the Tulips

An updated version of this appears in self stuff, among other commentary.

cw: heavy unreality, vomit

April 14, 2035

My birthday was yesterday. I'm 23 now. Fuck.

I talked with my new therapist today. Her name's Allison, she's nice. In the middle of her postdoc, so I've only got a year with her. But it's hard enough to find a trauma specialist around here. She didn't know what to do with me. My nightmares are getting worse. I told her I got stabbed in the back by the same guy from my dreams. I don't know who he is. I still don't.

I never have any idea what to write in these stupid reflections. She says they might help.

April 15

I took a walk today and it was way too fucking bright outside. That's not the point though. After putting on my sunglasses, something seemed weirdly different.

I saw a seam in the clouds. I saw a fucking seam. I took off the glasses and I couldn't see it anymore since I was staring at the fucking sun, but I swear I saw it. A repeat in the sky — like as if the fucking world's covered by a skybox and I can't- I

When do schizophrenia symptoms usually set in? I should talk about this. Fuck. Fuck. fuck fuck fuck

April 16

My big sis, Julie, and I went to the grocery store today. Sometimes there's comfort in the mundanity of it all. I looked up at the sky again. I still saw the seam. I asked her about it, but she didn't want to look at the sun, said it makes her eyes hurt.

I feel too bad to write more shit in here, honestly.

April 18

I dreamt about a California wildfire that apparently happened back in 2019. Looked it up, yep, that was real. I'm not sure how I knew about that, or how anyone knew about that — most of that history got extinguished back during the fall of the US, after the Hogan presidency, at least I thought.

I asked Julie about it, and she'd never heard about it. Neither did the internet: I had to go all the way to the library.

April 19

I dreamt about the library burning down.

April 20

Julie had to go out on a business trip. Good for me, given the day. I fully intend on getting stoned as fuck. Gonna miss her, though.

I took a walk and saw the seam again. This time it stretched down past the clouds. I wish I could show it to her. I wish she could see what I see. I stepped on it, and it extended into my foot.

April 21

My therapist's actually named Chloe, apparently. My… bad? I swear I remember it being Allison. She's sending me over for a psych eval after I mentioned the seam. I saw it going through the right side of her office, but she didn't see it.

Just… it's just like a crack. Through the sky, through reality. As if there's a missing texture somewhere… as if I could jam something through it.

April 22

I dreamt about getting bullied on the playground as a kid. A bunch of kids were pointing and laughing at… someone. But I looked down at myself. That wasn't me. My skin was… I'm not writing that down, that's fucking stupid. I looked horribly ill. I puked blue and they all kept laughing and laughing. By the swings by the swings what do the fucking swings mean

April 23

Julie's back. We're gonna go grocery shopping again tomorrow. I don't have a car, so I can't go along. My life's so fucking boring that grocery shopping is a highlight.

I dreamt about the seam.

April 24

[this page is wet] she fell through and i'm so fucking scared

April 25

i called up my mom and she said i never had a sister. what the fuck i called up my dad and he didn't pick up

april 26

i called up my mom and she didn't pick up i called up my grandma and she didn't pick up i called up chloe and she said i never mentioned a sister what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck

april 27

you're kidding me right? you're fucking kidding me right i haven't been able to move all day. i haven't been able to fucking get out of bed and i can barely muster the energy to write anything but i'm pretty sure if i don't write something down then it'll just get forgotten

april 28

alrighty this one's gonna be long

i had a dream again, with the same laughing kids on the playground. they called me a name i didn't recognize this time, again. “wendy”.

I knew it was a dream this time, so I went on a walk. The streets were packed with people who I kind of remembered. My old friend Brian, another guy who bullied me in elementary, etc etc. I was like, 7. I didn't look ill this time. The streets were packed with people. It seemed old, somehow: cars still ran on gas, Florida hadn't been submerged yet, Hogan hadn't even thought about campaigning when I asked, though my political literacy was questioned given that I was, apparently, like 7.

I passed by a house I remembered and knocked on the door. Mom – my mom — opened the door, and invited me inside. Her face was somehow distorted. Melty. She referred to me by name. Holly. But that wasn't me, I was this Wendy kid, and she talked about me in this horrible, sullen tone. As if there was something wrong with me.

I snapped back.

Controlling their body didn't seem unnatural, was the thing. It felt… comfortable.

Chloe didn't know what to do with me. She says that the dream probably isn't literal, but that I might have known someone like that as a kid.

April 29

Got my trademark capitalization back. Ugh.

I keep seeing the seam. I dropped some papers through it, and they fell through, like she did. I jump over it every time I see it.

She didn't even scream when she fell through she just did and that was that as if it was all forgotten

April 30

oh god [this page had a blue stain on the bottom right corner. it looks like blood.]

~

“And that's all she wrote. But I remember the last dream. Everything else I had to cross-reference. I– she, I guess– was on the playground. She saw the same person she saw back in that first dream, sitting down in the sandbox, while I was sitting down on the swings. That person was Holly. The person she had assumed herself to be. The person she was.”, Wendy said. “Do you remember Holly?”, Allison asked. “Yeah, I mean, she was my best friend. She kept getting worse and worse, though. Ended up dying pretty shortly after puking blue.“, Wendy said. “There's… there's a million ways memories can kind of take on memories of their own like this. I don't exactly know what yours could be, yet. I'd have to ask a psychiatrist. Regardless, it seems like her thoughts and yours got pretty intertwined.” “I missed her a lot. I guess it would make sense I would remember her.” “And Julie?” “I don't remember a Julie.”

~

August 13, 2035

I hope that this message gets read by someone.

I lost some cosmic lottery, I think. I'm not really sure if I'm real. I've just been going back and forth between the store and my house. I don't really want to process anything. But the memory bleed, the fact that I keep forgetting and remembering people's names differently, the fact that I've taken pictures and they've retroactively changed – something's up.

Let's take an example. Try to picture an apple in your mind. You've got something there, but it's not really an apple, is it? It's a collection of how you think about apples. If you were colorblind, you wouldn't have a consensus apple, but you'd have an apple.

Now, picture someone named Holly in your mind. You've probably met someone with that name, right? Can you hold a conversation with her? Does that image in your mind stay around?

Sometimes that image just doesn't fade, is all. I guess I missed out on being me, since I'm fairly certain I'm that image. Just a picture of who I am – who I remember being, vividly, fully and completely. Things I thought only I could ever know. Is it just some cruel trick? Some twisted string of fate filling in the gaps? Fuck. I'm not real, I never was real, and these memories are a fabrication. I'm a maligned coping mechanism wearing the mask of someone's friend. Someone they remember. The real Holly's probably living it up right about now. The real Holly gets to have her friends, her loved ones.

I'm a simulation of a person. Everyone I ever knew is a simulation, a projection, of a person. I feel real, I feel as if I'm real, I can perceive things, but that reality's just… nothing.

After long enough alone, I started getting better at it. I could stop going to the grocery store. Just dreaming up a glass of water or some food was enough to get it to be here. I almost wanted to dream up some of my friends, but they wouldn't be real either. I would love to be content with that unreality. But I'm just not.

I'm going back to that tear and I'm jumping in. See you on the flip.

-H.S.

~

“So about Holly…”, Allison asked. “Who, exactly?”, Wendy replied. “The girl from your dream journal? Your old friend?” “I'm not sure who that might be referring to.”