62.

A terrifying fear strikes me on the train ride home.

I didn’t take my own life. I didn’t reset. I haven’t relived the last week three times in a row. All of that is fanciful bullshit, the product of an unrestricted imagination – and imaginations should be fenced in somewhere. That’s how you define reality. But mine’s gone.

I remember when I first went through anxiety, having a public hospital psychiatrist telling me that because I was a writer I was prone to losing touch with reality – he actually told me that. Then, when the panic reared, I’d tell myself I’d be okay, I’d try coping, but I always feared that my sanity would snap, and I’d lose myself in some niche of my mind, while the rest thrived in madness. I could be in some mental institution right now, doped up, in a straitjacket possibly, thinking this is all happening.

But that also sparks a different possibility: how do I know what’s real anyway? Maybe we’re all just plugged in somewhere, like in The Matrix, imagining our reality. Defining it. Interacting with others doing the same. Usually, we synchronize.

Usually.

Luca said that: “Thought defines reality.” But maybe it’s not even that esoteric. You have all these self-help gurus talk about manifesting and our thoughts drawing like-minded energy and all that shit, so maybe this is what I’ve done to myself, which leaves me with what ultimately?

• A job I tolerate.
• An unsuccessful writing career.
• A terrible long-term relationship.
• A location that I can’t leave.
• Bombing in a new potential romance.
• A film I’m trying to get up and running.
• Relationships that are like gristle.

This is how all this started – this feeling of asphyxiation, that I couldn’t escape the life I’d found myself in.

How many other people feel similarly? I’m not special in this way. I know that. And I also know it’s whining to lament this. People have it much worse. But it just feels the more that I try, I’m either hemmed in (like trying to go somewhere) and that perimeter continues to shrink around me, and/or I’m woefully inadequate.

So what’s left?

It’s so fucking stupid, no different to anything I’ve felt before – I’m going all-in on what’s left of my writing career: the film. Because that’s what I do. Writing’s always the foundation. The fallback. The purpose. The everything that I am.

So, with shaky hands, I drag my phone out of my pocket, and text Gillian, suggesting we do an in-person meeting at Ben’s – she responds almost immediately, saying, Good idea! I’ll organize it!

But it’s no assurance, because when you’re young, you’re filled with unbridled optimism; as you age, that becomes cautious realism; and that gradually morphs into cynical pessimism, and a dismissiveness that comes from experience that some people don’t live their dreams, but only dream of the life they want while their existing.

So whereas once I would’ve thought the writing was a 99% chance of success, and a 1% chance of failure, now that equation’s inverted.

When I get home, I don’t have any idea what to do. Everything in my little flat is dark, but it’s blackening – closing in on me. If I was to take my own life now and kick off another reset, what point would there be to it? The things I’m trying just aren’t working.

Crawling into bed, I can’t find sleep to escape the terror, nor masturbate my way to some distraction, or do anything but exist in this new truth, as torturous as it is. Then I think maybe this is Hell because I took my life that first time. That’s the usual narrative for suicides. They suffer in damnation, and here I am, suffering.

It’d be cliché to write it’s a long night, but it fucking is, as I explore and rehash these possibilities, but always come back to the one reality that I can’t disprove.

I’m here.

And, right now, that’s the one truth I can hold onto.

63.

Where are we?

Thursday?

I haven’t slept since the drunken rampage with Stan, and the night whiling into the morning isn’t any different. There was one time when I was nineteen, and the psychiatrist thought I was going to lose touch with reality, he asked me if I’d heard voices. The question terrified me. Hear voices? That’s where I was at? I told him no, but asked him if I would. He told me he didn’t know, and advised if I did not to listen to them.

Years later, I spoke to another psych who said I wouldn’t, because voices were the domain of a psychosis, and my issues were a neurosis, but that night I lay in bed, worried that some voice would break out of the night, and it didn’t matter what it said to me, it’s existence would fracture me in a way I would never be put together again.

