Yoncalla,Oregon.

I started telling a story and accidentally stumbled on to a likely truth. You see there’s a character in a game I’m playing right now called THE PALEDRIVER, it’s too much to explain the pale and its implications but basically, you spend enough time in the pale and you take severe damage to the mind. Your own memories are wiped clean and seemingly replaced with disembodied memories from many pasts from many lives. It was interesting listening to them talk because well, it sounded like so much of my own experience.

I went to crack a joke about how I’m already pale poisoned because of the life I’ve lived, starting with a recounting of how I’ve had malaria a few times and how spending so much of my childhood feverish must have absolutely cooked my brain.

It was a joke.

But sometimes, you hear something and are struck by the inherency of the truth that resounds from it. on top of all the trauma and deeply surreal unique circumstances. yeah, I spent a lot of my childhood deathly ill and I never thought of it that way.

It’s bad on its own but what makes it a bit awful for me is that, it’s just a matter of sheer circumstance. ALL the good and bad in my life, a series of coincidences. It’s just because I was born where I was that I had to experience such extreme things.

Often I mourn what sort of person I could have been had things gone more… seemingly right. It’s a useless exercise because there are just as many scenarios in which my life would be worse off rather, I know that but just…

Like guys Malaria is incredibly horrible, if you had covid, multiply that by 15! No exaggeration.

Anyway, I guess I did fine all things considered.

That game is really cooking whatever is left of my already, it’s bringing up so many memories.

I was ready to declare the other day that I was completely over my ex and ready to move on and then a section of the game where you simply take a walk with a woman made me dry heave and shudder as I ugly cried in front of the camera.

It was the story of our first date, how they asked to see my tattoo and I absentmindedly pinched to zoom on my skin. AS IF THAT SPOT ON MY ARM WAS A PHONE SCREEN!

Imagine that! I laughed a bit, and then covered my face and wretched for a few minutes.

You think you’ve made it over the mountain and then you’re right back at the base.

At the very least, the sun is always on my side.

post script.

I went to open up tiktok but it was no where to be found on my phone. I had just uploaded a video I know that for a fact. I was just scrolling on it mindlessly thirty minutes ago that’s also a fact, but it’s nowhere to be seen. I must have deleted the app but try as I may I have truly no memory of doing so.

In college I got into a fight after breaking up a party. Apparently I was screaming and saying some awful things, were I not caught on video I wouldn’t believe the story because again, I have almost entirely no recollection of that event.

So many memories, false or erased, I can’t be sure of my footing in any reality.