My Tether to Reality

(Story contains allusions to mental health issues, substance abuse, and suicide, though none are explicit)

Now that I’ve realized I don’t exist, I see the signs everywhere.

The barista at the Dancing Goat cafe forgets my order two seconds after taking it. I waited for like ten minutes today before speaking up, because surely this time he would remember. No, it took three reminders before I got my coffee.

I keep running into dog walkers, because the dog and the walker pass on either side of me, and I get caught up in the leash.

My computer never keeps me signed into anything, and it never saves my passwords, even when I ask it to. I have to sign in manually. Every. Single. Time.

During my lunch break today, I actually had a seagull land on my lap and started eating my sandwich right out of my hands (Maybe that one’s not abnormal for seagulls, I dunno). I brushed it off angrily, of course, but it gave me this look, like it was surprised I’d reacted. Or maybe just surprised that I was there.

Individually, these are all meaningless occurrences. But it’s happening constantly. These are just examples, and only the minor ones.

Yesterday I think I got hit by a car,

I saw it too late. Barreling through the intersection, straight through a red, just as I crossed.

Coming right at me!

No time to react!

I screa—

And then it was past me. I gasped. My heart was thumping. I spun around and watched, dumfounded, as it streaked out of sight. Hurriedly I patted myself down. I felt…solid. Whole. Unharmed.

I heard one nearby driver give a half-hearted honk as they streaked past, but beyond that… nothing. No reaction. No one running to see if I’d been sideswiped, or anything. No one cared to notice.

Did I dodge at the last second? Had I misjudged how close it was to hitting me. Did the car pass through me?

I honestly don’t know.

But the signs are everywhere.

They call it the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Named after… a terrorist organization, for some reason. Once you know something, you begin to see it all the time. You didn't see it before, but now it’s everywhere. It’s a kind of cognitive bias, so it may not be objectively true. Then again, I don’t think I’m objectively real, so…

They don’t have a name for my condition. I called it ‘Cosmic Dissonance’ at first, back when I first noticed it. I thought it was kind of cool. It doesn’t feel so cool these days.

When did I come to this conclusion, that I’m not real? Can’t really say. Maybe one too many times getting hit on the head by a swinging door I was sure someone was holding for me. Maybe it was that fender bender I got into last week where the other guy just…didn’t stop.

I considered the “I’m in the Matrix” theory. It didn’t quite fit. Then I hit upon it. It’s not the universe that’s fake.

It’s me.

And it may just be this Baader-Meinhof cognitive bias at work, but… I feel like it’s getting worse. I feel less and less like I belong in this reality. More and more like an intruder. An imposter.

Did I used to exist? Did I replace someone? Who was it? Am I slowly losing my—

“Babe, what’s wrong?”

I jumped, startled. Rachel is standing under the archway in the kitchen, looking concerned.

I cleared my throat. “Uh, nothing? Why do you ask?”

She gestured vaguely at me. “You’ve murdered a bagel.”

I glanced down at my hands. Sure enough, I appear to have been wringing a jalapeño cheese bagel into pieces.

I carefully set the remains of my kill down on the coffee table nearby, then brushed myself off. Totally inconspicuous. I was now covered in bagel crumbs.

“I’m fine.” I said, forcing cheerfulness.

Rachel wasn’t buying it. “Is it the Comic Difference thing?”

Welp. Guess I’m not getting out of this conversation easily. I sighed. “Yeah.” I refrained from correcting her.

She sat down next to me. “What was it this time?”

Where do I start? “Uh, a seagull ate my lunch. Out of my hands.”

Rachel paused, then tried (and failed) to keep from snorting. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t…that is kinda funny though, right?”

I tried to laugh with her. It was hard. “Yeah, kinda funny.”

“Hey,” She took my hand and squeezed gently. “We’ll get through this. We’ll figure it out.”

I shrugged. “I mean, it’s not really affecting you. It’s not technically your problem.”

Rachel looked slightly hurt as I spoke, and I winced.

“Well… I care about your problems, so it is kind of my problem.”

Not for much longer, I thought. Then I frowned and tried to bury that line of thinking.

“C’mon, you could use a distraction.” She said, grabbing the remote. “How ‘bout an episode of one of those sci-fi shows you’re always bugging me to watch?”

That would be a welcome distraction. I nodded, and she started booking up Netflix.

. . . . .

I’ve started stealing things.

Rachel’s not pleased.

I just…no one’s stopping me. I can just pocket things and walk out the door. I did it at an Apple store, for God’s sake. Even the cameras ignore me.

