Transmitting Divine Communication Through a Vanity License Plate Is Pretty Ham-Fisted
The idea is rather camp, isn’t it? I’m not trying to tell God how to do her job, it’s just not what I would have personally chosen if I was omnipotent. I’d also stay away from the constellations, angel numbers—anything blatantly ambiguous. I feel like when you have all the power in the universe it’s a bit overkill to also be so flagrantly cryptic. Take the melodrama down a notch or six. Then again, maybe throwing in a bit of esoteric codebreaking is her way of surreptitiously taking the edge off when a message concerns some devastating shit. It’d be like staging a fun little scavenger hunt on a sinking ship with the grand prize being the knowledge that you’re about to perish.
Have you ever had a best friendship or long-term relationship that was over well before you were made aware of it? Anyone who read that question and solemnly answered yes probably went on to take a brief pause to collect themselves, because just the memory of how it brought them to their knees is enough to steal the wind for a minute. Even worse, have you ever peeled off rose-colored glasses that you were prepared to wear for the rest of your days only to discover your connection was never real, or they never cared about you to begin with?
Without getting into specifics, that’s been the realm of suffering I’ve been working with for the last several weeks. It’s made me feel a bit like Nigel, the world’s loneliest seabird, realizing his lifelong mate is a decoy made of concrete.
Luckily for Nigel, he died before he could make that soul-crushing discovery. This is not my favorite period of my life, I’m gonna be real. Having previous experience is only so helpful for these sorts of things. There are hits you can take in this world so horrible—like heartbreak, the death of a loved one, being involuntarily locked up in a mental hospital, heroin withdrawal, and much more—that having the knowledge of what they’re actually like does little to steel your resolve to weather the next one; if anything your grippy sock collection makes you more fearful of what’s to come. I’ll a-picture-is-worth-a-thousand-words my pain level for you, just so we can get on with the story. I have a whiteboard in my apartment where I write things I’d like to accomplish for the week. Sometimes, I’ll draw a little something on there to express the general vibe of said week. At the start of this one, I’d drawn a red vertical line with a row of black horizontal ones down its length to represent a stitched wound that’s healing. After the massive amount of weeping that’d gone down on Monday, I felt I’d gotten a bit hasty with making the presentation so neat and clean. To correct this, I started adding streams of blood leaking out of the cut immediately after each time my face did the same, and by Sunday it definitely represented the week’s emotional component much more proportionally:
I tried to add some bruises with the blue but it wasn’t really working. Hopefully, that paints a picture. Or dry-erases it, as the case may be. Moving on: I woke up around 4:30 in the morning with about 4 hours of sleep, which isn’t uncommon for me because I’m 38 and I did hard drugs for 18. I started when I was 14. I may actually never have a good night’s rest again, unfortunately. My mother—who’s very religious, and knows I’m going through something tough—sent me a quote from someone in the clergy at 4:25 in the morning. I quit social media months ago, but I was so heavily addicted for years that I still check my phone right when I wake up even though I logically know there’s nothing to see. This particular morning, however, there was a text from my mom that reads:
My first thought was, “Hoo-ey! Look at that ten-dollar word, Jack—I guess they go all out for English classes at the Vatican,” and my second was, “Also, a deep mystery cannot be explicated or it ceases to exist; inexplicability is basically the whole ass definition.” I’ve regrettably spent a lot of time in my life rolling my eyes at these sorts of displays of her faith, but at this moment all I could see was someone who earnestly gave a shit about how I felt showing up for me. I appreciated it. My morning time is just for me, though, so I left it on delivered. I’d answer it shortly. I hobbled to the bathroom, took a piss, then sat down in the corner and sobbed a bit.
After I cleaned up my snot, I opened an astrology app to potentially get some insight into the fucked up condition of my life. I’m always on the fence about astrology, but I will admit that I use the apps a lot more when things are difficult versus when they are relatively fine. I think it’s because they almost always have a spookily accurate interpretation of my current predicament, and it’s oddly calming when I’m suffering immensely to remember there are always energies beyond my scope and comprehension at play at any given time. “Who knows what the fuck is happening—or why? Definitely not this guy,” I’ll say to comfort myself as I’m crawling through some harrowing emotional minefield, all bloodied up by fond memories gone sour. The day before, I’d been given a heads up from the same app about how over the next 8 months or so, I could look forward to my soul being shit out of a butt after it’s been devoured:
Now it was the day after, and I was facing another bad forecast that said, “It can seem like an immense gravitational force is making you look inward. On the extreme end, it might appear that your entire identity is being dismantled and everything you know is being destroyed.” “Oh joy,” I dryly grumbled to no one. I swiped to another slide that read, “You might imagine worst-case scenarios, worrying that you'll be stuck living an unfulfilled life or never get what you want. You may be experiencing feelings and circumstances you've never felt or known before,” and I thought, “Well, you’ve certainly made sure of that haven’t you,” but I was only half-joking. I know this would all still be happening astrology app or no. I’m gonna keep it 100, The forecast was depressing as fuck, but it paradoxically made me feel less psychotic to know I might be feeling like shit for reasons beyond my control. That’s not to shirk the responsibility of looking at my part in the separation in question so I can be a better person to other people down the road. Maybe it just makes the emotional violence seem less senseless if it’s framed as part of a larger narrative we aren’t fully aware of—I don’t know.
