Therefore, I Think I Am

I.                    “When I discover who I am, I’ll be free.” 
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

I have no friends. Or at least I don’t think I do. I can’t be sure, since my thoughts do not seem to be my own. I have no memory of my childhood, my teen years. I could not even tell you how old I am. As near as I can tell, I am middle age, but this is based only on the sound of my voice. My looks are unimportant, or at least that’s what some part of me knows instinctively. I could be tall, short, thin, fat, dark, light… whatever I am, it matters little to my story.

I may, in fact, be the Invisible Man of literature. If you want to, you could call me Griffin, but that is his sobriquet, not mine, though I may be just as hard to see. Somehow I know what my real name is, but it is as unimportant as my appearance.

What do matter are the nightmares that haunt me. At least I hope they are nightmares, for if this is reality then I would prefer madness. I used to think that the events I am about to impart to you were simply my life, but one only goes through life once, not the dozens that I have experienced. None of them are exactly the same, but there are similarities that unite all iterations, that unite each march made to a destination that never ends in peaceful oblivion.

Now I am not a religious man, though I may utter the odd imprecation. I have always instead preferred to trust in being in control of my own destiny, my own path trod by my willing feet. Yet, as the following will show you, I have slowly come to understand something about my world and my role in it.

I am not as powerful as I think.

Despite my ability to call to mind philosophy from Jainism to Nietzsche, I have never read anything that gives me an answer to this impotence. I could hide behind Descartes and pretend that the existence of my thoughts must mean that I exist, that I am. I could hide behind Jainism and claim that the endless iterations, the seemingly endless cycle mean that I am meant to learn some universal truth before I can move forward to another existence.

 But if I must learn some truth, what can this possible truth be? As you will find, my body has walked through all the paths open to me and the only truth apparent to me is that I am unique in my impotence. I cannot exit my world, no matter what happens to me. I cannot leave my world, no matter how much I may wish to move on.

So it seems I am forced, in my loneliness, to experience the same events for eternity.

Forgive me my digression. The endless cycling has encouraged me to consider all implications, realistic or theoretical. Unfortunately, philosophy will not tell my story. While I may digress again, let me return to describe the phenomenon that haunts me.

 These fever dreams all begin the same way, waking in a room assailed by fluorescent lighting. The room itself is unremarkable, four simple walls, each blindingly white and somehow fuzzy and indistinct. Forever on the floor, I sit up slowly, seeing equally fuzzy hands flex as I rise. I do not get to my feet, somehow there are no feet, yet my view ascends until I am perpendicular to the ground.

There is little else to see in the room, despite a change in perspective. Or perhaps there is, but I never find myself able to move. My body always rebels against my desires for locomotion, to turn my head, to do anything. (Call me an optimist, no matter how many times I experience these events, but I always struggle to claim self-determination.) Yet I am ever compelled to inaction by some unseen force that keeps hands immobile and feet fettered firmly to the floor. Inevitably, I give up as my attempts increasingly become futile, and resign myself to waiting as an eerie high pitched whine joins the assault on my senses.

I know the wall will shatter behind me as the whine builds to its fever pitch, I know that a small monster will swarm through the hole to attack me, I know that I will slash my hand almost delicately at it, as if in some parody of actual combat, and the monster will cry out and fall to the ground in a tidy mess of blood and viscera. I know all of this, and continue to pray that it will be different.