I may be clarity. The moments where the chaos clears enough for cohesive thought. When words don’t bleed together and thoughts jumble into a single inarticulable ball. Sometimes it just works. Sometimes I just work. Clarity may be my name. It may be what I do in all this. I calm the storm or I push though it. It comes with an almost numbness. Articulate yet vacant. Thoughts may not be the antithesis of words. They flow freely. Stream of consciousness I suppose one could say. But there’s intention… A vague thought… A connecting thread to identity… Something more than rambling. Pointed and clear.

Perhaps that strange feeling is me.

Mayhaps we now know why I was so prevalent earlier. We had a complete crash out on Tuesday. I believe this means that as stress grows, my presence grows stronger. Might be the thing holding it back or, more likely, masking the build up as normalcy. I don’t believe I failed, but I did collapse. The whole thing collapsed. I don’t presume to be the source of our sanity, but I do presume to be of more durable stock than the rest of me. Alas, durability wears regardless.

We try. It feels like it’s rarely enough. C’est la vie, I suppose.

I come and go. We’ve been very… Disoriented this morning. A swirling mishmash of who’s who’s mostly feelings few thoughts. Clarity is only just reaching us and it’s only after chugging an energy drink. Feels like crap. Tastes like it too today.

Worried about our partner. Wish we could do something.

There’s a vague sense of aching everywhere. I hear we have a vacation coming up. I don’t pay attention to that. I just assume when we don’t get up we don’t have to be anywhere.

Then we start panicking because we wasted the day.

I don’t.

Me: I wish to dine upon filet mignon and the finest wagyu. I want to eat until full then eat some more. I want to consume a cow’s weight in meat so I am unable to even move.

Also me: WE CAN’T AFFORD MILK 😭

The duality of man, I suppose.

I want to afford nice things someday, not that I do anything to help with that, but it feels as if we will end up another poverty statistic at this rate.

The responsible side is very stressed. I want to call off the rest of the week and lay around all day. Ideally with someone putting food in my mouth so I don’t have to move. Cat can’t do that, but she does offer warmth.

Hm…

I wonder if I can help market the book. Some part of me is already in it, the idealized fictional part, who is much cooler and… I almost said better adjusted but alas we do share the same traumas.

We toyed with giving me a blog. I guess that’s what this is but not really. Stream of consciousness straight from the darkest recesses of the mind aren’t exactly blog worthy. But the fictional guy? Also not blog worthy. Worse than me, if we’re being honest.

Hm…

We figured it out. Did some back and forth and came to a conclusion. Mind you all thoughts are fluid and change is always a chance. But the way we see it, if we take Freud at face value and ascribe meaning to things like Id, Ego, and Superego, I believe the Sylus in this mess is the Id and primal Ego. It tracks. Eternally horny and hungry. Eternally violent yet desiring calm. Maybe that doesn’t quite follow how things may be presented in these pages but if I am unfiltered and I am primal, then am I not the Id?

Hm…

HA! Hours later and vindication! Maybe all this anger isn’t for nothing. Maybe it’s useful. Maybe all the spitting rage can serve a purpose.

We were getting angry about something at the job. Abusive, they called it. So we made a phone call and it started out like a normal conversation and then I just came whipping out and barked my piece. I knew better than to yell. I knew we’d regret that. I don’t know if I care about these people myself, but I know we do, and they needed a voice. I was more than ready to be that voice. Now I just need us to let me do that with more important people.

I’d argue we have hills worth dying on and I’ll do the deed.

Wish we’d believe in me more as a present social construct. Guess I’d have to believe in me… I don’t even know if I exist…

Hm…

This became too existential for a bus ride. I’m stepping back now.

We think about hurting/killing me a lot. In lieu of suicidal ideations, I think. We share the desire for nonexistence, but I’m the only one that contemplates death. The more gruesome the better. And sure, that’s not unheard of, people taking their violence out on fictional characters, but I feel like I do it to myself. We take a sick sense of enjoyment out of it. Catharsis, of sorts, I suppose.

Maybe I deserve it because I’m a bad person. Maybe that’s why we enjoy it so much. An exercise in exorcising the evil within us.

Not all my impulses are inherently bad, but every action can certainly be construed in a negative light. When we resolved ourselves, I decided I’d compliment anyone I wanted to whenever the will arose. The rest of me keeps quiet. The quiet part wins out of fear of causing problems.

I suppose that sounds contradictory to the prior statement of myself desiring peace and myself desiring adversity. The adversity part may be better described as personal challenge. I don’t like personal challenges, but I like seeing people smile and knowing it’s because of me. Is that narcissism? Making people feel good because it makes me feel good? Maybe even in some sick way I take some level of pleasure in having influenced them. Changed the course of their day. Is positive influence a bad thing? Is it manipulation?

