Oracle 1 - Message 3

(Beep. Music fades in)

Sometimes, I feel like I’ve been set up to fail, you know. Not that isn’t a sweeping critique of the state of the world, though there’s plenty of reason to offer one of those up, let me tell you. I mean, personally. I feel like the hand of cards I was dealt just wasn’t ideal for the game. They could have been a lot worse. I know that. I can make this hand work, but there’s a small bit of resentment that I even have to do that. Like, why do I have to be broken as a person, specifically when it comes to communication? That’s the one that really sticks with me just because it seems so wildly inconsistent. Abstract conversations or philosophical debates, I’m fine. But I went to pick up a burrito the other day, did most of the work through an app, but I still managed to screw up the process. 

And I know: things happen. We all have our awkward moments. I just think I’m directly throwing the curve off a little bit with how many I have. But then again, when I think about it, I tell myself that this tendency or the collection of tendencies that make this an inevitability aren’t bad in and of themselves. It’s part of being human to not know what to do all the time or to get tripped up on some random thought that pops into your head whether or not it was prompted. We’re not infallible machines, and that’s part of the beauty of the human experience. Random and absurd moments or so-called glitches can birth beautiful things, but sometimes you just ruined a restaurant employee’s day through second hand embarrassment. 

Or okay, I couldn’t have ruined her day, considering how a sizable portion of her customer base must act on a regular basis. I’m sure my interaction with her wasn’t enjoyable, but it was more innocent than some of her other ones.

But that burrito isn’t the issue here. I was still able to get it. I ate it, and it was fairly good. It fell apart towards the end, which is to be expected, but that’s why I ordered it double wrapped, which it wasn’t. Once again, though, these things happen. And I can certainly live without the additional tortilla on a burrito. And you know what, the inevitable dissolution of my burrito got a laugh out of my girlfriend. And I love that laugh.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

You just don’t know what’s going to happen when--quote--these things happen, and that’s really the problem. You don’t know what’s going to happen, and it could be an innocent burrito spill, and if you’re dealing with a burrito, it probably will be. Because it’s just a burrito. But you and I aren’t dreaming about burritos. Not in the sense that I’m using the word ‘dreaming.’

The stakes of these so-called visions were what made it so challenging, right? If there’s no room for error, then you have to avoid error. How can you avoid error when you have to rely on the weakest part of you? 

That’s one of the questions you want to ask me because--in many ways--our weaknesses are the same. 

We’re just too much alike, yes? I say too much because this particular combination of things is an emotional drain. Or a drain on the soul if you’re inclined to recognize such a thing, which does fit into this experience a bit, doesn’t it? But all that effort I was pouring into figuring out what to say or how to say it left me empty. And the dreams made it hard to recharge. So at some point, all I had in me was a slew of empty batteries, scrambling to keep themselves able to hold a charge that they would someday hopefully receive. But I couldn’t tell them when it was coming. So everything in me was left waiting, hoping for a rescue that my mind knew might not come.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

By any other name, that could be called depression, which--to be honest--was a fair thing to assume. It’s what my girlfriend first thought I had. It’s what her mother first thought I  had. And yeah, that is well within the ballpark separate from the dreams. No one gets through life unscathed, and I had had a few hits against me thrown my way, so yeah... 

But it’s like… Okay. This is not a scientifically sound description of what depression is. And it’s not going to apply to every single sufferer that’s out there. But in the midst of my depression, I always felt like it kept me separate from the rest of the world. Like I was in another dimension that just so happened to be superimposed onto the one that had everyone else. And I could see everything. I could even maybe touch things. But it was like touching something through a thin sheet of plastic wrap. The actual sensation was lost on me, even if I know I made contact.

When I first told my girlfriend about my diagnosis--the formal one that predated her by about a year--obviously she wasn’t surprised. Concerned because you have to be when it’s depression but not surprised. The evidence was everywhere, and it included the formal signs and symptoms that all those online checklists mention before they urge you to go to the doctor because those websites nor their programmers are doctors. In many ways, she knew before I said it. But then she asked me, delicately, what it felt like. She’d never known this monster, and I’m happy about that. It’s one small justice in the world. And that’s what I told her. I told her about being somewhat but not exactly removed from my life. Which conveyed the cognitive dissonance and the sense of isolation that can be otherwise so hard to explain. It told her that I was there with her, but I also wasn’t. It told her that she could try to hug and console me, but it wasn’t all going to come through. Telling her was the first step. For me and us.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I loved fiction writing. Still love it, frankly, but now it’s a more complicated sort of love. Now, there’s this feeling or sense that I’m not getting it right when I try to write. Like I understand the emotions I want you to feel with what I’m making. I know the themes, and I have a central message in mind. But it’s the getting there that’s hard. Not even the story design or the character design, background, whole nine yards sort of thing. It’s constructing each sentence. It’s finding each and every word that gets you or whoever to understand the picture in my head. It always feels like I’m missing something. Like, did I clarify that this person has a small dip in their earlobe that reminds them of their grandfather who didn’t have it but used to tease them for it. Because it’s not a good association, and I don’t know if I conveyed that. Do I tell you that shooting stars can catch the light in brown eyes just so and shine the universe out from them? Do I tell you that this laugh I imagine is the same laugh I once heard in an art history class in college whose owner I never figured out? How do I get you to picture that in your mind? 

How do I tell you about the beauty that I see that you won’t recognize? When it comes to fiction, you won’t recognize it because it doesn’t exist per say, but when it comes to the dreams, it’s a picture someone can’t see, especially when it comes to the beauty in themselves. There’s no easy and not creepy way to describe that, but you know how desperate I am to do just that. The problem is I can’t force someone to see through my eyes. I can only ask them to.

See yourself as I see you, I can beg. Someone asked that of me once, but I can’t make someone else do it just like I couldn’t be forced to do it. I can’t force anything onto anyone. Imagine, I can beg. Imagine a person that you may realize is you deep down, but I can’t make you superimpose your face onto theirs. But if I don’t ask directly, maybe your mind will wander over to it. Maybe curiosity provoked by a broken and half told story, a mystery as it were, might do it for you. 

I cannot offer words that may or may not be believed, only an image--vague and yet able to convince the hand that had to paint it for itself to reconsider what you have made in a new light. When I speak, they stand back and listen. There’s no need or way for them to answer, and no answer that could potentially derail me. I found a way to run from my weakness, and I know that I am fortunate to have gotten as far away as I am. 

(Music fades out. Beep)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?