"Before Tomorrow," a Short Story

These days, you take the times you know your name as a win. It didn’t use to be like that. From what you can’t remember, it didn’t use to be like anything.

You tell yourself, That’s good. You tell yourself, That’s great…way to go.

Before, when days weren’t even really days, you had no idea who you were even talking to. Conceptually, you’re not quite sure who you are feeling good for or for what or why, but you do your best to ignore that and bask in that little bit of sunshine anyway. That feels fantastic.

You’re in good health, or at least feel you are; you were told as much that one time at the doctor. There’s enough money in the bank from a job you work to keep the lights and the heat on; enjoy some food and maybe even a drink (or two) before tomorrow. Sometimes you see friends, dabble in sports with certainly no professional aspirations or hope for glory. This fact has gone from depressing to something akin to pain receding. Anyways, you do it for exercise, for your hips.

You read books, physical books, because you like the way the pages rebel in your hands and sometimes, it feels as if your brain is literally expanding, pressing up against the bony framework of your skull. You know it’s not really doing that but you take refuge in visuals. You always have. Humanity (you), to its own detriment, can’t help but progress and advance and optimize - grow, growth, chase the exponential, you were so often told.

That’s your real-life story in a nut shell. When you say it out loud for everyone to hear, it feels small against the backdrop of the millions and millions of years of humanity. Doesn’t everything though? you ask the air. Even the world looks small at a certain angle, you admit to the room. Even the universe when they do those crazy zoom out videos on YouTube that feels like forever, yet it’s only a minute, you share with your computer screen.

In that truth, you are special and not special, like everyone and everything else, concurrently.

This makes you think of Plato’s cave and you wonder, how can I be the prisoner, the shadow, the firelight inside and the sunlight outside, all at the same time and still be asked to pay rent?
You know you’re lucky. There is so much pain, so much agony in epiphany; so much death every second at the tip of your fingertips with the mere swipe of them. That’s not a lie, you tell yourself. That’s form because you see the proof of it on your phone, something you paid for upfront and every month thereafter forever always in your hand or in your pocket - a new part of you -

even when you go on your afternoon walk to feel the sun or to the bathroom to feel relief or cooking dinner while listening to a show that really just makes you sad or a Podcast with strangers you will never ever meet or a Reel that genuinely makes you laugh (for all the wrong reasons) or the price you pay to take part in this game of extortion and the damned.

You know something is missing, and you're loath to admit it. You thought you were getting better. You’re not. You’ve convinced yourself that it’s the cost to live and breathe as a modern man. You know it’s connection but, ironically, you have never felt more tethered to everything and everyone in your whole life. They won’t stop forcing themselves on you. Even when you’re together, you type. You’re alone. And even when you’re alone, you type. You’re together.

You know you’re missing something but you can’t tell if you are being nostalgic about something you have never experienced.

So you take refuge in your name, like Totoro under its leaf umbrella; like hate from love; like pigs in a blanket for dinner; reminded again, after far too long, that you are someone, someone with a name, and something so good and right in your own life down pat, you are actually shocked that you can't wait until tomorrow to do it all over again.