F*ck

After what, you’ll say. After what, indeed. In the After. The one that followed the Flood, something like that. The one that doesn't make sense, or doesn't make sense anymore. Meaning is something for everyone, even if it's just fragments. If it were everywhere, it would be obvious. But it's there nonetheless. At least, its promise, its shadow, or its illusion —however you want to put it—but its reflection shimmers somewhere for everyone. In the lottery ticket, in religion, in their mistress, in MMORPGs, in H&M, in those upcoming holidays, in that boat, that car, that dog, that new kitchen paint, in that book, in that refreshing encounter, in that career change project. And what if suddenly meaning is no longer found anywhere?

Then everything collapses. Because playing the lottery, fucking, playing, changing things, leaving, all that loses its value. It's nothing but a little spin around oneself. On a tiny circle. We think we've taken a turn, but it brings us back to the same point. And worse: we think time has moved on, that we're making progress, that we're moving forward… But that point, it's Time. Because a circle that thinks it's moving forward is a spiral. Seen from above, it’s a point. Motionless.

So, with desire and enthusiasm gone, what's left?

Huh?

What?

What's left is the After. It's kind of the story of rebirth, that very one from Jesus and the Buddhists. You kill your old self and you bare reborn, all fresh and new, all meditated. At least, that's what the self-help books predict. But what does the Bardo Thödol prepare us for, actually?

You're dead, okay. Dying is easy. Continuing after being dead is something else. What do you do? There's this guy who said, "Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water; after enlightenment, chop wood and carry water." Smart guy. The problem is, before, I chopped wood with the joy of a nice fire to come and carried water to quench my thirst. Now, I'm no longer cold and I'm no longer thirsty. So, do I have to pretend?

I think that's all there is to do, actually. Pretend. It doesn't change anything for the others who look at you; they don't see anything, and if you tell them something has changed, they find you cute with your little depression. No one will ever know that you're dead. That doesn't matter. Unless you have a spiritual weave that interconnects you with the idea of an idealized After, something nirvanic, prophetic… Or psychotic. But if you have nothing, because you listened well, watched well, and understood well that there is Nothing, what do you do?

Pretend, yes. Same as before, but less fun, then.

There must be something to do, damn it! Take care of others? Be humble and give yourself? Watch them suffer as they spin endlessly on their little circle?

Wait for The End, the real one? Hoping there is one; otherwise, it's a big scam.

Anyway, I experienced ego death in 2020. It's a kind of journey that takes you above everything, and I mean Everything, where you see above the theater lights and behind the stage. But what you see it’s there's nothing, nothing makes sense, everything is false, the absurd is actually everywhere. At first, it's very calm and contemplative. People say they experience that with psychedelics, for a night. Well, yeah. There are two ways to experience it, I think. There's the way of considering it can be real, which is already a lot because it destroys everything you knew. But it stays in the brain. Then there's the way of actually going there. The thing is, I stayed there not just for a few hours of a psychedelic trip (by the way, I didn't take any drugs for going there), I stayed there for months. Months. And if I came back down to the land of humans, it's because after a while, I decided I had to interact with this world. To see if maybe… it would pass. That's a good one!

I've never really come back down; a part of me is still up there. I had to put on a spacesuit to come see you.

Actually, I don't think it's possible to come back. Once you've seen the magic trick, you can't see it as magical anymore.

So, what am I, a living-dead? Zombies never seem very cheerful. Do I share my knowledge? Do I have to become a prophet or a shaman? Do I act like nothing happened and chop wood and carry water for others? A vampire can very well make spaghetti and clean mirrors, even if he doesn't need to.

Since the ego is gone, why not release everything into nature and stop trying to gather the crumbs into a disguise? I don't know.