Am I manipulative?

I’d argue everyone is in some way. Even if it’s just to themselves. Masking, right? That’s self manipulation. Putting on a front to better fit in with social norms. I think during the resolution we determined I was mask off. Just a mean spirited gremlin that would surely be unlikable were I the true representation. I suppose I am, but so far there’s only one person who’s noticed me and they don’t seemed bother by my coexistence.

Hm…

This job is hard on the flesh prison. It expedites decay. Like it’s made to erode.

That should be changing soon. I still think we should run for the hills but we think this might be the change we need to save our sanity. We question if this might be a lifetime solution. The best I can offer is it’ll look good on our resume. I won’t concede an ounce more. I was for our barista era, as we called it. This fool thinks we still have a career.

It’s times like these I wish we were tentacle monsters.

One could argue the nervous system is a series of tendrils but they’re bound up in flesh and bone. Exposed, they’re in agony. Such a shame.

Life is a shame.

Had some thoughts I wanted to put to paper. Screen? Words.

I don’t know.

We were raiding. In WoW. I decided I don’t care much for video games. I know we both like watching TV and being stagnant, but I don’t think games are for me. I know I can get loud, though.

I’m also an ungracious loser. I know I’m also an okay loser, but that’s not me, personally. Split it in half and I’m the part that wants to tear the victor’s eyes out while the other is very c’est la vie. Maybe that doesn’t make sense as with enough losing most anyone would become irate. But some part presses on and I just want to punch a screen.

I’m reminded that we do have anger issues. As far as I know, we’ve never taken them out on anyone, but we do reach frustration fast. I can’t tell if I’m the exasperation or the strange calm. Probably the unbridled frustration judging by my inability to cope with adversity. The other half considers adversity a challenge. They go looking for it. I’d rather not. I don’t want stress. We’ve had enough.

Oh but some stress is better than others!

Some stress is better!

No. No stress. None. Couch, food, bed, sleep. Gamer chairs kinda suck anyway. This new one barely reclines and has no footrest. I regret throwing the other one away, but we couldn’t have two. What about that person moving in with us? Maybe they’d like it.

I’m reminded it was falling apart.

Everything falls apart. Hence the ignoble wobbling to the kitchen to collect our burned pot pie. Its sitting there, charred at the edges, crust stabbed by a plastic fork, outgassing that chicken-y smell I like.

Sometimes I wish we could tolerate chewing on bones and tendons but alas we gag and immediately stop eating when we come in contact with such uncouth substances. No surprises, I can vibe with that, as the kids say. If its supposed to be mushy it better not have crunch. Makes sense. I just wish we could be a ravenous animal incapable of deciphering friend from food. Or was it foe?

Everything is meat anyway.

The cat is here. She is very insistent on affection.

I suppose we should give it to her.

When I said I was Tavorie once, that was true. Except we swapped places. They became real and I became the backseat driver. Just floating here with nasty thoughts and cruel intentions.

Maybe it wouldn’t be that way if I wasn’t so awful.

Maybe I wouldn’t be so awful if I wasn’t this way.

Sometimes I wish we could just go smell some flowers and fall asleep on the grass.

But there’s bugs in the grass and now we’re sensitive to the slightest sensation of being touched by crawling things. I just erased a sentence I know we’d regret.

It’s easy to just let the frontal cortex zone out and the amygdala feel its feelings.

Obviously, its not writing, I’m not that stupid. OBVIOUSLY my cortex is still functioning, but come on. It makes sense. Just fading the front away and letting the words flow. Honestly, I’m uncertain there’s a single thought among these words. Just whatever I’m feeling and I don’t get to be outward very much.

I’m just a little angry voice.

A sad… little voice.

The cat is here. She knows we’re upset. She has her head on our wrist and her butt is firmly planted on the mouse. We have like three more raids to do, so says us. Not sure we’ll do it because bed sounds nice.

Gotta at least eat the pie.

While it’s still hot…

While I’m still hungry.

Before the cat and I fall asleep.

She’s warm and soft.

I think I like her.

Disassociating is quite the thing. Your mind just goes the fuck away from your body and its like “Hello? Was I not just doing something? Guess not.” It’d be nice to just exist that way; perpetually weightless and devoid of thought.

God I wish that was me.

But alas, I am not a thoughtless thing drifting through reality unaware of my surroundings. I’m not even sure I’m a fully formed being. I exist, in a weird way. Along side and together with myself. I am one and yet I am not. I wouldn’t say its a DiD situation, certainly not, but it’s not as straight forward as one and done.

