[ WP ] `` I 'm sorry , but you do n't exist . ''

So I get off work and it's just been one of those days. One of those days where the monotony really eats at you, it eats away at your very core. Where your concentration is at the attention to some outside will, some distinct presence other than your own, prompting you to look at things. Things like: `` what the fuck are you even doing?''. Perhaps `` things'' is the wrong word. 
 
 I'm walking to my car with my coworker and we're exchanging small talk. I honestly ca n't even pinpoint what we're even talking about. My body and my voice are on autopilot and my mind is off somewhere else. We're not talking about anything too complicated I do n't think. Something like how lame work was, or complaining about management. Regardless, I'm responding correctly at least. In time this memory will be pushed from my mind to make space for something else, as I'm sure it will be for her. This whole moment in time is absolutely insignificant. This conversation might as well never happened. As we get to the parking garage I feel a strange sensation, as if I'm in a place completely separate right now, but I'm just occupying this space. 
 
 What's going on? 
 
 After I get out of the elevator, step into the parking garage and start heading to my car I can feel my body return to a more natural state and I can just be quiet for awhile. My face relaxes and I can drop the smile. I think that whole `` you use less muscles to smile'' is just optimist propaganda used to get us to just grin and bear it. I'm still lost in my thoughts though, jumping from one to another, not bothering to make and connections as I go through them all. It feels a lot like shuffling songs until you can find just the one you were looking for. I feel that strange sensation again. On what I know is a particularly warm summer night, my body does n't recognize the temperature. The sounds of the people outside going to movies, grabbing dinner, going on dates; it all registers as distant and `` other'' to me. As my thoughts grow more disconnected, the more disconnected I begin to feel with world around me. 
 
 I look out over the railing of the parking garage and watch all the people going by. They're all leading such completely separate lives. It's like we're living in different world, yet occupying the same space in time. We all share more insignificant memories and, again, they are pushed to the side. As I get into my car and start heading towards the highway these thoughts get more powerful... more persistent. How much of my life has been spent in traffic listening to music or doing other frivolous things? These things happened, I'm experiencing them now. They are bright and vivid in my mind, but in a day or two they will disappear and all that will be left is an light impression. 
 
 Looks like my thoughts are leading me down to a place of skepticism and doubt. Wonderful. It's not as though I can control where I'm going now. Not when I get like this. I feel like I get caught up in a wave, and I'm being dragged away by the a current. It's far less stressful just to go with it, and let it eventually wash me up on the shore of some unknown spit of land. But on this particular night I did n't feel like I was being dragged into some metaphorical/metaphysical ocean. No, tonight I felt like the whole world was dissolving around me. As if I could feel my self being `` pushed out'' by some invisible force. 
 
 It's not the first time I've thought about the insignificance of my existence. I feel like everyone goes through that at least at some point in their life. But it's always been on a grander universal scale and I understood and accepted this fact with humility: my life was of ultimately no importance whatsoever. I suppose I took this in stride simply because that fact rang true for not only myself but for everybody else and if I was going to be unimportant I found a strange comfort in not being the only one. Misery loves company? I'm comfortable being a spec, but at this moment I am no longer a spec. I'm a person with a brain and lungs and a heart and all sort of complex ins and outs that serve purposes both known and unknown. I felt fear for the life I have, and unable to see the invisible force trying to push me out I felt threatened by the world around me. 
 
 The cars in the lane beside me, the construction going on around the highway, the stores and shops that I'd never go to, the horizon I'd never reach; these all felt like threats. Complications for what should have been a simple existence. How dare they. How could they fuck this up for me?! All at once that fear turned into an intense anger. It was hot, it burned my skin, and I could feel my nails dig into the steering wheel as my body began to tense up. I wanted more than anything to grab the invisible force by the throat, dig my nails into it's flesh as I was doing to the steering wheel. I wanted to pull it in close, I wanted it to hear every syllable I had to say. I wanted it see the hate that was dripping of every word, before I beat it to death with my bare hands. I'm not even sure hate is the right word. No, this was n't hate. This was what a cornered animal feels as predator prepares to strike. It borders on offended. 
 
 `` How fucking dare you.'' 
 
 The world goes out of focus and time becomes irrelevant. This anger grabs at every nerve and my body begins to swell with an intense heat. My heart is beating out of increasingly tight chest. There's nothing to do but endure. Eventually... the anger recedes and all that is left is quiet resolution. The world begins to form a clear picture again. This is a giving in. This is a giving up to the nothingness I will inevitably become. The best I could hope for was to be an afterthought before the sun burned out and took everything with it. 
 
 I think about the current. I think about the planet spinning on it's axis. I think about friends and family and even perfect strangers who's lives are going on at this very moment. Very distinct worlds, like my own, all occupying the same space and time, moving at varying paces, experiencing things in varying degrees. They're all in some sort of motion, some sort of flux. All caught in their own individual, intertwining currents. Yet, here I am in open water, calm and resigned. My world is still, while those around me and even the time I occupy are moving in at least some kind of direction. All of a sudden something clicks, and it begins to make something like sense. Nothing concrete, but just solid enough for me to grasp, to feel in my hands. So I know that this is real enough to keep myself afloat. It does n't last. 
 
 I remember Schrodinger's cat. Being both in a state of life a death until conditions are established that reflect reality. I'm here and yet not here, alive yet dead, existing yet not. There is darkness and there is light, until chance decides one or the other. Chance... Chance is the invisible force. As intangible and abstract as I had feared. I would never be able to grab it's throat. I would never be able to say what I needed to. Fuck. Fuck. FUCK. Everything shifts slightly, then shatters. 
 
 I'm not here anymore. I feel as though I've just come out of a trance and my car is gone. Everything is gone and there's nothing left but empty space. There's no fear, no anger, there's only nothing. I ca n't see my hands, or my body. I ca n't feel my own touch. Strange enough though I feel conscious, I feel aware. That should count for something right? 
 
 Right? 
 
 As I floated around in the dark, I noticed a white dot come into view. It was getting bigger. No, it was getting closer and the closer it got, there were more and more white dots coming into focus. They were moving incredibly fast, but I was still able to make out their forms. They were translucent imitations of people or at least some of them were people. Some were recognizably human, with slightly different features. Others were strange and were what one might picture an alien to look like. I'm almost positive they were aliens. These were all inhabitants of other planets as well as my own. We were all traveling a light speed past one another. I looked at them and they looked at me, but there was no contact, no recognition. We were all traveling impressions of light, staring off at one another, wondering if there was anyone looking through the same dark. Our gazes were meeting but never at the right time. 
 
 I am light traveling through dark. I exist in this nonexistence. I am a ghost, trapped in the playback of my life. Is this hell? I was never really there, not now at least. At one point, possibly, but now? I had already been pushed from memory and had faded into the recesses of obscurity. I've come to a cross roads. Either continue `` living'' in my endless loop of a life or accept nothingness. I continue to float as I mull the choices over. 
 
 Is hell better than nothing?