The best thing that could happen to me, I believe, is to manage to have a self that holds together in one piece, rather than this collage of fragments from others that constantly unravels and that I have to patch up a little every day. I don't really know how to go about it, or even if it's possible given the magnitude of the task. Should I start by scraping off these half-peeled bits, removing everything that isn't properly attached, sanding, rinsing, and using the base to rebuild on top, perhaps after a small primer? Or is it magical and all I need to do is let go? And how do I make myself impermeable to the bits of others that would like to colonize me? How do I stop being porous, or at least not porous enough for your thoughts to lodge between my bones? Will I be empty if I peel off these tatters? Because if they're there, it's because there's a space to fill. If I accumulate new ones, if I inhale them into my internal system as if to put them in orbit, it's because there's some kind of black hole somewhere.

So how do I feel like a person? I believe I was more or less one before The Great Confluence of 2020. In any case, I believed I was. Before Covid hit us and Rust Cohle explained to me that in fact, it's all an illusion, that it's foolish to believe we have a self, that each of us is unique and has a purpose. That's where it clearly messed up in my head. I won't go into details, but basically, it's been impossible to be a person since then, just an aggregate.

Since then, it's obvious to me that no part of me really belongs to me, and besides, who would it belong to? Take a bag, put in it what each gaze that lands on it contains, shake well, give it a few good kicks, and put on it a pair of pants and a black t-shirt: I present to you me. Then let it wander the streets trying to do normal things and figure out how to react.

Why? Because we spend about 95% of our time lying to ourselves and to others. Especially to ourselves, primarily, but when we lie to ourselves, we inevitably lie to others; it's a collateral effect. It's called Phantasm, and Freud was the one who brought it to our attention. Note that it was already there before, but it was socially acceptable to believe anything. Since Freud, we've made it a problem, which has reinforced the phenomenon.

Most of the time, it works. Very neurotic people get along very well, in love as well as in hatred. They are on the same oscillating wavelength, looking for trouble out of a love for nonsense. It protects them. It's a bit more of a problem for people who can't stand nonsense and for whom it's an existential wall, like autistic or paranoid individuals... I often think I must be one of the two, or somewhere in the neurodivergence spectrum in between, which doesn't yet have a specific name.

But well, we're forced to live with it. Personally, I find it tough, but it's like bills, cavities, stepping in dog poop – it's inevitable. Fighting against it only leads to exhaustion because lying is part of the structure of language. That's Lacan.

This structural lie creates a virtual world in which most people thrive. Those who don't feel comfortable in it prefer virtuality without consequences: video games, TV series, books... And in this virtual world, which we could just as well call Reality, all sorts of craziness occur. Like politeness, manners, small talk, the vast majority of business relationships, and so on. It's valued in professional circles, naturally. Because, you see, we couldn't just speak our minds and trust each other; that wouldn't work. 

However, when it remains just as thick in love and friendship, it tends to discourage me. When someone is nice to me, I think they're my friend. Maybe I'm too naive, so I'm always a little shocked by the nonsense. Perhaps the problem is that when someone tells me something, I believe it. So when I realize it was false—not really false if you consider that the person was sincere, but false for me, who takes things literally—I freak out. And when I freak out, I question my entire perception of reality, how much I can be off the mark and unfit to understand social relationships. 

I was in the process of moving three parts of my body while identifying three different sounds on the street when the idea occurred to me that it wasn't impossible that I might be on the verge of the madeleine trap. No panic, I won't delve into the search for lost time. But. The fact remains that I'm still nostalgic for the benefits of the 2015 Spiritual Quest. For the freedom I felt while drawing. For the ecstasy that sent me into the cosmos when I was writing in 2018, 2019, transcending time and space.

So, I thought I should stop that. I much prefer not to be pursued by anything, like at the campsite, for example. At the campsite, all you have to worry about is when you're going to take a dump and what you're going to eat. Everyone likes that, I think. Even the prudes. And if everyone likes that, it's because we're no longer pursued by constructions and imperatives at the campsite. Everyone is the same creature when it comes to taking a shower next to big Bob, who's putting his catch in the next cabin. Everyone leaves each other alone when we walk around in our underwear, towel over the shoulder, slightly buzzed from the beer from 1 PM. And then, it's in underwear, a little tipsy, lying under the white page that came to shade the everyday, that we can most distinctly glimpse what we desire. Rosé. Terrace. Pizza. Cumbia.