This next part is going to require a touch of explanation. I’ve been Uber driving in Las Vegas for the last year or so. Drivers are given bonuses in various ways, and Surge Pricing is one of those. A Surge Price is an upfront bonus on top of your fare anywhere from 1 to 30 dollars that you get for being in the same GPS location. Here’s a visual aid:
On the driver’s end, it looks like a weather map, with the reddest clouds representing the highest surge rate. For whatever reason, this Friday morning the whole map was dead—save for one small red cloud around the MGM Grand steadily hovering around the 10 to 15 dollar range. I usually don’t chase after surge prices so far away because they’re likely to change before I can make it to their location, and I’ve learned that the hard way. This particular day, however, the cloud over the Grand stayed static for hours. Eventually, FOMO got the better of me, and I hopped in my 2013 Ford Explorer to attempt to cash in if at all possible.
I customarily barreled through traffic on Tropicana Ave. because they’re always dawdling on the roads in Vegas. A deep mystery I have yet to explicate myself is why everyone in Nevada drives like they’re a couple of years away from the retirement home or permanently baked. Weed is legal here but that’s not the whole enchilada—not by a long shot. That’s mainly because none of this analysis applies to anyone with a California license plate; they’re all definitely high as fuck, and they still drive like they got their paperwork drawn up at a DMV located in Hell and run by Satan. I somehow managed to make it to the Uber pick-up area at the Grand in time to catch the surge price, which is inside their parking garage. As I pulled inside, I saw every Uber driver in the city who had the same idea piling up like flies on shit, and taking up all the parking spots. Against all odds, I manage to instantly snag one while only half paying attention. I was trying to send a voice messaging my mom about her forgiveness text before my next ride about how I didn’t want to deny my anger. I told her, “I wish I didn’t have any rage towards anyone who’d ever hurt me, and I wish there wasn’t a hint of outrage now, but that’s not the situation.” I went on, “I’m willing to learn to forgive them; I just don’t know what that takes. For now, that’s the best I got.” Just then, I read a vanity license plate right within eyeshot:
I took a pic and sent it to my mother with the caption, “oh, so u think ur funny don’t u,” all wry and shit, but truth be told, I thought it was a riot. I could not get over the Nokia brick 3310 text message formatting and the content’s idiosyncrasy. My question is this: outside the context of a personal message from universal consciousness to forgive a former best friend for abandoning our relationship, what the fuck does that mean? Just pragmatically speaking. Is it a preemptive sorry for cutting people off in traffic or something? I guess either way it’s a reaction to the gall of someone acting like your life or well-being doesn’t matter. There was nothing else to do but go on about my business with my persistent delusion of a cold and uncaring universe with zero sense of humor once again thoroughly shattered.
Later on, I was driving back home and it spontaneously occurred to me that I’d always been very severe with people who caused me harm. For most of my life, I’ve harshly closed myself off to former friends once I felt I’d been crossed. It was radio silence for the rest of my life unless I got an apology I’d never tell them I wanted. Even if I got it, I’d never be able to bring myself to get closer than arm’s length again. In my mind, I was better off without their faux companionship. There was only one problem. My mind does not know what the fuck it’s talking about, or what is going on. In any given set of circumstances. It’s trauma-informed and seeing through a kaleidoscope of defense mechanisms. “Nevertheless,” I thought, “I’ll never understand how they could claim to love me and knowingly reconfirm my lifelong fear of abandonment. You know, the one we spent years talking about.” The following thought was something to the effect of, “If you were able to access self-love, you wouldn’t be so dejected when they inevitably let you down. Disappointment is unavoidable because you’re all selfish and imperfect, but you’re putting an unfair amount of pressure on them to meet emotional needs you can only fulfill for yourself.” It felt like it had been beamed into my head. I barked out loud to an empty Ford Explorer, “That sounded so fucking smart it must’ve come from somewhere else.” Maybe it could be explained away as a dollop of serendipity on top of some sentimental tomfoolery supplied by my subconscious if you’re an Atheist; maybe it could be attributed to God or Allah if you’re not. If you follow the Buddha, maybe it’s just the selfless and impersonal nature of all phenomena expressing itself through consciousness. Hell, maybe it’s my wavering thetan level if you’re a Scientologist (I do not know how thetans work at all). Any way you slice it, it’s not the caliber of concept my day-to-day mind has ever been able to come up with by itself. By that logic, I decided to take it to heart. I told myself there were much worse ways to be spurred into contemplating something meaningful enough that it makes you grow as a person than reading a vanity plate on the back of someone’s car.