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Wednesday, March 3, 2021

T. L. Sullivan

    Summer is my favorite season. Summer is like spring and summer is like fall but summer is not at all like winter so I like it the best. The worst part of winter is February, because everyone has taken down their Christmas lights, but the sun still sets too early and it doesn’t get above forty, even in the afternoon. I wonder what it’s like to be an animal who does not think about other animals of their species, apart from their own children, like a bear. I wonder what it’s like to sleep the whole winter through all alone in a cave. I wonder what you dream about for all those months. If a human dream can last 30 seconds and feel like hours, do they live decades in their sleep? Do they wake up lucky or miserable? At what point does a dream become a life?
    I am a child, but I am grown. I am old, but not wise. I am turning twenty-one in three months. There is something nauseating about that. When I was immature in years, and not merely in my mind, I was not romantic with melancholy. I was, and still am to some extent, dull and stupid with pain and idleness. I would throw myself into my moods, over-act. I tried to convince everyone that I was sad in this way, but nobody worried about me. I wanted them to, very badly. But I didn’t even believe myself. For how unhappy I was, I couldn’t express it. I couldn’t get it out of me. And I couldn’t ignore it. I would watch sad movies and listen to sad songs constantly because I couldn’t cry at what was happening to me, what I was becoming. I was too used to it. I tried to make myself fall in love. Sometimes I would obsess over people. But I didn’t love anyone. I went seventeen and a half years without love. The one thing worse than death is when you die and you’re still alive. You become a Half-Person. Not Quite Inhuman. I let everything around me die. I would sleep the whole day through. I was angry at everyone, especially people who went to college, people who had jobs, people who weren’t miserable like me, people who were miserable but unignored, “normal people”. I had to stop, though, because it made me sick. Nothing can make you sicker than yourself. I couldn’t remove myself all the way, no matter how much I wanted to. I belonged just enough to hurt.
    I am halfway fixed. I am three-quarters of a person now.
    Some of the things I think seem so pathetic to me that I can hardly write them down. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to talk to anyone. Or see anyone. There are times when I feel like there is nobody else like me in the entire world. The good thing about there being 7 billion people on Earth is you know that can’t be true. The bad part is, you might not ever find those other people.
    But there is somebody out there right now who knows exactly how I feel. The older the human race gets, the fewer unique thoughts we have. This means that, according to my calculations, in about three hundred years, we should hardly have to talk to each other at all. We will just be able to read each other’s minds. But for now, and for our children, and our children’s children, we will have to make do with verbal and written communication. There is something of value in the clumsiness of our interactions, anyway. It’s nice to know that humans aren’t The Apex Predator, The Smartest Species, The Most Communicatively Advanced Creature On The Planet. We have our shortcomings, like everyone else. It is not earthly to be perfect.

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