Striving to be an author, to be an artist, to be Keanu Reeves, is a lost cause. Feeling like an author when you dream up a new character, glass in hand; believing you're an artist when you scribble a feeling on a piece of paper; feeling like God when you're right where you're supposed to be—those are the things to cherish. Did I just say that Keanu Reeves = God? Yes, absolutely.

So, not doing it, but being it. Damn, but I'm not saying anything new... What the hell was this damn quest of mine for? Every time I wrote a new story, it was somewhere a story I was living (on another plane, mind you, I don't think I'm an elf or a soldier). Well, you don't know everything. I never looked for the "next story to write," as if it were my job. If I were even paid to do it... You might be asking if I'm not writing the story I'm living right now. Damn it.

I already know everything, I'm a bit like Keanu somewhere. I've read Thich Nhat Hahn, eh! I just need a few characters ready to step out of reality to expose things not to forget on an easier-to-contemplate plane. Gluing their pieces together to make myself a costume. Fiction is a refuge of predictability, determination, and welcome emotions. But seeking these pieces in reality is futile. Of course. Letting them come, on the other hand, catching glimpses of them, collecting them as they appear... Rosé... Pizza...

This morning I woke up at five o'clock and wondered if I should get up. Before (what does that even mean, before?), I used to wake up at five o'clock every day. And I loved it ! Because I did it to write. The blue silence of dawn, the mystery between night and day, it's magical, damn it! I'm really nostalgic for those moments, now that I usually get up around nine o'clock. So, I seriously wondered what I should do, because lately (the after before), I haven't been writing anymore. It's been months, maybe a year, and if we thought about it properly (but do we really want to?), and didn't count the last gasps, maybe even two years. Whereas Before...

Argh!! It would be difficult to convey the joy, no, the ecstasy that used to fill me during those moments of pure creation, those flights outside of the world, that floating in the eternal, outside of time... So, is that all over now?

How can it be over? I asked myself. In my bed, eyes wide open to make sure I didn't fall back to sleep foolishly, I analyzed the situation. How did I start being unable to write at all? First, I finished college. A return to studying psychology, if you want to know. Go ahead, make fun, the nutjob studied psychology. Yeah well, if you knew who hangs around in those classes... Anyway. It took me a year to recover from those four years of studying, ‘cause it was so intense in terms of learning and rich in emotions. I'll detail it some other time if you want to talk about Freud. So, depression.

The seeds had been there for a while, they had probably always been there, but they got a huge dose of fertilizer to the face. Crying every night was still manageable, I was already familiar with it. Cutting myself, I did it briefly in high school, not as deep though. But the psychiatric clinic, I wasn't familiar with that. Boom! Meds, and I found myself on a month and a half vacation, far from everything, with my boyfriend. Everything was fine, you know. No brain, no thoughts, no creativity, and most importantly: no guilt for not having them anymore! Bliss!

And here we are: I wake up at five, wondering if I should get up to write and enjoy my life. The thing is, there should be a good reason to do it. To be sure. Oh, I forgot to tell you: I stopped taking the medication. So I had this argument with myself: if you get up, you'll find your reason! Inspiration doesn't just come on its own, you have to go after it, blah blah... and the other part retorted: if that reason existed, we wouldn't be having this debate, and I would already be in front of my computer! Because the rest of the analysis confirms it: I have nothing to write.

Abandoned projects, these past few years, are like an invasive species. The fantasy trilogy started in 2016? One and a half books done. The fiction started in 2020? Missing the ending. The pixel art video game started during college? Guess. The tabletop RPG based on the same universe? Special case: everything is there, or almost, except the players. Coding? Oh yes, I started learning how to code too. I wanted to create a character creation website for my RPG. Abandoned too, of course. The science fiction story outlined this year? Not even started. I'm starting to lose faith, you see. And what happened during the vacation? An urge to create a webtoon, believe it or not. So, and you'll probably understand, I don't have an ounce of ambition for this project. And even though I started a panel or two, just to test… I'm not going to give you an exhaustive list, you get the idea. I discovered a new feeling: the desire to stop something that hasn't even begun to avoid being disappointed by seeing it unfinished.

