You Can Be Anything You Want

I ordered everything on the internet. Toilet paper, instant noodles, juul pods, microwaved food, soylent, Telehealth prescribed drugs, plastic cups, toys.

One day, I tore open some boxes and then I laid down. Another day, I pressed my shoulder blades against the wood as my eyes grazed the ceiling. I had red eyes and a stiff neck, lumbago and a popcorn ceiling. “Popcorn” sounded buttery, delicious, but the ceiling looked like the kind of swelling yellow mold that grows on a three-week-old, closed pot of broth.

My things were everywhere, melting into each other like how all the colors together can produce one horrible brown. There was nowhere to look away. I found a tiny clean spot on the floor amidst the sprawling landmines where I sat and watched my monitor as it auto played the last two episodes of the anime adaption of Hyperdimension Neptunia, a video game about the video game industry. I fell asleep quickly on a pile of clothes that my mother had washed and folded weeks ago. The PC slept too.

Some days later, my juul broke. I pulled on it between my lips and I was suddenly quite thirsty. I wanted food as well. I folded into my hunger and thought of cold rice. The dry air fogged my throat, swelled my tonsils. My stomach rumbled. Then I fell asleep thinking of my strange medical condition that made me sedentary and homebound and alone. I sunk into my cluttered mind and empty stomach.

My hunger bred a weird dream. I was lying on cold asphalt. The cold felt good and fresh. The sky was as black as the inside of my eyelids – no stars, no moon. In staccato frames, the way dreams often develop: a cat jumps ＾ዋ⋏ዋ＾, eyerolls (◔_◔), my head hurts, my room is clean, cat jumping, eyes rolling so hard, head hurts, running away from something, stress 0______O, hunger, my mother’s feet at the door, my computer, my reflection, a hamburger, a steak. I had never had a steak but there was a scene in the Attack on Titan Junior High spinoff in which the main character has a Cheese Hamburger Steak for lunch that is stolen and eaten by a Colossal Titan monster. I was so hungry; I wanted to bite into something big and tear it apart with my teeth. I was on edge ­­– the edge of a cliff from which I looked down to see a whole world of animals to hunt, a dinner spread for three.

I lived in a basement that was equipped with a kitchenette and a bathroom underneath my dying grandfather’s home, one block from my mother. My grandfather had been dying since I was three. I was long under the impression that death would never come soon enough to either of our pathetic, stationary lives. For a while, my mother would come every day to my door, with fresh meals and a will to save me. We would talk, and she would quietly suggest that I get help while she’d try to rearrange my things. She was shy like me, a bit of a hoarder, and lonely, with no more than two friends. She worked as a paralegal and would diligently transfer money to my bank account once a month. Sometimes, I resented her for financing my rotten life. I wished she had raised her voice when I was a child to fill the quiet between us, or that she at least had another child who could make her proud. She was the only reason I was still alive, and I felt, whenever she went, I would go too. Eventually my craven obstinance to do nothing made it painful for her to keep up with daily visits, so she decided she’d only come twice a week.

Some months had passed until I dreamed again. There was a giant sequoia. Up and up 𓆱𓍊𓋼𓍊𓋼𓍊 I climbed and climbed. I decorated the tree with flowers. I am a PhD student. ദ്ദി(⎚_⎚) I am a research assistant. I live on campus at a big university with three strangers who slowly become my friends. We share the rent and clean together. A sea of corpses. Under the sun. My computer screen hurts my eyes so badly (𓁹 𓁹) Chasing comfort has brought me pain.

I went outside for my birthday. My mother had ordered a gift that was quite heavy, so I had to help her lift it from her house to mine. It took about twenty minutes; inside the box were dumbbells. She had also prepared a steak for me, but I was ill from the physical strain and too nauseous to eat it. It sat in front of me, cold, while I stared at the Internet Archive.

By then, I stopped playing video games. I stopped listening to music. I was burnt out by my own life. Complete anhedonia. I often laid awake while the morning birds sang, wondering about my own cognitive decline. After many years of isolation, my short-term memory suffered. My speech was interrupted with long unnatural pauses. Time moved much slower when I stepped outside. The dentist office induced severe migraines. Answering questions was painful. Looking at others was shameful. Once, the dental hygienist pulled her mask down to reveal her pretty face, and I watched her nose wrinkle, her face turned away from my body odor.