I quit my job. Hated working that job anyway. No one ever noticed me, even before I started unexisting. Now I don’t need to go at all. I can just take what I need.

Rachel’s understandably upset. She’s always been very clear on her principles, very upright and (sometimes) self-righteous. She actually tried to run as an honest politician in the local government. It went… about as well as you might expect. We still laugh about it from time to time.

I understand why she’s upset. I just… don't really care. Nihilism, it’s called (It’s good to know the technical terms for my steps of my mental self-destruction. I think it helps). Why care about what’s right, when you aren’t even real?

It’s getting worse. I’m not making it up, it’s not all in my head. I can see it happening, physically. My hand passes through doorknobs when I try to grab them. In bright sunlight, my skin becomes translucent. I actually dropped a big screen TV, one of my more ambitious thefts. It just slipped through my arms. Literally. And of course, when the TV hit the ground with a loud CRASH, that attracted all the attention! Not to me, though. I just speed-walked away, and people ignored me and gawked at the shattered mess on the ground.

The evidence is undeniable. I’m fading from existence. I see no way of stopping or slowing it down. I have no clue how long I’ll endure. I'm not sure how long I want to endure.

Rachel and I had a fight about it. We fight about most things, these days. Figures that the only person still acknowledging my existence is always mad at me. But then again, that’s my fault, too.

I grew too close to her. We became emotionally attached.

Now she’s feeling betrayed, because I’m abandoning her.

I’d be mad, too.

Why did I have to—

The man in front of me cleared his throat. “I don't mean ta be rude, but… can ah have the money?”

I blinked. The homeless man in front of me stood patiently with his hands folded in front of him.

“Right…Yes, sorry.” I fumbled. “Here you go.”

I handed him the $50 bill, which he took with measured restraint.

I sighed. Despite my recent turn to crime, I know in my heart that I’m not an evil person. The first time I stole was from a gas station grocer, and I felt guilty enough to come back with money to pay for it (Of course, they’d entirely missed the theft and thought I was just giving a friendly donation).

Since then, I’ve only stolen from supermarkets, big businesses. The kind of places that can afford it, y’know? And since I don’t need that much stuff, I’ve been giving a lot of it away. The homeless people around the city probably have much more need of cash than I do.

I feel a strange kinship to them now, though I’d be uncomfortable admitting it aloud. They’re also unseen, overlooked by society, surviving apart from a system that doesn’t support them. What little support I could offer them, I wanted to give.

I only wish I’d seen things this way before it became my problem.

The man took the bill and nodded graciously. “Thank’e, kindly.” He turned to leave.

I hesitated, then spoke up. “What keeps you going?”

The man turned back. “Beg pardon?”

I flushed, immediately regretting my intrusive question, but I pressed on. “Life is… rough. What keeps you going?”

The man pondered for a second. “Well, the drugs are pretty sweet.”

I sighed internally. Not sure what kind of life advice I was expecting from a homeless person. Oh well.

“Ok. Well, take care then.” I turned to leave.

“An’ of course, there’s my daughter.”

I turned back. “You have a daughter?”

The man’s eyes lit up. “Yeah! Beautiful thing, she is.” He pulled out a wallet, dug for a second, and produced an old polaroid photo of a young girl, maybe seven years old.”

“Oh.” I said, not sure how else to respond.

“Yeah, she’s all grown now. Has a family an’ everything. Don’t get to see ‘em, but I sure am proud to have ‘er.”

I glanced up. “You don’t see her much these days?”

“Oh, no, she hates me.” He said, grinning toothily. “I was an awful father, must be said. Left home shortly after that picture was taken.”

He said it so candidly. “I…see.”

He nodded. “Yeah, don’t have much to show for myself, an’ even the one good thing in my life I screwed up real well, but…well, I’m still proud of her. She’s my one gift ta the world.”

I wasn’t sure his daughter saw things the same way, but I had the good grace to keep that thought to myself as I bid him good day and went on my way, lost in thought.

. . . . .

I’ve been lingering for nearly a month. I thought for sure I’d be gone by last week. But I’m still here.

I’d taken the homeless man’s advice and tried some drugs. Just some light stuff, weed to start. It was fun for about a week. Then they just stopped working. My body is so far gone that it’s no longer affected. I can’t get drunk or high. So, there’s no escape for me.

Everyone’s left me. My friends, my colleagues, my parents. None of them get my calls. None of them reach out to me. I suppose it’s for the better that they just forget me. Better to forget than to mourn.