That’s how I feel now, because I really don’t know where I go from here, and I know the things I’m hanging onto – like the film – aren’t even long shots, but impossibilities, but I anchor to them because there’s really nothing left as far as I can see.

Come the morning, I text Autum, saying, Still don’t feel good.

Okay, she writes back, and that’s it.

I feel some pang of disappointment that she doesn’t follow up, but where can she take this? She would’ve in the past, before Lana, but Autumn’s pulled back, and as far as she knows I still am with Lana – I could be right now, as far as she’s concerned, as unlikely as it is at this time of the morning.

Getting out of bed, I shower, standing under the water too long, but I don’t know where else to go. A walk around the block does nothing, and sitting in front of the computer to write does less – that always was my one salvation: not only could I write through anything, but it would override whatever I was feeling.

As the day wears on, I feel the futility of catching up with my film crew, and try to explore new possibilities. I couldn’t leave this place, but I could hook up with Rachel, so it’s not like everything’s overridden. Then what occurs to me is some computer game logic; maybe I can’t leave this place until some condition is met – something I have to do.

It’s not breaking up with Lana (unless there’s a way I’m meant to do it), or negotiating with Melody or Regina or catching up with one of my mentees. Surely existence doesn’t hem me in because of that.

Rachel.

Rachel’s likelier, because I was allowed to take that direction. Is it something to be hooking up, some trite bullshit like finding new love? It’s so farfetched, although I keep thinking how it’s the one avenue I was able to pursue – twice.

But this is now me latching onto any desperate hope.

I want to see out the week, but what I really want to do is die and harangue Luca, as unhelpful as he might be. Each time I’ve gone back, he’s retrospectively explained rules I hadn’t know existed, but what’s happening now isn’t a little thing – it’s not like showing up to dinner to find Quinn there instead of Ethan, or forgetting Peta. This feels like the world’s collapsing.

I’m going on about this too much, about what’s fair and unfair like it matters, when I’ve always known that life’s unfair, and that I should be privileged on this third chance, but given the compromises and all the unexpected shit, I just don’t know – but that’s always been my problem: I just don’t know.

And never have.

Eventually, I can’t cope anymore, and it’s a choice of a sedative or a beer, and I choose a beer because I know I can have another, and another, and although it doesn’t settle me entirely, six beers gradually dull the edge of my anxiousness and uncertainty, but then I just want to get out. I need to be moving. Need to launch into whatever comes next.

I know I shouldn’t, but I drive to Ben’s.

I tell myself it’s okay, that I’ve always remained very controlled, regardless of drinking, and it’s true. It comes from years of disguising anxiety, learning to wear a mask on whatever’s going on inside my head. Drinking’s no different. I can play the stoic just as well when I’ve drank too much.

Because I’m like an hour early, parking’s busy around Ben – people who’ve just finished work have come for an early dinner, or they’ve stopped to do some shopping. Cars take up all the usual spaces, so then I have to round the block, and then the next, until I find parking in some side street. This is life – always being pushed to the most negligible option.

Getting out of the car, I’m aware that I’m desperate for a piss, but also desperate for more beer, because drinking’s channeled me into a zone where things are tolerable, and I’m already beginning to lose that. This meeting’s pointless. All I’m doing is going out to keep busy, drink more, and be out. But I really am dying for that piss, and worried I won’t even make it to Ben’s.

The trees in front of houses here are big, casting long, dark shadows that stretch out across the road like they’re planning on seizing me. Glancing back and forth and around again, I make sure nobody’s watching, step up to a tree, and enjoy the relief of relief.

Then I see that across the road is Dom’s car, and he’s sitting in it, leaning back. I’d think he was on his phone if there was any backlight. But then a head bobs up from his lap, rearing back into the passenger seat: Gillian. She dabs her lips, like she’s retouching lipstick or something.

Gillian’s was going down on Dom.

