Maybe Fiction, Maybe Dana

When you give in to the idea that not having anyone to talk to is the new normal, you find yourself in your own company, and you think up shit like this: There are times, and if I’m honest, nearly all the time, when I feel almost sure I can stretch my arms out far enough, and lean in, on the tips of my toes - and I can almost touch the end of my life. It used to feel so far away. It was this unimaginable thing, because I was young, and I was supposed to be invincible. It’s not that I wasn’t prepared for that to end, but I didn’t expect to get stuck in between. I made an orphan of myself, of I was abandoned as a lost cause. You’ll decide. I failed to become an adult. I do better and better at making it all look good, but it always feels like someone tore several chapters out of the middle of the book, and not only does it not make sense now, but it feels unsatisfying in ways that are hard to describe. I think I may have even failed at being a child. It always felt that way. Somet...

I’ve received a lot of advice, from a lot of people I respect, and even more strangers, to stay here-now. Most of the people I interact with, are strangers to me. They tell me to find some way to remain in the present, and I get it. They're not wrong. When I was 16, I met my father. He told me I had ‘one foot in the future, one foot in the past, and I was pissing all over today.’ It stuck. How could a person only 16 years in this world be stuck in the past and unable to attach to this moment? 18 years later, a long-lost-sister would remind me to come back to Earth, and in that moment I feel like it saved our future. I want to believe that, anyway. I should have been the big sister, but am so grateful for her emotional maturity. So day-to-day, they are all totally right. It’s important to recognize when you have totally left Earth, to Space-travel between your future and your past, in a manic and nauseating, nightmare! But when that becomes impossible, one must return to the past...

History can creep up on you, even when you’ve been outside it’s door, knocking, and carrying on like a child, for years. Tonight, as I consider the bitterness of this beer, I find it a match for my mood. I’m indulging in my favorite feelings indulging playlist too. I have too much in my mind and no one to tell it to. Who are you supposed to talk to? I’ve always been such an alien. For so long I identified myself by the young person I was, trying to find footing in the world, without parental guidance. I remember being 14, and something shifted. I was kind of on track to be a completely mediocre semi-proffessional singer (as far as I was concerned), when something just kind of changed. A lot of people told me I had talent, and plans were being made. I knew it wasn’t true. There was something they were hoping to develop me into. Lots of parents were doing it. I met their kids. Some of them had talent. Once I saw it, and knew I wasn’t good enough, I was in familiar territory. D...