Suddenly the future seems more promising. And fun.

Reader, I'm happy you've joined me as I journey into a gradual yet inevitable loss of my grip on reality, for today I have reached an important milestone in my descent: I saw myself of the future.

Obviously not me since my hair doesn't do that. And it's daytime.

Not in the future. We're not doing some time-travel-y crap. She was a customer at the restaurant where I am a hostess, a middle-aged Japanese woman eating dinner with her husband. But seated on the bench next to her was a stuffed teddy bear, and every once in a while, the woman would take the food in her chopsticks and hold it up to her bear's mouth for a second or two before she ate the bite herself.

Oh. my. god. That is something I personally should have grown out by now but have not, and I am so glad that this woman 10+ years my senior hasn't either. It was encouraging to see someone with my strange reality-bending idiosyncrasies as a functional member of society rather than a psychiatric hospital patient. Sure, she might get some weird looks, but she is living her inner life permanently. Perhaps I too can be free to act out my desire to throw paper leaves at the injured to crit heal them. Or walk around draped in fake tentacles to symbolize Cthulhu's grip on human consciousness. And be married too!

Besides, I'm sure there are people out there who appreciate and find joy in experiencing this woman's presence. Like the family that once caught me walking my stuffed dalmatian plushie Snarf in Central Park and asked me while laughing jovially if he "went."

I said, "Yes, he did," and then waved to the actual dog that they were walking.

Snarf waved too.

-Avia.