This is the search I did on Google this morning. It's Wednesday, and I haven't spoken to anyone since Friday. At the beginning, everything was fine. I was even happy to have these few days alone with my thoughts, my projects, to have time to think freely, to wallow in ideas cheerfully. 

Then I checked my bank account, so as not to make a mistake and spend everything on fried chicken. And that's when I started to panic. Forty euros. For fifteen days. Thirty actually, after the panic beer pack. I also bought an onion, ketchup, and mustard to season the crappy meals I'm going to eat in the coming days.

I want to go out, to close my eyes under the sun, to feel it warming my skin, to laugh with friends and confront new ideas, maybe even new people. But stepping out of my apartment is a damn ordeal. First, I have to get dressed. Which I usually do, because staying in pajamas during the day makes me feel pathetic. So, getting dressed: the fateful moment of choosing who I will be today. Because going outside implies existing, you see. Not easy, I know. Wai… who am I then? 

I'd like to be that gray kilt I bought at the beginning of summer and still haven't worn pairing it with a cool t-shirt and casually strolling through the streets of my town looking cool. But going out in a skirt, even if it's below the knees, is something I haven't done since my young adult life. For 12 years. 

And what if I run into someone I know and they say, "Hey, you're wearing a skirt?" Panic. Alright, how about shorts then? Long shorts, of course. But if I run into neighbors and they notice the scars on my legs ? They'll think, "Ah, that explains everything." That good old pair of jeans I wear every day, at least it won't betray me. Let's pair it with one of my twenty black t-shirts. 

Then I'll have to stare at myself in the mirror four or five times to make sure my face isn't doing anything stupid. The eyes are in place, a bit smaller than expected, but it'll do. The nose looks a bit bigger than yesterday, but if I walk fast, no one will notice. The hair... damn, I'd prefer an afro to this thin, flat, straight thing that makes me look like a balding teenager. Alright, let's not do anything different from usual, that way at least no one will be shocked. And to think that when I was 16, shocking people was a passion... 

So, I've failed the first test of novelty: I'm the same person as every day. Usually, a cap helps me hide, but since the July vacation, I've gained an extra 1% of nonchalance and I can walk in the wind without hiding that f*cking five fingers forehead of mine. Good. But calm down, it's not over. 

Now I have to open the door. With the risk that my lovely neighbor might come in or go out at the same time and greet me warmly, and her little dog might jump all over me. Am I ready to handle that? Let’s analyze the sounds. Silence in the hallway. Good timing, quickly, go out, descend the stairs, cross the door, freedom. Bravo, nothing to be proud of.

And then? The easiest thing is to set a small goal, like going to buy an energy drink or something. It's about a three-quarter-hour round trip walk, not ideal, but a good compromise. Wander aimlessly, observe people, take your time and contemplate... that hasn't happened since I quit drugs. Oh yeah, I didn't tell you? Well, I'll tell you another time. 

The fact is, now I don't really have friends anymore (not related to drugs... I think), even though I never really had many to begin with. One or two here and there, but never at the same time. Not so bad, you’ll tell me. Yeah, but not enough to fill a social life, partly because 50% of these two or three friends don't want to see me anymore, and also because, remember: panic.

Yeah, it's great to hide in my vegetal lair (aka my apartment), not see anyone, and give the world the finger from my closed, secret, and solitary little world. I love it, and I really miss it a lot when I'm too far away from it. But it's also a damn fertile ground for panic. Not talking to anyone for a week, being afraid to go out, not knowing what to wear, it's really easy when you get used to it. And it becomes comfortable super quickly when you're a phobic person like me. 

