02 - 10 The Wheel of Fortune

“Is this a joke?” I ask the Fool, holding the card for the day in my hands. The ever-turning wheel, tied together by the strings of fate, spins before me.

“What would make you think that?” He asks me. I’m still there, sitting, standing in the darkness with the voice of the Fool ringing in my mind. I can’t see him, but I do. I see him floating in the air, lying on his side. He's wearing a twin tailcoat suit. Maybe even a top hat. There’s a smile on his face.

“I was thinking about this last night.” I admit. There’s no use in hiding anything from him. He knows me. “The card at the center of them all.” Befitting really, I think. The card signaling the perpetual motion of the world sits at the center of the major arcana. I don’t believe in fate or destiny, but I believe the world is always in motion, always moving onward.

“As is our time together, isn’t it? Such a shame.” The Fool sighs. I can almost hear the sadness in his voice.

“Don’t worry Fool. The wheel may be moving forward but we still have nineteen more stories to tell.” The smile is back and more than that, I can feel the excitement is his voice. There’s an eager bounce in his step when he jumps to his feet.

“Careful now Fool. Keep sweet-talking me like that and I’ll start thinking you’re enjoying our time together.”

“This relationship is toxic.” I say aloud. But not to them. Never to them. There are a million excuses why. The one I always come back to is easiest. And it’s true. I don’t say it because in the moments when we speak, the words don’t come to me. I wish it could be like a movie. I wish the words, the truly powerful ones, would come to me when we talk. But they never do. Instead, I sit there impotently just trying to process what they’re saying while trying to keep my emotions from clouding my judgement and my words.

The words, they come after. They come when I can’t sleep at night or as I pace around my room playing and replaying our conversations. As I reflect on what has been said and on my life. They come when I have these conversations with myself: speaking to them and imagining what they would say. I imagine being interviewed by others when I one day become someone worth interviewing. I imagine speaking to my friends and think how I would explain it to them. What details would I emphasize? Would I downplay? What questions would they ask? How would I respond? It comes then. After all has been said and done. And the words no longer have any power to anyone but myself.

If even that.

It’s only then when the words come to me. Only then when I realize things like how toxic our relationship is.

But that’s not why I don’t say those words to them. It’s a reason. But it’s not the reason.

It’s because I’m afraid.

I’m afraid my convictions, my beliefs, my understanding of who I am will be shattered against the rock of their beliefs, of their understanding. I could speak to them, talk to them, tell them how I feel but I am not so confident what I know will not become what I thought. The relationship is toxic. I remind myself. But if they somehow managed to convince me it wasn’t, how much deeper into this hole would I fall? How much longer will the cycle have to repeat itself before I find my way to those words again?

But even that is not the full truth. A half of the truth but not the truth I need to speak. The one I need to say out loud. Only now, as these thoughts consume my mind after our conversation, do I realize it. Only now as I said those toxic words out loud, as I release them into the air, do I realize a deeper truth.

“I’m afraid of being wrong.” I whisper into the cage that is my room. I’m afraid I’m the one who expects too much. I’m afraid I’m the one who doesn’t try to understand. I’m afraid I’m the one who twisted reality, so it would meet my needs. I’m afraid I’m the one who misremembers the promises made. I’m afraid I’m wrong.

But I can’t allow that fear, that possibility to stop me.

“I won’t let my fear stop me.” Because even if they are right, even if I am wrong and this is the only loving relationship I will ever know, I can’t allow myself to remain shackled to them.

“It’s time to truly live in the world.” And to do so, I have to leave them. I have to leave the only home I’ve ever known. I have to leave my family.

It’s still not easy. Tugging on the film reels and strings of these stories is still as difficult as trying to pull a freight train with my bare hands. At the ends of these red strings are still broken shards of glass. Fragments of a story. But something about it has changed. Maybe it’s my feeling towards this story. Maybe it’s my understanding of what this story truly is.

“What did you mean earlier? When you asked if this was a joke?” The voice asks me as I pull on a string.

“Last night, the wheel of fortune was the card, the part of the story I was thinking about.” I realize I’d already told him this. Did he forget somehow? Or is he just playing games?

