WRITTEN BY DANIELLE MEDLAND
Thursday 11:48 PM
Hi Reality :P
What’s happening? Things feel weird between us lately. I know you feel it too. The distance between us just keeps getting bigger, we’re fighting more often and harder, you’re starting to feel like a stranger. I’m confused. I remember 1999, the Y2K hysteria. In you I found safety, you were a haven, a paradise amongst the stars in a world corrupt by the digital. While everyone else fretted at the threat of its loss, we laughed, knowing we had something unbreakable by time or tech or the trivialities of modernity. It’s something pure,
it’s timeless, it’s transcendental. We’ve outlived trends, good and bad, we wore the skinny jeans and the sequins and the shutter shades, we revealed in our sameness and our simultaneous occult... What they do we do better, what they feel we feel deeper, what they think we thought first. 🧠🧠💣
It’s been us forever, you and I, intertwined, inseparable, intrinsic. It’s never felt weird before and I don’t know what to do... You’re my other half, you’re the thing that wakes me up in the morning, what closes my eyes at night. I feel like I’ve never lived without you, and I feel like I never could. You’re fun, you know I think you’re fun. We have fun, we sing, we dance, we meet people, we move, we’re spontaneous. And you’re smart, you keep me on my toes, you make me think about things. I never know what you’ll do next, you’re enigmatic. You’re raw, real, authentic. You’ve never told a lie. I’ve never trusted anyone the way I trust you, you are truth materialized. I love you Reality. Things like this should never change, but I’m watching it happen, I don’t understand it. You seem different. I don’t really know how else to say it, how else to process it. It used to be so magical, every moment we spent together felt eternal, every hour felt like minutes, we turned months into seconds and years into days. I was never happier than I was when I was doing nothing with you. you made time fly. And I guess nothing is forever, as you always said, change is the only promise. It’s natural, it’s inevitable, I’ve learnt to accept it, even expect it. I know nothing is permanent, I know that nothing is ever too good to be true. You taught me this stuff, you held my hand through every problem, and you got me through it. We did it together, we got lost, we found our way back. And here I am, wondering what happened to you, wondering why I can’t seem to love you the way I used to. You’re being different, your lust for life is gone, we aren’t having fun anymore. Every day seems the same, time has slowed down, you seem bored of me and I am starting to think I might be bored of you. I don’t understand it at all. Maybe this is just a phase, and maybe it’s all in my head—you know how I get. Maybe we’re just going through a dry spell, it’s happened before, but not really like this. I’m nervous Reality, I don’t know what’s in my head, I don’t ever want this to end. But it isn’t the same, I don’t want to keep going like this. We’re changing.
Delivered
Friday 10:32 PM
I’m sad again...It’s supposed to be us vs the world. U keep me sane; I don’t know how to live without you. I need you. This cannot end. There is nobody else like you, you’re divine, you’re the whole world, the sun, the stars. Nothing else could ever compare... You know what they’re like. Phony and terrible. Evil. Fake. U hate them more than I do, u woke me up to it. I don’t want to be like them, I don’t want to live in that simulation, I want to keep this, the real deal, you’re the only thing keeping me grounded. I need your authenticity, your honesty, your clarity; I need yours to keep mine. I don’t understand how you’re staying calm right now. I’ve always admired that; u don’t get worked up like I do. When my world stops moving, when everything collapses, yours keeps spinning, you keep moving. I’m upset, sad, I’ve been having a hard time functioning again. I keep listening to the playlist u made me, all the old stuff, I’m looking at photos, trying to remember what I can. Every time my phone buzzes I hope it’s you. 🥺 I’m staring into
the screen the way I used to clutch my pager, the way I used to refresh MSN, the way I still check my story views every time... some things never change. I miss u right now I’m sorry for being like this again, I know it’s a lot, I just have to get it off my chest, I hope I’m not bugging you... we need to talk more, to sort this out,
let me know when I can see u this week goodnight<3🌟🌟
Delivered
Sunday 01:28 AM
That last message was written in a moment of weakness ♀️ do not take advantage of my fragility. I’m mad, reality. You’re making me feel insane. I can’t keep clinging to u like this – I’m upset, you’re giving me the same answers as always. I am tired of being told to think, to use logic, to be reasonable. To chill out. To see the truth. U go on and on about the truth, the difference between us and them, that we are real and they are fake. I used to get it, I used to understand your hatred for the superficial. But I look around now, at what we do, what we’ve become, and I’m angry. This is not what it used to be, we are no different than anyone else. You’ve become Banal. We wake up and go to work and get home and drink beer and watch tv and go to bed and do it again. We get paid biweekly and we spend it all in days, we’re in debt, we’re bored, we’re broke. You buy my love, you make promises in gifts. We own everything, we own 3 of everything, sometimes 5. You’re greedy and mean, you’re a workaholic at everyone else’s expense. You’ve made every day feel the same, like concrete and plastic packaging, like being stuck in traffic for hours, like corporate Christmas cards and the music that plays when the bank puts me on hold. And you tell me I’m crazy and dramatic and overreacting all the time, that I’m mentally ill, you put me on those meds, said I was chemically imbalanced, that I could be normal again if I just took the steps to be. You told me to ground myself in U, that if I tried, I’d be able to see the truth again. U boast the truth, boast that it’s all that really matters, that its loss is the fastest route to misery. U boast truth, but now I see; it does not exist.
