A Brief Conversation With Myself That Got Completely Out of Hand
“You okay?”
“Absolutely.”
“You’ve been staring at that young man in the grocery store for six minutes.”
“I just realized he has an entire life.”
“Please stop realizing things at strangers.”
“No, an entire one. He probably has a person he avoids at Christmas, a password he keeps forgetting, and one specific fork at home he hates for reasons he couldn’t defend in court.”
“Stop looking at him.”
“I’m trying.”
“You’re making eye contact.”
“I know. Now I feel both exposed and invasive, like we accidentally opened each other’s medicine cabinets.”
“Look at the cereal.”
“I can’t. I’ve suddenly become aware that I’m trapped inside one body, in one grocery store, living only one version of an infinite number of possible lives.”
“You came for Cheerios.”
“I could have been a marine biologist.”
“You hate deep water.”
“Exactly. Another door closed.”
“Cheerios.”
“Also, I don’t quite belong here.”
“It’s a grocery store.”
“No, everywhere. Just slightly. Like everybody else received a pamphlet titled How to Be a Person and mine was delivered to an old address.”
“You are being dramatic.”
“I’m also aware of my heartbeat now.”
“Don’t.”
“Thump.”
“Stop.”
“Thump.”
“Holy shit, has it always been doing that?”
“Fifty-two years.”
“That seems excessive.”
“Get the cereal.”
“Wait. This song.”
“What song?”
“The one playing over the speakers. It reminds me of something I can’t identify, and now I’m nostalgic for a period of my own life I apparently forgot to attend.”
“That’s impressive.”
“And I just realized that twenty-six years ago feels like approximately 2019.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Don’t tell me.”
“You were twenty-six.”
“Fuck off.”
“You asked.”
“So there’s another me back there who has absolutely no idea what happens next.”
“Yes.”
“I want to tell them.”
“You can’t.”
“I know. That’s the terrible part. I finally know how some things turned out, but the only person who desperately needed this information is twenty-six years behind me, probably wondering what the hell they’re doing.”
“Can we please buy the cereal?”
“Hold on. Now I’m imagining a conversation with them.”
“Of course you are.”
“I do that a lot. Whole conversations with people who aren’t here. I give magnificent speeches. Everyone finally understands me. Sometimes there’s applause.”
“Nobody applauds in real arguments.”
“That is why I conduct mine privately.”
“You’ve been standing here nine minutes.”
“I’m thinking about how the story of my life doesn’t resemble the story I thought I was in.”
“What story did you think you were in?”
“I don’t know, but this feels like somebody changed writers halfway through.”
“Fair.”
“There are entire chapters that don’t match. Characters disappeared without explanation. Some returned twenty years later. Several plotlines went nowhere. There was an alarming amount of character development I did not authorize.”
“Still, you’re here.”
“Apparently.”
“And someday this exact moment will be a memory.”
“Don’t do that.”
“You’ll remember standing under fluorescent lights thinking twenty-six years ago was somehow last Tuesday.”
“I hate time.”
“Time is indifferent to your review.”
“Rude.”
“And someday this grocery store might close, and you’ll walk through the empty building and remember carts rattling and babies screaming and that weird freezer hum, and the emptiness will somehow feel crowded with everyone who isn’t there.”
“Why are you like this?”
“I’m you.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Also, someday somebody might remember you for something you don’t remember doing.”
“Like what?”
“You smiled at them when they were having a horrible day. You said one sentence they kept for thirty years. You pissed them off in 1997 and they still occasionally think, that bitch.”
“I hope it’s something profound.”
“It’s probably the bitch thing.”
“Fair.”
“And every person in this store has those invisible little threads trailing behind them too.”
“The young man?”
“Whole universe.”
“Cashier?”
“Whole universe.”
“Guy squeezing every avocado?”
“Whole universe.”
“That seems irresponsible.”
“Even him.”
I stand there for a moment.
People pass.
Carts squeak.
Somewhere a child is screaming because apparently applesauce can betray you.
Twenty-six years collapses into five minutes.
Five minutes quietly begins becoming twenty-six years.
And for one peculiar second, I can feel the ridiculous enormity of being alive:
everyone carrying an invisible country inside them,
everyone missing something,
everyone becoming someone their younger self would not recognize,
everyone pretending they know where they’re going,
everyone occasionally standing in the cereal aisle having an existential crisis.
“You okay?”
“Absolutely.”
“You’re crying.”
“No.”
“You are.”
“My eyes are experiencing weather.”
“Buy the Cheerios.”
“I don’t even like Cheerios.”
“THEN WHY ARE WE HERE?”
“I don’t remember.”