“Is it now?” There’s a bemused, shocked smile on the Fool’s face. Perhaps he’s merely playing the role of the Fool. Or is he only here when my fingers hammer away at the keys? Was he truly missing last night as I thought about the story away from the keys? Or just hiding away? I suppose that’s the same as asking whether he’s just another voice in my head. Then again, I already told him I’d been thinking about this last night. Is it even a he? Or is it a she?

“Leave me hanging why don’t you.” Her voice turns higher, matching the pitch of a recognizable female. I feel her flipping over. She was standing upright but now she hangs from nothingness like a bat. Her feet hang in the air and her head is somewhere on the same level as mine. Always caught inside that head of yours.

“The wheel of fortune was supposed to be the turning point of the story.” I keep pulling on the string. Its longer than the others. It doesn’t mean the shard of glass is any bigger, the fragment any more enlightening. It just is. “I don’t know what or when, but I imagined it closer to the middle. I imagined something between you and I changing. Between the family changing.”

But something between us has changed.

Today is going to be different. I tell myself. Parties are not my thing. Especially when I only know a single person there. But today is going to be different. I’m trying to change. To be more than I used to be. I didn’t just step off the path I’d been on most my life, I jumped off the train. I was left with little direction and a giant field of places to go. I needed to change.

So, when a girl I knew for less than a couple of months invited me to her birthday party where I didn’t know a single person: I said sure. It isn’t just that I’m a shy person, it’s that I don’t generally like people. Too easily I find reasons I don’t like talking to people. They’re too loud. We don’t have anything in common. They don’t understand. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with them; I don’t think they’re bad people. I just don’t like them.

I said yes because I’m trying to change.

“Hey! You’re here!” She says to me. I smile politely. I don’t dislike the birthday girl, I even enjoy her company. It’s part of the reason I said yes.

“Yeah. I got an ice cream cake like we talked about.” I hold up the cake to emphasize the point.

“Oh.” She looks awkwardly back into the house. “Someone else bought a cake too. But that’s okay, we can just have two.” She shrugs but it already has a hold of me. Is it okay? Is it really okay? She steps aside to let me in, so I walk in. I could tell from the cars outside, but it seems I’m the last one to the party. There’s some movie playing in the background a few people are watching and a few others are huddled around a board game.

I feel out of place. I shouldn’t have come. I don’t know these people and as easy as it is for me to feign politeness and pleasantries, it’s an irritating practice for me. I want to put the cake down and leave. It isn’t knowing that’s rude which stops me. It’s the fear. I’m already in the house. They’ve already seen me. Walking out now will only make it worse.

“Oh, we have two cakes now? Cool.” Someone says.

“Yeah, you can really pig out now!” Someone else counters. They all laugh. I laugh awkwardly along with them.

“I mostly bought it cause I wanted to eat ice cream cake.” I joke. I realize it’s bad. It highlights my selfishness. They don’t know I’m just joking. Maybe they don’t already know I didn’t know there was going to be another cake. I shouldn’t have said anything. Should have just laughed along with their joke.

They laugh at me. With me. I remind myself.

I put the cake down and she starts introducing me to everyone. Points out each person as she says their name. Some of them wave and say hi. Some of them are too focused to hear anything else. At the time, I didn’t know any of these people. By the next day, I’d forget most of them. But I had to start somewhere. I had to make the effort. And this is where it would start.

This is where I would find my first family.

The faces in the shard melt away. The string breaks and the shard of glass floats back up into the darkness. Just like with the previous one, I couldn’t see the full story. I couldn’t see what family he was saying goodbye to. It couldn’t be the one I’d seen before. It couldn’t. I refused to believe it.

And somewhere, somewhere deep down, somewhere in the darkness, I knew it too. The Sun comes after the Wheel of Fortune. And that story, the story where he says goodbye to his family. I understood that was what needed to be done to find his new family. His real family. A family full of warmth. A family that wasn’t toxic.

“You seem to know an awful lot. More than you should with these fragments floating around.” She whispers into my ear, enticing me to doubt myself. I can’t see it when I look up. All I see is darkness and the rain of strings and movie reels descending from that blackness. But I can see in the Fool’s eye he sees it all. She sees what each of those strings, those reels connect to. He sees the entire movie playing out before her.