I used to slip into the fantastical world of whatever shoujo anime I was watching. I’d imagine wearing a uniform and playing on a sports team. I’d imagine the suave boy in school choosing to pry me away from my shyness. I’d fantasize about severe blushing, forgiveness between friends, the courage to face my life-affirming destiny. I used to believe that if the world magically stopped sucking, I would clean up the rust and return to society. The fantasies slowly faded. Eventually, the unchanging world stopped sucking, but only because the rust inside my bedroom became an unbearable lethargy.

I was jealous of what was outside the small window in the bathroom. I was jealous of those things that easily came to others. I was jealous of my dying grandfather who was forced to live this life, while I chose it. I was jealous every time I searched ‘executive function’. I was jealous of those neighbors that silently mocked me. What a waste. I once writhed at the thought of a life filled with responsibilities and obligations, so I turned myself into waste. My mother’s sad subservient life caring for my grandfather and I suddenly seemed envious. At least she wasn’t me. I could feel her walk on eggshells near me, with pity and disgust. In any case, there was barely anywhere to walk.

I started exercising to enforce some kind of contrast between day and night. I watched videos of how to lift the dumbbells, then created a section of my room to follow along the motions. Lift in the morning. Pushups before bed. I soon added 15-minute Pilates and standing on the porch for 30 minutes a day to my routine. I ate a few meals with my mother upstairs, though I dreaded it. It was as though my body craved things it did not know how to enjoy anymore. I started taking long walks to improve my blood flow, so that I could sleep end to end, and perhaps dream again. I watched my mothers’ eyes soften; she believed in me after all these years. Oh, how I wish I could believe in anything :P.

My mother left printed out webpages of jobs for me to consider in a folder outside my door, as if I couldn’t have found them on my own,in one fell swoop with a google search: “jobs for the unemployable”,. I wondered if there was really anything out there. The things I longed for might not even exist. Is it possible that existence is our exile and nothingness our home? Nothing seemed more tempting to me than an ordinary life, friendship, responsibility, but even then, I would be wanting. And an ordinary life seemed impossible to achieve. Socially underdeveloped. Sexless. Ugly. Incapable of finding meaning. Fresh air was morbid against the raw skin on my cheeks. Conversation with strangers was a migraine. The only thing that enchanted me after my long walks was the relief of returning home where I was not watched or judged. Mount Lu in misty rain. The river Jiang at high tide. When you have not been there, your heart is filled with longing. But when you have been there and come back, it was nothing special

Mount Lu in misty rain The river Jiang at high tide.

I continued exercising, with an ambivalence to its obvious improvements on my health. I was only motivated by my mother’s softness, who I sensed was getting old. My sleep worsened as I lay awake wondering if I was prepared to die a lonely death. After my mother’s death, will I starve? Will I be moved enough to commit suicide? Or will it be a slow, painful nightmare? Eviction? Homelessness? I finally slept one night after a walk in the dark. A coat made of wedding veils. Unpaid bills ꒰ა $ ໒꒱. Maggots waltzing. Sound is illegal and I cannot scream. Polite maggots waltzing @_'-'. My organs become exhibits for the enterprising maggots who are now conducting seances under my breath ×͜××͜××͜××͜××͜××͜××͜×. I am nothing but a spine, a spineless coward turned into a feast for death eaters. My mother asks for directions to the nearest funeral 𓇢𓆸 . I am in front of my computer again. My eyes are red. Maggots waltzing. Good morning ૮(˶╥︿╥)ა.

My mother woke me up early in the morning to inform me that my grandfather had passed away in his sleep and that she was selling his house. She spoke with urgency and coldness, as if she was half-expecting this nightmarish, codependent life we shared to evaporate along with my grandfather. And half-certain that I would feel no desire to change.