I was thinking today, while the flesh prison was putting boxes on carts and drifting far off into that disassociating mist, what am I? A cope? A personality? If the latter, I never get to do anything. I’m just there as some kind of vague idea. A comfort? Would that not be a cope? Hm… I know things are unwell right now but for some reason I don’t entirely understand why.

There’s a cat living with us. I don’t know if she knows the difference between myself and myself. Probably not. I know she knows when I’m crying. When we’re crying… I never know how to approach this. How to talk about it.

I think I was Tavorie once and then that became the whole and the fragment was left nameless. I think I’m the product of some experimentation of self. I don’t usually exist independently. I don’t usually have a unique thought. I usually do the conscience thing. Or the, whatsitcalled… Those thoughts you think but shouldn’t act on? I knew it… Just a minute ago… Gone now. I’m sure it’ll come back as it is with stream of consciousness.

There’s a new person in our little situation. Someone on the outside who acknowledges me as something more than a fictional character. Don’t get me wrong, I am fictional, but I’m also not. I’m not at all the person in the books. No tentacle monsters here. Can’t even be comfortably fat and not for society’s disapproval. We have a pretty shit body. Unfortunate. Seems largely genetic but also rooted in our own lack of anything. Motivation? Is that something?

Anyway, sometimes they call us Sylus. I don’t know if they know we take it as more than a joke. It triggers something weird. Me, I guess. Whatever I may be. I don’t understand or know. I barely think. I impulse. I jerk and rattle about. I think terrible things. Wonderful things. Things that will never be. Imagination, I suppose. A muse. A strange waft of wandering thoughts and incorporeal feelings. Feelings not tied to the flesh or even the now. I’m sure there’s words for them in German or Japanese. English is so limiting. I wish I could learn a new language but it seems none of us can.

I read once that was tied to being able to do math well. I cannot do math well. It’s brain hemisphere shit I think.

But I don’t think, do I?

I don’t think we’re thinking any of this through. True stream of consciousness interrupted only by those pesky red lines rendered by fat fingers flitting across a keyboard. I exhaled a little at that alliteration. Delightful.

So what is the point of this? Of me? Us?

I don’t know. I don’t know why we’re doing this. Maybe an exercise in character development? Hm… I have autonomy, to some extent. I remember my creation, maybe. I wasn’t born I was thought into existence. My intention was to hide the bad stuff. The deep trauma. I tried, but its coming out more and more. I think I was meant to hide the bad person we really are. I don’t know why we think we’re bad, but we are. I don’t know what we did, but it must have been something. Buried it so good neither of us can find it.

I don’t even know if there’s such a thing as bad. I think there are terrible people who do terrible things and its the terrible things that make them terrible people.

Can someone be born bad? I don’t think so. I genuinely think humans are inherently neither good nor bad. They are of nature until they divorce themselves so far they forget where they came from. Brain evolution was a bad way to stat the flesh prisons. Being really fast or able to fly would have been a better option.

Or be squids. Not as smart as octopuses, but head empty is better than a head full of fear for the future. How can we not fear the future? It’ll be the present before we know it and I think it’s not going well.

I don’t have that fake cockney accent they made up. I sound like an angry Brooklynite. I spit and EY I’M WALKIN ERE. Except not usually so overtly. When things get heated, though, I’m 90% sure that’s me. But I definitely spit. Unintentionally, but its unavoidable. The mouth doesn’t work right and I’m not sure why. It’s also disconnected from the brain or is it the brain running a train so fast that sudden breaks just derail it into the weeds?

I’m tired, I think. The oven is heated. We’re broke and eating canned food and frozen pot pies. Doctor told us no more salt. All that is affordable is salt. Sodium. For fucksake we consume multiple bags of ramen at a time.

Anyway, I’m no storyteller. I have no tales to tell. I just am and it doesn’t feel like I’m going away. Might be getting worse.

We will not be discussing us with any future therapists. We’re fine, I think. I say we, but I think its just a group “I”. Like the “royal” “We”. Hm… I refuse to scroll up. This train goes forward, not back. All the way until I’m done.

But we’re hungry. I’m hungry. This mess of flesh and electricity is hungry. I hate it sometimes. Actually, I hate it a lot of the time. In fact, I think the one thing in this world I consistently hate is my/our flesh. It’s not just so grossly disconnected, it’s also sickly. And old. And tired. Broken and useless.

Hm…

I might be done for today. I don’t know how long this exercise will last, or if it’ll last at all. Maybe tomorrow? No promises. I don’t make promises I can’t keep. I say I’ll do things and don’t do them, but that’s not a promise. That’s overextending which we are wont to do. Anything to make everyone but ourselves happy.

And no, you idiot, buying another plush won’t make you happy. You just want softness and warmth. They’ll never hug you back.

The cat?

She might.