“It has to be that. The Wheel of Fortune is about fate. About destiny. It’s the piece that propels us into the future.”

“But the wheel is a circle. And when you start at one point.” The Fool puts her pin in a wheel and spins it. “It eventually comes back.” The pin hits his outstretched finger. The smile on her face is more malicious than I ever thought I would see in him. “The cycle repeats itself.”

“No.” I stamp my feet on the ground. I pull the pin out of the wheel and toss it into the darkness. The string that demanded it be pulled floats upwards into the darkness. Disappearing. I stand across from the Fool, grabbing the wheel in my hand, gripping it so tight my fingers turn white.

“Because it’s not about this wheel.” I brandish it in his face, then toss it aside. “It’s about where it takes us.”

“You’re my emergency contact from now on.” I tell my best friend. He shrugs, gives me an empty look. It’s no big deal to him but it’s a huge deal for me.

“Sure?” He might seem aloof, but I know I can count on him. I know if push comes to shove, he won’t lose his cool. Somewhere in my mind, I know I ask him to do this because he won’t ask any questions. He doesn’t really understand it. He comes from a family. A good family. The kind where you place each other down as emergency contacts. He doesn’t understand that. But he understands I need him to do this.

“I’m moving out and cutting ties with my family.” I tell him even though he didn’t ask. I know even though he didn’t ask, it doesn’t mean he won’t listen. It’s hard to believe sometimes how much of an impact him and our randomly assembled group of friends had on me. It’s hard to believe how our group even came to be. Adults assembled person by person in the most random sequence of events to form a group of friends. We were too old for the metaphor of a box of misfit toys. Too young to be birds of a feather. We were just chickens, running around with our heads cut off who happened to bump into one another. The headless leading the headless.

“Huh. Alright.” He shrugs again. It’s an impressed but still carefree look he has on his face. It’s not that he doesn’t care; it’s that he trusts me. He knows I can handle myself and he knows I’ll ask for help if I need it. “You’ve got to settle for us instead. You poor soul.” He shakes his head. There’s an amused smile on his face but I see the hint of sadness hidden deep beneath the surface. He’s been blessed with the warmth of love from his family.

“Yep. You fuckers are my fam jam now.” I joke with him. In a movie, I’d slap his shoulder now or we’d have some secret handshake. Maybe even a bro hug. But it’s not us. It’s not me. I haven’t touched or hugged anyone in so long I don’t know how anymore. I appreciate his presence all the same.

“I’m so sorry. Welcome to hell.” He nods grimly at me. “Enjoy your stay.” It’s a welcome hell. If this group of people I somehow found myself drawn into is hell, there are no words to describe what my family used to be. They were poison in my veins. Slowly killing me from the inside out. These people, these friends: they are people I would walk through hell with.

“I’m not staying long; I’m moving remember?” I grin. He nods unimpressed at me. He knows what I really mean.

“So, when do you require our labor?”

“Why this story?” I ask the Fool. Or maybe I’m just asking myself. I’m no longer sure.

Why indeed? For tis the wheel of f’rtune tisn’t it?” He stands there with his chin in his hand. Those all-seeing eyes look between his feet though to the darkness in the sky above. I know she knows. She knows why this story, she just won’t say.

The Wheel of Fortune. The winds of fate. The call of destiny. These are powerful, life-changing moments. The birth of his daughter. Meeting his wife. Finding the lake. But these stories? These are nothing. Perhaps the realization of his toxic relationship with his family. Arguably the party where he’s trying to change. But why this? Why this dull, dreary conversation? There is nothing important here. Nothing life changing. There is no fate or destiny here. This is nothing compared to the birth of his daughter.

“And yet the string thou hast pulled upon did show this unto thee.” Why? Why these insignificant moments? This humdrum of life? What is the meaning of this?! I grab the shard and toss it against the ground. It shatters into hundreds of fragments, each one holding a small piece of the story.

“Because.” The Fool says, hovering over the shard, standing between me and those broken bits of the story. Wisps of the story float up from the broken shards, but she obscures them from sight. She looks away from me. Instead, she looks at the ghostly images left behind. “Because something came before it all. Because long before his daughter came into the picture, something changed within us. Because something set us on this path. A path into the darkness. And one day, before we ever saw a light, we started on a path out of it.”