That can’t be true – they’re friends, and they’ve even been good friends, but there’s never been any physical chemistry between them. Well, I don’t think there has been. And she regards him with some element of distrust, if not condescension, because she knows as much as I do that Dom’s full of shit. Can somebody bypass that and jump to a blowjob?

Finishing my piss, I zip up, then hurry on, trying to reconcile this as a new truth. Is this something that’s always been going on? I think back to their interactions, but I’ve covered her attitude to him. And he’s happily married. Or so he makes it. So this is some bizarre schism irreconcilable with truth.

Once I get to Ben’s, I order a beer at the counter, then find a booth. This has to be a change in this cycle, because I just can’t see how it could’ve happened. Of course, it could just be a physical thing. And people do get together when they seem to have nothing in common, and he’s an idiot, and she’s not.

Then something scarier occurs to me: this might not have happened at all, and I imagined it. I’m back in the fanciful. The delusional. Nothing’s real because this whole fucking thing is insane, and I’m probably just imagining something that’s so jarring to my reality, something so fracturing, something so frighteningly implausible, that it’s probably representative of my mind breaking.

That seems likely when Dom arrives first – I study the way he walks, like I can tell if he’s just had a blowjob and unloaded. Is that a thing? Has somebody done a study of that? It doesn’t matter, though. He’s always walked like some demented monkey masquerading as a human, and that’s exactly him now.

Peta comes next (and I note how different the order is to the to the last cycle) and then it’s Sam, and finally, five minutes late, is Gillian, apologizing because she had to see to the kids before she could leave.

I can’t tell if that’s a lie, but I do study her lips, like I can detect what they’ve just done; her hair, to see if it’s mussed; and even her jeans, like I might detect arousal on her, but I don’t see any of these things, although maybe there are no clues to be detected.

I’ve known people who’ve committed adultery, and you’d never guess from their behavior that they’ve cheated on their partners – their partners haven’t known, so there’s a possibility that deception marries into the affectation of life, and truth because indiscernible.

The meeting itself is irrelevant – it’s the same as the last cycle, the only difference being I know who Peta is this time. We make the same vows, but I struggle to believe in them. This place is unraveling. That’s all I feel. And I order beers through our chat, loading up because I’m trying to find oblivion.

At the end of it all, Dom leaves first – that makes me think first that if there was anything between him and Gillian, he’d hang around. Then I reason that maybe he’s just hanging back somewhere, like in his car, waiting for her; Peta goes next, and then Sam, leaving Gillian with me. It’d be maybe half an hour since Dom left. If he’s waiting for her, if they’ve arranged anything, then they’re really going to sell it.

“You okay?” Gillian says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Sure. Why?”

“You seemed a little different.”

“What’d you think of Dom?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know, usual stuff.”

Gillian smirks. “He’s Dom. He doesn’t change, no matter how much you talk to him.”

The more I try to find the lie in her tone, the more I find the truth in the possibility that I have snapped, and this is something I’ve imagined. Gillian going down on Dom? Fuck. It could not be more unlikely than that. Just like Rachel coming onto me. This whole thing is a delusion. In my overly inebriated state, that just seems more and more likely.

Gillian’s phone rings – when she takes it out of her jacket, I can see her daughter’s name, and a picture of her, on the face of the phone.

“I’ve got to take this.”

The conversation she has with her taught is typical – Gillian saying she’s at a meeting, she’s about to come home, asking if her daughter wants anything, if she’s done her homework, and telling her to be good for her grandmother. This is about as stable as it gets.

“How’d you get here?” Gillian says, once she’s done, and slipped the phone back into her pocket. “You didn’t drive, did you?”

“Uber,” I lie.

“You want a lift home?”

“I’ll be okay.” I lift my beer. ‘I’ll finish this, then find an Uber.”

“You sure everything’s all right?”

“Never better,” I say.

She senses something, so she’s slow to slide out of the booth.

“If you need to talk, just call me – okay?”

“Thanks,” I say.

Once she’s gone, I order another beer.