Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

I’ve got it all figured out. We’re a parasite. Other animals on this planet coexist with nature. We don’t; we’re like scabies. Tiny mites covering the outer layer of earth, burrowing into it, infecting it. We are like tapeworm

I felt like I was never in the moment I was in. I was always looking back, or
worried about the future

Impostor syndrome is a psychological pattern in which individuals doubt themselves and have a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a fraud.

. I don’t really owe anyone anything. I am an animal, brought into existence without my consent, left scrounging to get by. I have my own problems.

I haven’t heard from you in ages!

That is because she is dead.

How are you?

Dead.

What’s new?

Nothing is new with Grace, or ever will be again.

I haven’t heard from you in ages!

That is because she is dead.

How are you?

Dead.

What’s new?

Nothing is new with Grace, or ever will be again.

“Thank you,” I say to the cashier as I leave the store poorer.
I wish that I hadn’t lost my job at the bookstore. I knew that if I did not go to work I would be fired, but I still didn’t go. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’ve been exhausted. I don’t have the motivation to wake up in the morning, let alone the drive to go to a bookstore and interact with people.

“It’s horrible,” my dad interrupted me.
My mom cut in. “It’s a horrible, good painting. You’re so talented, Eli. We just wish you had painted something less morbid—”
“All of your teachers are seeing this,” my dad remarked, exasperated. “They’re going to think you have a screw loose. You are embarrassing us. I’m disappointed in you.”

Sometimes I wonder if I have really been the same person my whole life. I stare at the picture, and think: Is that really me? I have this bizarre feeling like I was a different person at every other stage of my life. I feel so removed from myself then. Sometimes I feel like I was a different person a month ago. A day. Five minutes. Now.

The doors to the emergency room open automatically when I stand in front of them, confirming that I exist physically. This is a comforting affirmation.