At my grandfather’s funeral, I realized that nothing made me more suicidal than being around people and seeing how far behind I was. Later that day, some family and friends brought my mother food, while I sat quietly with her on the couch. I held a napkin with biscuits in the palm of my hand until the biscuits dampened from my sweat. The sunlight beamed through the room beautifully as my cold skin thawed. I never liked that the days were much longer in the summertime. A cousin of mine came by as it got dark, with her toddler. My mother was beaming. I felt awkward and jealous. My mother showed the toddler how to use a napkin. As they left, my cousin hugged me tightly, and I imagined how she would think of me tomorrow.

My mother left the day after the funeral to visit her hometown. I had three weeks to pack. Then I’d live with her until I ‘figured something out.’ My whole world was changing so I thought more seriously about reintegrating back into society. I decided to identify with a monk who opted out of a wretched world. The world outside of my room felt like blunt trauma or propaganda. I wasn’t crazy. It was a bad, bad world. I whispered a thank you to my mother for letting me live this way. Then I looked around. Then I felt angry that she’d sell the only thing I had. Then I gave up packing. A painful cavity developed in my mouth that I was most likely going to do nothing about.

Two weeks before my mother returned and everything was supposed to change, the plumbing stopped working for the entire house. My mother’s house was locked so I began going in bags. The odor was unbearable but I had no money for a plumber. I searched online if my town subsidized hygiene and if it was legal to dump waste in the trash. Reddit suggested a litter box. I eventually dug holes in the backyard.

I ran out of funeral leftovers, and I was afraid to eat anyways. The hunger brought upon tactile hallucinations of a ghostman holding me down while I was supine. I would fight him and lunge off the bed. Everytime I slept, the ghostman would return. I decided to avoid sleeping as well.

I noticed certain things around my room had been moved, and from the corner of my eye I saw something whoosh. It was a cat. I never really caught a proper glimpse of it, but I left a bowl of water out. The days continued. I could not seem to keep up. My mother was supposed to be back. Sometimes the cat would appear from underneath my bed, too fast to see quite clearly. The nerves in my mouth were ultra sensitive after starving myself and the cavity felt like a gun in my mouth. Starvation was the worst way to die; I hoped dehydration would take me first.

I went outside to use the bathroom. I was surprised I still had the urge even after I had stopped eating. I locked myself out. There was a half-deflated beach ball snagged in the powerlines and behind it was the red sun. I turned to look at my house colored in by the light, which looked uncannily clear to me now. The shadows traced the outline so that it looked wrong, like a sitcom set after the audience’s been laid off. The yellow paint blistered in patterns that suggested Morse code or fungal theory. The dented aluminum awning occasionally flapped in the breeze. Asbestos. A rogue lawn overrun with mutant crabgrass. The front door - my grandfather’s front door - bore the weathered “NO SOLICITING (EVEN FOR GOD)” sign. The mailbox was open. A single leaflet for “MEDICARE FRAUD: IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU.” Everything about my house was so violently normal, it bordered on conspiratorial. I half expected to find a key under a mat that spelled “WELCOME”.

I walked away from the house, delirious and tired. I saw a cat, perhaps it was the one in my room. I followed it. It eventually disappeared, but I was too far to go back. I kept walking in the nightfall. My skin was warm. I passed a house with a garden and bent down to inspect the flowers, which smelled like nothing. I kept walking. I could not see the moon. I had left the neighborhood behind as I approached a strip mall. My dentist’s office. I never realized how close it was. My life was as large as a mile. Across the dentist office was a steakhouse.

The waitress asked, “Table for one?” I nodded. I don’t remember ordering anything, but a steak appeared nonetheless. I played with my napkin for a bit, and thought of the toddler holding it between its fingers. I methodically cut the steak into eight pieces. It was completely dark outside. I sat for a while before I ate, occasionally checking if the meat was cold. I wondered how I was going to pay. There was no one else inside. The waitress had disappeared. Thank god. The comforting solitude was underpinned by a horrible anxiety that someone would walk in at any moment. I took my first bite. I chewed. I took another bite. And then I chewed it and swallowed everything. It was alright, mostly disappointing. I think I’d need to eat it again to understand it better. Before the waitress came back, I walked out, impressed with my own bravery. Maybe I was young enough to change things. I walked home, threw a rock at the bathroom window, and climbed inside. But there was really nothing worth living for.