A handful of people carried me through this experience and deserve thanks. I would not be here if not for them.
First is my wife, Akane. She… I don’t know how she handled it, or how she stayed, but if she hadn’t then I would have chosen annihilation. I love you, Akane, and I always will.
My children too, George and Luca. They are my reason for living. George is my divergent partner and Luca is my convergence point when I want to come back to reality. Going camping on the beach with Luca and gazing into his eyes for my first moment of true, all-encompassing empathy, are what brought me back from the edge.
My friends Mat and Ruth. I hadn’t spoken with Mat for 20 years. When things got messy and I was crying for help, all my other friends having dropped me, Mat is one of a handful of people who had the balls to stay, and I can’t thank him enough for actually talking to me when I needed someone to listen.
Leszek is an old candidate from my past life; vanished for 7 years but reached out to me about the time this madness began, and helped with maybe-unwitting guidance and the occasional Alan Watts quote. Knowing that someone else was on their own journey and hearing them talk to me like I was *not* insane was incredibly important at the time.
Duncan is the archetype of how you curate your simulation. I had never encountered someone from our walks of life who demonstrated such unfiltered joy and love toward his family. He showed me that it could be done. I just had to figure out how.
Mark has been a rock for both me and my wife throughout it all. He is fast, and detail orientated, just like me. And he actually replies, comprehensively but without making you wait. I can’t thank him enough for the support and reassurance to my wife in particular. Again, someone from half a lifetime ago.
Gosha gave me all the time in the world despite the arrival of his second child and looking for a job. Sorry for being a pest, G.
Shiena, Sebastien and Nat were all great too, though I think the crazy may have gotten a little much for them toward the end. What can I say? I dissolved the self; ha! You did well to stick around so long, when all my fair-weather friends had stopped replying.
And there’s Fred of course, a fellow divergent-as-fuck get-things-done-er. This is the guy I hope to build the first of these systems with: the medicine matching system, imaging system, and adhd cure. He is also a futurist and didn’t completely balk when I explained about the ship, quantum entanglement and simulation, because I think he knows that it is possible and can never be disproven.
And then of course there is my birth family: the reason I am here in the first place and a solid part of the reason why I remain. I had to explode them away at the start because a lot of the false self was tied up in satisfying the expectations of my internalised versions of them. But they were never like this; it was all my imagination. When I went into withdrawal, Anne and John got on a plane and came to look after their son. This helped ground me at a time when I needed grounding.
And last… I think I also need to thank the dead man I found hanging in the park. He was the final messenger I needed to see. The final reminder that we are all but meat and electricity. He was the oversized straw that broke the camel’s back and opened the floodgates to a lifetime of repressed trauma. It was not nice, but it was necessary, and his death was not in vain.
Thank you all.
James