Attaching meaning and inserting it deep within an inane thought or obtuse musing has always been a strong suit of mine. Convinced things have to mean something and lead me somewhere or to someone – that things happen for a reason; that nothing just happens to happen.
Immediately, that disposition is defective as I get into Jaai's car and pull the seatbelt over me a bit too quickly, jamming it in the process. Some menial acts just have no rhyme or reason. There is always a reminder of this around the corner. Although my peripheral vision is 20-20, my mind’s eye is severely impaired.
By the time we reach Phillip Island, it is dark, and we’re scared. The Airbnb looks and feels like the Idaho house where all those students were murdered just a couple of years back. My friends hate that I keep bringing it up. I don’t get it.
Out on the balcony facing the ocean, there is a darkness akin to blindness; a silence so piercing, in the face of which my existence echoes a screech. Sedation is how I’ve kept myself alive for the past couple of years. To slowly kill myself is to subscribe to a longer sentence. I light up a joint and exhale with it tension about death and destruction. When it may not be up to me to decide on my demise, I am the most alive.
At night, in the room assigned to me, the closest to the front door, the window of which faces the void sea, I try to put myself to sleep. My metal water bottle tips over and lands on the floor with the ricochet of a gunshot. I drift off paralysed in fear.
When we wake the next morning, the house has come alive. Light pours in like the first cocktail served on a Friday night. I prop my phone up and film myself getting ready. I always feel pretty in a sleeveless top. The extent of scandalousness I allow my body to exhibit. I don’t look back over the footage.
At the beach, which was death dimension just last night, waves crash over rocks, forming small pools in gaps. I had this illustrated encyclopedia as a kid that kept me occupied for hours. The detailed depiction of life coexisting in small pods gave me joy and stimulation – something I was hoping to resurrect.
As we inched closer, peered deeper into each pool, we saw right through to the bottom – sand and sediment. Empty shells, many broken – empty homes, a ghost town. I chalk it up to being the wrong time of year to visit. That the creatures are simply elsewhere. It’s not until a week or so later that a video pops up on my FYP talking about how many beachgoers have noticed the same thing around the world. I wonder if death dimension wasn't the perception of darkness on the horizon; rather, the darkness lingered and blinded me in the face of Earth’s grief over lost love and creation.
The 8th of August this year was said to be the day for manifestation. Something about the Lion's Gate Portal and how powerful it was in the face of what the number eight represented. I saged the house; I prayed hard, over and over, for many things. Selfish things which I can’t say I regret asking for but which worry me, for I didn’t ask for something for the Earth. I could've wished for life to return in places where cruel humanity had eroded it. For the pools to look the way they did in my encyclopedia.
I don’t know if things have been happening because of the manifestation, or if they’re just happening because they always do. Do I attribute my recent successes to deep yearning on a certain day, or do I take credit for setting myself up to succeed?
Whatever it may be, the answer doesn’t lie in how easily these things come to me – because they don't. They’re served in thin-stemmed coupes rimmed with devastation and torture, the taste of which either comes first or lingers long after the liquid has been devoured.
I’ve been on my phone a lot more lately. I find it embarrassing, and it’s something I used to get angry at Nick about. But everything I see leads me elsewhere – to a promise I made, to a place I was, to a feeling I endured. I got back on Tinder recently; I’m in a relationship which allows me to be who I truly am – unsure and always wanting more. Unsure I deserve love, wanting consolation that I am beautiful to those who aren't in love with me.
I match with someone I once knew but had cut all contact with. I match with someone I never knew but had seen online a few years back. Nothing really goes anywhere, but every time I open the app, it says you received 61 likes. You received 35 likes. You’ve received the approval of strangers; you've caught their attention enough for them to swipe – not even right, but up!! That "dtf?" text from the ugliest guy with the worst seeming hygiene on the planet attests to something, right?
When Nick asks me how it's going on there, I respond truthfully that it's all boring and nothing much ever happens on these apps. "I bet you already have that 99+ like button at the bottom though," he responds. He's right, and it does feel a little good.
Two weeks or so after our Phillip Island gals trip, I load up my TikTok drafts and finally watch the video of myself getting ready. It dawns on me that the Tinder likes may have been pouring in because of my strategically chosen pictures rather than the reality or actuality of me. I haven't edited anything, just picked my faves and maybe turned up the saturation on a few of them; but perhaps my selfish manifestations led me from getting invited to dine at places free of charge – as a writer – every week in hopes I’d enjoy their service enough to feature them in an article, to becoming too intoxicated, drinking on the dime of success, and forgetting that nothing ever comes for free.
Whilst Bella Fiori's new video on the Staudte family murders plays on the TV in the background, I edit the 5-minute-long video down to around 40 seconds. Four minutes and 20 seconds of fat and chub and gluttony I try to hide. Angles from the side where my nostrils look so big I finally look into getting that deviated septum surgery I've put off for years. I think about how carefree I seem of all my losses in the video. How much I am like the empty pools; how they reflect my conscience – shallow and absent.
I get mad at Nick for telling me over and over, for years now, that I’m beautiful. He doesn’t deter his stance. I feel guilty for the way I act. I feel grateful for the love I have. I wonder what I did to deserve both. If one is reparation for the other. If I deserve one, maybe it’s because I insist on the other. I upload the video in its fractioned form. It sits at 12 likes.