I’m beginning to forget their faces, even. Will I forget my own—

The sound of shattering glass caught my attention.

I froze, listening. It came from downstairs, from the kitchen. No one else was in the house but me.

No one was supposed to be here.

Was this a home invasion? Absurdly, I found myself laughing at the notion. Had it really come to this? I was so out of sync that my house was being robbed out from underneath me? I giggled, sounding somewhat unhinged even to my own ears, as I grabbed the nearest heavy object (An old bowling pin I’d gotten at a birthday party once), and started heading downstairs.

“Who’s there?” I called out, voice high. “Come out with your eyes open!”

I have no idea what I meant by that. I thought it sounded oddly profound. It probably just sounded dumb.

In the kitchen I found… Rachel.

I stopped in my tracks. “Rachel? What…”

She looked up at me, eyes hollow. Shards of colored glass lay scattered around her on the kitchen tile, spread out like a mosaic. With horror, I realized that it was the remains of one of my antique vases, that I’d collected years ago. I stared at Rachel in shock, trying to process the situation.

“Rachel, what happened? Are you hurt?” I asked.

Rachel gazed at me levelly. “Did I get your attention?”

I stared at her. “What? Yes. Did you just break one of my vases to get my attention?”

“Well, shouting your name wasn’t working! Slamming my fist into your door wasn’t working!”

“When did you do that?”

“I've been calling you for the past fifteen minutes!”

I hesitated, stunned. Had I been that out of it.

A lingering silence stretched between us. Eventually, Rachel spoke.

“Stop pushing me away.”

I frowned. “I’m not push—”

“Yes, you are!” She snapped. I stepped back, surprised at her forcefulness.

“You lock yourself in your room and don't return my calls! Why? So you can just disappear without me knowing? You don’t get to do that!”

I glared at her. “I have the right to priv—”

“No, you don’t have the right! You don’t have the right to abandon me without saying goodbye! You don’t have the right to give up. Not before I do.” She shouted.

A pause followed.

“Why won’t you give up on me?” I asked quietly. Bluntly.

Rachel looked taken aback. “Because I care about you.”

I looked down. “Well, you should stop caring. It’ll hurt less.”

Rachel’s eyes widened. “You can’t mean—”

“There’s no hope for me anymore, Rachel.”

“Don’t say tha—”

“There’s no hope!” I snapped back at her. “I’m going to melt away like morning mist on a summer day, and there’s nothing we can do about it, so just let it be. Let me go.”

“Just because you’ve lost hope doesn’t mean that I’m going to—”

“What’s my name?” I demanded.

Rachel hesitated.

“When’s my birthday? When did we meet? How long have we known each other?”

She shook her head, tears in her eyes.

“Do you remember anything about me?” I practically shouted.

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know. I don’t—” She choked back a sob. “I can’t remember. I don’t know why I can’t remember, or why this is happening to you…”

I turned away. “It doesn’t matter.”

“YES it does!” She insisted, stepping forward.

I heard a sickening crunch and a soft moan. I spun back to her. Rachel was walking forward, stepping on the shattered glass shards.

“Rachel, no! Stop!” I shouted, moving towards her. She stepped on another shard and winced. She tried once more, then her legs gave way beneath her. I tried to catch her, but she fell through my arms to her knees, clutching them and shaking slightly. A tiny trail of blood began to pool behind her.

I hurriedly rushed for the first aid kit in the kitchen. Thank God, I could still pick it up. I ran back, gently pulled her out of the circle of glass, and inspected her wounds. They looked like minor cuts, clean, no glass splinters lodged in there as far as I could tell. I applied the hydrogen peroxide (we’re still using this stuff?) and the bandages. Then we sat in silence. I didn’t know what to do, so I just held her, gently rocking.

“It matters.” She whispered. “I don’t…I don’t know you anymore, and I don’t know why. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t matter to me.” She sat up and looked me in the eye. “I don’t care what’s happening to you. I don’t care if the universe says you don’t exist. I still care.”

I tried to respond, but she held her hand up. “I-I need you to hear this. There may be nothing I can do to help you. But if you were to disappear right at this very moment, and if I were to…to forget you?” She took a deep breath. “I would still care.”

A stared at her, stared deeply into her eyes. Her words didn’t change anything. I might still just cease to exist tomorrow.

But…if I believed her…then knowing that someone would still care… it helped.

Wordlessly, I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight.

She held me back.

I truly hope she did.