My Reason for Living

I stopped dating a girl after I cut it off with the previous one and the one before that. I began brushing four times a day and doing Pilates. My abs became lean, hard. I enjoyed shower water running over and through them. I downloaded Tinder, Bumble, Match.com, eharmony, Happn, OkCupid, Hinge…most of the day alternating between sips of smoothie and swiping right. I traveled, documenting with a 360° camera. Perfected my performance voice, my YouTube thumbnails. Gained four billion subscribers. I quit, or lost, my job. Got usurped by the algorithm. Lost followers. My exes sent me nasty emails. I cried four times a day. Beneath a tree, I buried the 360° camera in a shallow grave. I began spending time walking through the woods, growing hair on my face, shoulders, and abs. Examining the skin on my arms in front of me, I screamed, “What strange suit is this?” I found a cave near town. Started eating ants—graduating eventually to squirrels and rabbits and larger carcasses smoking in the duff. “HYEAaahhAH!” I said. One day, hunger peaking, I ventured into town for the only meal that would satiate me. A psychiatrist. I drug her screaming by the hair from her office, past the front desk and onto the sidewalk. “What is it you want me to help you with,” she kept yelling. I’d lost my need for language in the cave, so I responded “HYEAaahhAH!” and kept moving. Police set up a barricade at the edge of town. When bullets bounced off me, they dropped to their knees, set rifles on the ground as I walked past pulling the psychiatrist. We arrived to the cave. I showed her my collection of deer pellets. The Nintendo 64 I found next to the creek. Demonstrated my morning exercise—jumping rope shockingly fast, but ropeless, because I’d been unsuccessful yet in finding one. “I thought she was a psychiatrist,” I thought. “You’re terrified of being wrong, aren’t you,” she said, finally. I felt terrified. “Afraid you’re exactly like everyone you despise,” she continued, then cupped my cheek and sort of smiled from the side of her mouth, gently stroking my hair, fangs, and tail. I’d never hated anyone like I hated her then. From then on, I decided, I’d behave in a way that made it seem like she was wrong. That’s the only way to stomach becoming part of a system not built for me, I decided. This, I decided, would be my reason for living.