Reality has had a rough go recently, hasn’t it? A lot of people are treating reality like it’s up for debate, like they might be able to convince us that there is some other version of reality with their words alone. I think we’ve been over this—reality is more than words. It’s also more than video.

I grew up living in an unreal reality. My parents played happy family but inside they were miserable and their misery was the feeling the permeated the household. They never admitted it and the discordance made me feel crazy. It wasn’t until a few years ago when I allowed myself to finally believe the reality I felt over the reality that was dictated to me that things finally came into alignment. It was as if I had been staring at that red and blue line art and someone finally handed me the right pair of glasses. The pain of reality became crystal clear. There are times I want to choose fantasy. I want to use the skills I honed in childhood to ignore what’s uncomfortable and gussy up the truth to make it work in my favor. But you can’t unsee it. Once you’ve acknowledged reality, it stays.

The ache in my chest has been there for a while now. It’s accompanied by a helplessness that I’ve never experienced before. Lately, my efforts to help feel like trying to gain traction on ice. The faster I move the more off balance I feel. Every spiritual leader, therapist, and instagram influencer offering advice on healing tells me to sit with it. Feel it. Acknowledge the reality of the ache and it will dissipate. What if while I am sitting around waiting out my heartache, I die? What if someone else does?

It smells like ass in this Panera bread. I came to Panera to write so I wouldn’t dissolve into tears over how bleak reality is while I write about it. There’s a man here who’s taken his elderly mother out to lunch. He’s talking to her about World War II. I wonder if she cares. I bet she cares the same way I care about Pokemon when my ten-year-old tells me about it. She cares the way a mother does. They’re leaving now. She’s taking her cookie to go.

It’s a weird feeling to ache like this around other people. I can’t ignore it and no one else even notices. I’m just another zombie typing on a laptop. Aren’t they curious about me like I am about them? Aren’t they also looking to others for a reason to feel hopeful? Maybe they already have one. Maybe they don’t need to find hope in the interactions between strangers in a poorly ventilated chain restaurant.

The elderly mother and her son have been replaced my a young mother and her child. The conversation is different, but it’s also the same.

I’ve been sober for twenty-four days. I’ve been fully experiencing reality for twenty-four days. When a woman was shot in the face by someone who claimed he’d protect her, I did not reach for my pot to escape the senselessness, instead I cried—a messy, feral, powerless cry. Then I listened to the people in power, the people responsible for her death, tell me that she brought it on herself as if she was the one who pulled the trigger. Three times.

The woman across from me is picking the cucumbers from her salad. I think it’s time to go.