ChendaWrites: At Work on Wikipedia and Thinking Too Much

At Work on Wikipedia and Thinking Too Much.

When I was a kid, I used to be scared all the time because I didn’t know if I existed or not. I would watch people going around me…or by me, living lives that I could neither understand nor comprehend.

I used to tell people that the world revolved around me, only because I was so scared that it did. If I wasn’t there to witness it, or to watch the news, how do I know that those things would really have happened?

Maybe that kid would not have been kidnapped, or that plane would not have struck that building.

Everything seems to happen to teach me a lesson.

Only, I can’t decode the clues fast enough and learn too slowly, so things keep happening that seem very bad and all my fault, or very good and none of my doing. That is, if badness and goodness exist at all, which they might not, but which I hope that they do, because I want to be a good person.

I wonder all the time about how the world spins on its axis. I see the tide of the ocean, when I go to the beach, crashing in and out, and so it must be true, we must be spinning. Or else, the ocean would be still and the sun would not shine in the daytime and the stars would not glimmer at night.

When my husband holds me, I feel calmer than I have in the past.

I wonder why he loves me, since I don’t exist and neither does he. But nonetheless, I am grateful to feel real with someone who feels real to me.

Existence is such a crazy sensation, isn’t it???

Consciousness, then sleeping, then waking up - and it’s the same life as it was yesterday, only, you can’t even really be sure if yesterday took place...because it could all just be some crazy trick of memory.

I watched this Star Trek episode once, where one of the characters had false memories of another life implanted in his head, which had never actually happened, but which he thought that it had, and when he woke up, everything was wrong and false and he was a stranger to himself.

Then he cried and I cried. But he never asked whether the waking up part was false as well. That made me cry even harder.

So I ate some ice cream. Because that is what you are supposed to do when you are having a crisis of faith. And because it is delicious. So, I guess that I should eat ice cream all the time. Except that, I don’t want to gain weight.

I don't want to have the scrutiny of all eyes on me.

Because, even though we don’t exist and the world is an illusion, I still want to look good in my blue jeans. And, I still want it to be, that when Randy sees me, for him to say, baby, like he really means it.

© 2010-2025 Chenda Duong

Note: "I think, therefore I am."

— René Descartes (1637)