So, I dream of a social life, of museum visits, walks by the harbor, concerts under the stars, laughs, and cold pints. Sometimes even some roommates, when things really go bad (lol, that will never happen). In my most courageous moments, usually after two or three glasses of wine, I can go out without caring, be the version of myself that I want the world to see, glide through life and party, and regret it bitterly the next day. Then I replay the night, how far I clearly shouldn't have gone to not feel this way anymore. Too many people, too much of them, too much of others. Too many definitions of myself. I want to cut myself to detach from this social attachment, from their lingering gazes. Yes, because I also cut myself, you might have already noticed that.

In short, it's the eternal return. I want to change, I push myself to change, I think I've changed, I don't like how I pushed myself, I want to change. We're reborn in the same life again and again, according to Nietzsche. Jerk. He ruined my life, that guy, I'll tell you about it another time. 

So, how not to panic? According to the website Healthcare.com, there's the 3 3 3 method, which involves identifying three objects, three sounds, and moving three parts of your body. Well, it's an obvious cognitive bullshit, but why not. We also could call it "just think about the present moment, goddamn it," and reproach ourselves for giving up on The Spiritual Quest since 2020. Why 2020? Guess. 

The present moment, right ? I know how to do that. I know it's hard to believe after reading all this, but I swear I had another life. I'll tell you. Apparently, I have a lot of things to tell you. And it's true that it's not stupid to connect with the moment and the environment when the brain has decided to do somersaults on a flaming motocross bike in a minefield. I'll try to remember that. It's not like I've been trying for 15 years. Didn't they say it's a path, a perpetual learning, all that? Did they? So, I'm good, I'm on track.

When you don't care about anything and nothing evokes positive feelings? Even cheese, lately, makes me doubt. I've even started a list of things I like, like in "Dispatches From Elsewhere." On Jason Segel's list, with just "Spooky" and "Surprise," the guy made a series. Mine is filled with vague things like "writing stories," "writing my feelings," I even wonder if I wrote "cheese." What do I do with that, then? Well, yes, I know.

The first step in Wikihow to feel enthusiasm is to find out who you are... Big piece! How can you know who you are when you don't like anything? And there you go, you're just going around in circles. What we all do, more or less consciously. Less conscious: happy people, people who go to the supermarket with their families, people who think they know others just by seeing them (aka my mom). More conscious: depressed people, people who only go out for a pack of beer and the bigger cheese in the supermarket (aka me).

In fact, I recently wondered if the real me, the less natural one, is the one that bugs or the one that compensates. In other words, the one who is sensitive to everything and scared of everyone, or the one who puts on masks to greet people in a cool way. Because honestly, I kind of want to be cool when I get the chance. Maybe not everything is lost.

Step two: find out why you no longer feel enthusiasm. Is it depression? Lollllll. I'm coming out of it, man, leave me alone. Look, I'm doing fine.

Step three: have positive thoughts. Damn. It's August and it's raining outside. I'm broke, and they're going to take away my social assistance soon. I have no friends. No enthusiasm... Okay, okay. Next. Something I know I can achieve? Another round of Dragon Age? Yeah, that's definitely going to lead me to happiness.

Setting goals... But I don't have any goals! I just want to appear normal, you know. So, wear the mask. I should have been Japanese; that double life valued by society would have suited me perfectly. 

The only thing that makes me feel even remotely enthusiastic is imagining starting my life over somewhere else, in a freshly decorated house, with a freshly adopted puppy and kitten, fresh bike rides, a super fresh baker, etc. And believing that this time everything will be fine, and I'll be Amélie Poulain. I'd put all my weirdness into practice, but in a cool and not at all creepy way. There might even be people who throw themselves at my feet to be my friends and tolerate my sort of poorly managed autism. Except they'll never do it without letting me know they're coming, of course, because otherwise, I won't open the door.

In short, I want to recreate myself. Sorry, to re-re-re-re(...)create myself.