Or compulsion to reopen old wounds

I cross the street and avoid eye contact
If the women acknowledge me I don’t notice

My house appears from behind a dense row of trees as I round the corner
I will walk this loop at least three more times
This is the only solitude I can find here

I step awkwardly and feel the sharp pain in my leg
It’s imperative to keep moving
I’ll favor my other leg for a moment
I long for the time I only despised my body for aesthetic reasons
It was foolish to ever criticize my strong and capable body over minor details
It once offered seemingly miraculous utility
Now, after years of injury and illness,
I despise it for failing me so spectacularly
Yet, this seems an appropriate revenge for my body against my egoistic dissatisfaction

I try to increase the volume in my headphones, But the chastising beep reminds me the volume is already at maximum

I want to die,
But I can’t end my own life
I fear that would inflict wounds on my daughter that she’d carry the rest of her life,
Inheriting my wounds like a wave of sadness propagating through time and across generations,
Causing the worst parts of me to live on in the memories of the person I love most in this world
I want to simply disappear from time and memory
But I am trapped here

I have narrowly escaped death multiple times
My survival is the result of state-of-the-art medical interventions
It owes nothing to heroic resolve and perseverance with which I’m often unjustifiably credited
Maybe there are worlds in which I did not survive and the anthropic principle is the reason I’m still here
Maybe I will necessarily experience outcomes that allow for my continued consciousness
Maybe survival is mandatory, not lucky

Still, it’s comforting to imagine there might be worlds where long-deceased loved ones survive

I’m trapped here
Many times that feels like an impossible burden
I think about it in quiet moments,
In the shower or walking as I am now
I feel the need to cry, but I can’t
My body won’t physically allow it

I steal myself for one more day
How many days have I endured?
15,304, my phone’s calculator confirms the answer
I can always make it through one more day
Those days slowly accumulate into weeks, months, years, decades
I will eventually reach the end

Many worlds
I could be anyone
But I am me