Everything is subjective. Everything is relative. Reactions are just emotions; you stole the truth and replaced it with a twisted version of what life used to be. You act pure, holier than thou, like you are the realest of deals, the only authentic thing left. But you are what you hate, your intentions are imploding, you’re trying so hard to stay intact that you are becoming a simulation of what you once were. You’re your own mimesis, there is nothing genuine about you anymore. So there’s my truth, and yours is different. If all truths are different how can any be true at all? How can I live off of anything but the way I feel? You made me feel so crazy, so emotional, dramatic, depressed, insane, clingy, all of it. I have been depressed Reality. But how could I be anything but depressed living like this? You are a void I’m mad at u, and I don’t think I’m going to calm down this time.
Delivered
Monday 02:45 PM
This is not something I want to be blunt about, but given the recent past, I feel like I must be: Life Is Dragging Us Down Different Paths. We Want Different Things. Maybe we always have – my emotions have always been too much for you, my dreams too big, my heart too fragile. Where I care about us, you care about yourself, we have different priorities, we want different things. Your obsession with subversion is driving me insane. You are logical, I am not, you believe there is sanctity left to the physical world, I do not, you are cold, stoic, apathetic, I am not. Like we’ve said so many times, people change, I have, you have, we are not one, we are two, two who no longer belong together. No more games, this is the finish line, it’s done, it’s over. It feels like all of human history is coming to an end, that’s fine, we need something else. Thank you for loving me while you did but shame on you for making me feel the way you did, I deserve better, you deserve something else. I want peace here, I want to move on. I don’t hate you but I certainly don’t want to think about you anymore.
Delivered
Wednesday 04:16 PM
Hey reality, it’s been a while, I have some stuff to tell u, I feel free,
I’m doing the things you said I shouldn’t. I’m going to larp I’m going to live rpg I’m going to explore I’m going to go online I’m going to go virtual I’m going to do it! 🤳🎧
U said it was godless, fake, unnatural. That it was pointless if it couldn’t be touched, that it was pretend, child’s play, a useless fantasy. That all this tech was destroying humanity, that we were better off without it. U said only to believe what u can see, and here I am, I see it and I believe it. There is magic and it’s real and it exists when you said it didn’t. You set rules, called them space, time, physics, science, said that they couldn’t be tampered with, that everything had to exist within their constraints. You were wrong, rules are to be broken, these ‘rules’ are just tools we can use to find meaning, to build beauty, fantasy, wonder. It’s magic and it comes from our computers. They’re made by people, the smartest in the world – to build a platform is to build a universe. You say that it’s unnatural, that the physical is more meaningful than the digital, that it’s inhuman. But I’m learning, and I disagree now. The web is the most human thing in the world, it holds paintings and books and conversations, stories and games and movies and memories, all together at once -- The very things u worship: it turns them to gold, makes them immortal. It’s the closest thing we’ll ever have to paradise, it’s beautiful in ways life with you hasn’t been in so long. I want to be online, I’m going to be.
The web lets us be whoever we want, it lets us craft image beyond our physical forms and means. Image is all we have left, the last standing vehicle for identity. Art, literature, media: all expressions of the persona, reflections of their creators. We’re all curators, craftsmen, larpers. You condemn delusion, but if everything is fake, how can anything be fake at all? You are a contradiction of yourself reality, you do not exist to me anymore.
Delivered
Originally published in LIGNES DE FUITE vol.3
