So it's not really possible to escape what you are, but how do you KNOW what you are?

What I think I am is absurd and ridiculous and utterly impossible! It's foolish! Idiotic! Childish! Inconsequential!

And yet I secretly love it so much and want it and it makes sense to me more than anything. And I would be miserable without it, and I CAN'T be without it.

But is that real? Just a delusion I've convinced myself of to attain some semblance of identity to this hollow husk I call a life?

Is it just a fiction I desperately want? Or is it somehow inherently real?

Does it matter?

Someone contact reality's manager, because I have SO many complaints.

@Phorm How is being a genie any more ridiculous than anything else we've been asked to swallow in the name of reifying the dominant metanarrative? Politics have become a lethal joke. Companies are offering to mind-control people so they can live in nostalgia cocoons. Moloch is eating itself and will devour all who try to appease it. Giving in to one's own magical nature feels like the least ridiculous thing any of us can do at this point.

@literorrery I know what you're saying is true. It's just that the tendrils of the orthocosm are so tightly wound around my brain than any narrative counter to the dominant one feels impossible. And pursuing anything but the expected line of action and behavior feels like... Cutting myself off from material support in the long run?

In the market place of ideas and metaphysics, I've been shopping at the company store for too long, and the only currency I have is scrip.

@Phorm I can't address your emotions directly. I wish I could. I wish I had the tools to do so, but I can't. You don't know me, you don't know my story, and you have absolutely no reason to take my word on anything. I don't know your situation, I don't know your life, and i can't be inside your head. I see the fear you're facing, and all I can say is that it's understandable and I sympathize with it.

I can also say it's not the only possible future.