The Stranger I Always Knew

I'm really happy to be alive. I can't believe I've come this far. I can't believe I'm me, and that's... good. It's 12:10 in the morning and I just walked back from WeWork. And as I looked around the the dark cubicles, or the vacant streets, or the my quiet room, I was alone. But not lonely.

---

Ever since freshman year when Amy introduced me to the "This is Water" speech, I've thought about the metaphor at random intermittent moments of my life. It reminds me how to be present. It turns the air around me into glass, like a resin cast of that single, fragile, moment. Like a bug frozen in amber.

And for a fleeting couple of seconds,

it makes me feel

suddenly,

vividly,

a l i v e.

It's a strangely inexplicable feeling. Words can't do it justice, but I'll try. Silly humans.

We always try.

This is how it works. In some particular moment I want to remember, I'll tell myself to remember how this moment feels. Not just superficially, like am I happy or sad, but how existing feels. How the air hangs or how the carpet feels under my feet or how the dust carelessly blurs the window. I'll look around and widen my eyes to just... absorb my surroundings. And suddenly, I'm completely inside my own head.

My thoughts become my whole reality. Only my eyes see my world and experience my moment. That moment is mine.

I guess, in a way, it seems weirdly egotistical. But I don't think it is.

The one person that every person knows at all times, on all days, in all moments (more or less) is themself. That's it. Call it the curse of consciousness. Call it thoughts in a cage.

And so doesn't it make sense that if you're going to spend that much time with someone, nevermind that it's yourself, that you should like that person? Or at least get to know them? It's only common decency, is it not?

Otherwise you become your own hell.

Imagine sitting in a room with only one other person and nothing else for 80+ years. What would you do? I'm sure at first you'd scream and wail for someone to let you out. And then pound on the walls. I'm sure I'd do that at least. And then I would resent this stranger sitting next to me in silence. I'd consider them a mockery of my predicament. How dare you just leave me here. With another person that I'm supposed to just get along with. Because they're here. Because they'll always be here.

And then time will pass. And more time will pass.

And then I'll get tired of being angry.

I'm tired of being angry.

And then finally one day, I'll walk to the corner of the room and sit down next to the stranger with my legs crossed on the ground. I'll hug my legs to my chest and look over my knees at the stranger I always knew. My eyes will browse through their features. Dark hair. Brown skin. Big, round eyes. I'll wonder what her name is. What she likes and dislikes. What makes her angry. Does she get angry? I'll ask myself.

And then finally. One excruciatingly average, particularly random day, I'll ask her.

I'll ask her all the things I assumed about her and all the things that made her feel full inside. I'll hug her and squeeze her and yell at her and laugh with her and fear with her and be with her and be her.

Because I am her.

And I'm not.

I'll remind myself that this is water. This is water. That feeling of learning bit by bit that a moment and every moment will be familiar and foreign at the same time. That life is is just a trillion strangers we've always known, wandering around on a rock convincing ourselves that there's something more. That there's got to be something more.

And in all of that wanting, we get lost. We forget.

This is water. This is water. This is it.

We just have to stop. And look. And listen.

That's it.

That's all it takes to know someone. To understand. To learn. To live.

That's all it takes to remember. To feel peace. To surrender to the mindblowingly mundane. To find happiness in the deep and overbearing indifference of the universe.

It's just you. You in your head. It's always been just you.

We just didn't realize it. Because we didn't see it.

It feels strange. But I guess it is strange.

Like a stranger that I always knew.