“The ancient romans had many things going for them. They built amazing structures, they had an amazing army, intricate political systems. They were a massive, incredible civilization. One of the most amazing things Romans had was plumbing. Over two thousand years ago, a civilization had plumbing! It’s incredible! But it would become part of their downfall.”

“They used lead in their pipes. There’s some debate but it’s possible the Romans poisoned themselves with lead which led to the decay of their empire. Just think, part of what made their civilization, their people so amazing is part of what contributed to their destruction.” Those are the words that I think about now. Lessons from a social teacher I hope to never have to listen to again.

I’m not like other people. They do it because they can’t live with themselves. They do it because they’re embattled with their emotions. They have things they can’t face, things they’re terrified of and angry about. They settle on a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Those things are there for me to but it’s not why I do this.

I do it because I question the point of existence. The meaning of life isn’t what brings me to this point. I know what it is: the meaning of life is to create your own. It’s to create a life. It’s the point of existence that brings me here. Even if I change the lives of everyone on Earth, a billion years, a trillion years, on a universal time scale, all life will one day end. There are innumerable possibilities in this wide, unknowable universe but they all lead to one, undeniable truth: the end of the world. A permanent solution to a temporary problem.

And so, no matter how much joy and love there is in my life, no matter how much joy and love will one day or ever will be on this planet, it will all one day be for not. And it means all the pain, all the confusion, all the anger I feel, will also be for not. And if that is the case, if everything we do leads to the same end, I would rather not live at all.

I feel it all so strongly. The rage building in my chest. My body trembles when I speak with them, begs for me to act. Every word they speak reminds me why I am angry with them. Every action they take, seen or unseen, triggers my rage. The callousness of their actions and often times, inaction, call out to the fury in me. The disrespect they have for the things around them, for the world around them. It begs for my absolute wrath to rain down upon their heads.

But they are not bad people. I always remind myself. I hate that I can remind myself of that. Guilt by inaction is not the same as guilt by action. And more than that, their needs are simply different than mine. The house we live in is not alive. It does not have feelings the way I have feelings. Regardless of whether I feel this building’s emotions or not.

They are not the bad people: I am.

I am the one who feels this burning rage inside my chest. I am the one who wants to punish them for what they’ve done. I am the one who wants to make them responsible for their actions. For a house that is not real. For an object that does not have emotions. There is not something wrong with them. There is something wrong with me.

I can no longer bear it. I can no longer hide it. If I continue to exist, one day, this rage will erupt from within me. The words I speak to them will no longer be enough. I am responsible for my thoughts and feelings. I am responsible for my actions. I am responsible for the things I know I am capable of. With existence, comes responsibility.

I break pencils all the time. I’m too strong for my own good and I write with a heavy hand. I collect the broken pieces of lead because I can still write with them. My fingers are small enough to grasp the tiny pieces of lead. I don’t want to waste them. They won’t be wasted anymore.

I take a handful of them. There’s an assortment of colors. They’re from all the colored pencils I use. I stare at them for a second. Thank them for they’ve done for me. For what they’ll do to me. I don’t know how long it will take. I just hope it works. I throw them into my mouth.

I swallow.

The memory in the shard rewinds and begins to replay. The child in the memory couldn’t have been more than ten years old. I knew who it was. It was a faceless memory, but I could see his face there. He was probably about the same age as his daughter. So many questions assault my mind.

How does he feel when he realizes the lead doesn’t kill him? How does he feel when he learns it’s graphite and not lead in those pencils? What does he do? Does he attempt it again? This time with something more dangerous? This is the Wheel of Fortune. The story of things being set in motion. Is this only, is this merely the first attempt? He survives. He has too. I saw him after this point.

Didn’t I?

What if it’s not one continuous story? What if this isn’t the same him? What if the love he sent back never reached himself? Are these really just stories?

“Which question do you need answered Fool?” She asks me. I stand there with the memory playing in my hands. In the seconds before it completes a loop, I watch it a hundred, a thousand times. I feel everything he feels over and over until I know the one question I need answered.

“What card is next?”