Self-evidence

Self wakes up not wanting to be a self. And yet self dresses self’s self, though self remains unamused. Self walks outside and gets breakfast. No, self considers walking outside and getting breakfast but ultimately declines this request, preferring a meal of microwaveable oatmeal. The milk boils and when the oatmeal has been prepared, self places cherries on top of it.

The ways in which self has been inhabiting self’s thoughts as of recent is different than it has been in the past. For while self knows that self is given to bouts of paranoia, rumination, and hysteria, ultimately self could trust itself to identify the locus of self as a self. But now, no longer. Ultimately, self thinks as self’s self finishes self’s oatmeal, that this is due to the prolonged and ultimately unhealthy and damaging situations self places self’s self in. Self does understand self’s self to be a particular person. With some habits others might describe as peculiar. For instance many people have noticed self’s relationship to chaos and change: that self deems one as necessary, and the other as violent and upending whatever small fortress self has built in self’s life.

Self is tired of self’s self. Self wishes to fire itself from the hard work of caring for a body. For caring for others. For self has responsibilities. Such as taking care of a family that is physically so far away but figuratively lives inside self’s apartment in the walls of self’s room. Even in the abstract, things do not become easier. Self’s grandmother crops up unannounced to tell self that she is dying. “Help me,” she says, as piss drips through her pants and onto the hardwood floors of self’s room. “You aren’t helping enough.”

Self has in the past met this image with panic and guilt. But now self feels a distant kind of forgiveness that is intermixed with futility. As the other day self went to the Japanese embassy to apply for insurance given to atomic bomb survivors, of which self’s grandmother is apart of. Before going into the consulate, self stopped into a nearby grocery store. It was overpriced, with a box of cookies being sold for $48. Rows of even more colorful and overpriced merchandise continued for miles down the store. Even now it seemed like rhetoric, like repetition — knowing that self must perform one’s filial duties and also the customs of one’s culture, and thus self settled on buying the most inexpensive box of chocolates that self could locate. $16 for a small plastic box of chocolate petities with a purple ribbon on top.

Self reaches the building. It is hot and the feeling of doom is very palpable, radiating from the suits and white veneers of those who live in Midtown and yet step around puddles of piss and shit like all the other bottom feeders of the city, those who make no money, of which self is also included.

Last month, self had accompanied self’s friend to a literary event. It was a different kind of event than self would have normally gone to, where self’s friends or self would read at. At those events, everyone felt like a person rather than an avatar, human beings who read work that was interesting in its investigation of reality and emotion. People who were obviously undergoing mental health crises of some kind or another, and did or did not have glasses, lived with 2-3 roommates, had sex. But at the particular event that self’s friend had brought self to, the people seemed somehow very asexual, despite at least five or so women being pregnant. Their faces were all pink, like salmon lox, and gleaming with sweat. Self and self’s friend had been two of the three nonwhite people at the event — the other being one of the readers for that evening — and the only two Asians, until later when one of the servers had come out from the back. The server was pregnant, too.

Two is a coincidence, three is a pattern, but what this pattern was, self could not say. The point being that at the event, self could look around and see money signs hovering above everyone’s heads, signaling their worth, and now in Midtown the feeling was the same.

In the building, self travels up to the 16th floor. Looking at self’s reflection in the elevator self remembers that self is not unattractive and even maybe desirable. This is a different feeling than how self has felt for the past 12 months, in which self began to view self’s self as something less than human.

When the elevator doors open self walks into the room. A man in a slim suit comes out to greet self. He is attractive in a way that is not often attractive to self, which could be due, among other things, to the recent hurtful messages exchanged between self and self’s aforementioned ex-lover, who before this, was self’s best friend. Their relationship was one charged by desire and friction, and also great rifts of miscommunication, constipation, and explosion, as if both had descended into a shared irritable bowel syndrome in which each played a part in dysregulating the other. There had also been the mid-winter abortion during which time self and self’s ex-lover had spent a week in self’s room as self dispensed many ounces of blood that self’s ex-lover had dutifully disposed of. Together, they had dreamt of a life in which they could co-regulate and be happy. But this could no longer be. In time perhaps they would connect again, but for now self must close self’s self off to the operating room of love. No surgical procedure or biopsy could mend the truth, the truth being that time was reliable in its nonpromises.

Back at the Japanese consulate, the semi-attractive man guides self into a room, where they go through the documents that self has brought for the appointment. It was an arduous process to collect these documents — passports and testimonies and records of who in the family had died from the atomic bomb, and when, and how — involving the help of self’s own mentally unwell mother. Self had learned just three days ago that self’s mother had suffered from two strokes and that her memory was rapidly declining. These aspects are left unsaid. In speaking Japanese to the man, self feels as if self’s tongue is slipping out of network with self’s psyche. Words shift and rearrange themselves in the order of self’s mind, interspersed with thoughts of self’s ex-lover, and self’s family, and self’s self, for whom self once more feels resentful toward for surviving. For even if self avoids the feeling of anxiety and doom, they continue to crop back up in self’s feelings. And dreams. In these dreams, people are angry at self in these dreams for some failure, real or not, and most often projections of the self superimposed onto loved ones’ faces. And just as in the real world self takes culpability for this. It is easier to point self’s finger at self’s self rather than at others whom self loves.

As the man leaves the room to make copies of the documents, self opens up the book self bought last month. I Who Have Never Known Men. In the book, the narrator is left alone in an arid world as their companions continue to die, one by one, after they leave the prison in which they have been confined for 13 years. But soon, the women realize that the seasons and landscape do not change, and there are no cities, no signs of life. Just more bunkers full of the dead, and no answers as to why any of them were there. The narrator, unlike the other women, has no memories of a life lived outside of the prison, for she was born inside of it, rather than being transported. Thus she learns how to survive, completely alone, surviving off of the rations she finds in the rest of the bunkers for another 13 years.

This room feels similarly, and though self knows that the man will return within the next hour or maybe less, he will not make self feel any less alone in this world. Self closes the book, and stares at the wall most intently, so as to witness self’s own thoughts.

Last evening, self saw a man pulling himself across the pavement in 100 degree weather. Pulling might perhaps be a strong word. It was like the pavement was Lazarus and the man Jesus, scraping the sores off. Weeping as he did so. Around the man many cars were angry and loud about it. A semi truck pulled out from the intersection as self watched on. The semi truck did emit such a large horn. And many other horns sounded, stretching into the cavern of the night to reach self’s ears, even as they ran, even as static rose and screamed from self’s phone as self dialed 911. “I’m here to report a man in danger,” self said, not knowing if self was referring to the man, or self’s self, or self’s ex-lover, or all of the others wandering the earth, in search of someone who would tell them where they were.