Note from the Author: This one is a bit heavy. Sorry everyone. More lighthearted content coming soon! I promise.

July 15, 2019

Now I knew time travel didn’t exist, for if it did, I know that today is the day my future self would have reappeared to give me support.

Growing up, I would always test it. If time travel is real, I would say, I should reappear to myself on this date to prove it, promising I would never forget that date. My future self would not appear, and of course, I would promptly forget the date.

But today is a day I know I will not forget. Sitting here next to this river, sun beating down. Today is the day I know if time travel was real my future self would be walking up that jogging path to mentor me, support me, tell me it will be okay, rather than a collection of random people passing by enjoying the heat.

So now I know for certain. Time travel doesn’t exist.

October 3, 2052

I brushed off my guitar today. Haven’t played it in probably 40 years. Other than some strange evidence indicating a family of animals might have lived in it somewhere around the 30s, it looks and sounds the same.

I’ve decided to take singing lessons. I’ve never been much of a singer. Maybe as a kid, one of those voices that sings a solo in church and everyone says you were so good. Translation: the lisp caused by your missing tooth was adorable.

Despite my age, I’ve decided to get serious. I’ve signed up with one of the premiere vocal coaches in New Raleigh.  Refuse to use one of those programs that naturally augments your vocal chords but learn how to do it right from a real person. Might take longer but it feels right.

Besides, I’ve got time.

July 15, 2019                                                                            

How can any one place be this hot? 

I thought getting out of the car would help but one sweat soaked shirt later I had doubts.

Today I had enough. I’d try to explain to you why I felt the way I do, but if I could explain it, I could fix it. This feeling is something I cannot fix. Trust me I’ve tried.

You were probably right. It’s a combination of everything, magnified by my refusal to eat or drink. Once again, if I could, I would. Even now the very mention of food makes me nauseous.

If I had to describe what I was feeling, the only world that comes to mind is empty.

No, empty isn’t right. Empty implies it once was full. I don’t feel empty. I feel void. Inside I feel an insatiable hunger for anything that is not emptiness. It’s like a black hole lodged directly in my chest, grasping at any ounce of light and sucking it from existence until all that is left is emptiness.

The only emotion that seems to be able to escape the void is anger. Pure seething uncontrollable anger. 

I should add the word irrational. Rational anger could not escape the void. Only anger so pure that logic cannot calm it.

I haven’t even mentioned the worst part. The anger is so uncontrollable that the only safe thing to do is turn it on myself. I’ve got to protect those around me, people I care for that also care for me. I can never let the anger hurt them, so I do the only thing else I can think to do.

I turn it on me.

February 25, 2057

Singing and playing an instrument is hard. No one tells you that. I guess it might come naturally to some people, but to me it is like splitting the creative part of your brain in half demanding it do two competing things at once.

Now that I think of it, singing and playing is easy. Singing and playing and doing both well at the same time is impossible.

My vocal coach says I’m improving, but I know where her pay checks come from so I don’t trust a word she says. Her name is Madeleine Montenegro. Mr. Montenegro died in the war, and she remarried but kept his name. She says she likes the alliteration, but I think it also had to do with the fact her only solo vocal album had been published under that name. #1 on the charts for nearly a day.

She still kept the album proudly displayed over the piano alongside a calendar she refused to change. It was underneath her greatest success where we practiced every Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. 

Listening to myself sing now I realize that maybe I should add a Thursday timeslot as well. I need the extra help.

It’s okay though. I’ve got time.

July 15, 2019

I lost my cool.

I went from one moment calm to the next wide eyed, like a mouse dropped in an unknown expanse with nothing but predators around.

I could feel it coming, building. I tried to push it down, deflect, find a healthier outlet.

Yet every strategy only led to further frustration, added reminders of what I knew was coming. A total melt down. The kind two year olds cannot control but adults are expected to overcome without a second thought.

I’m not one of those adults. I don’t claim to be. Though I might try.

So the pressure exploded. First internally as it ravaged every safe hold within my soul then externally. First stop, the front door of my tiny apartment. The deadbolt a thin barrier slowing my overwhelming need to escape. I had no where to go. No where in mind. All I knew was I had to get as far away from my feelings as possible. I couldn’t flee with this door in front of me.

So I threw the door open. I fled to my car. I could feel the void following me. I ran faster and it closed the gap. I got in my car and it sat in the passenger seat.

Exhausted from the amount of energy it took to flee, I started the engine. Barely able to lift my arms I pulled out of my parking spot and into the world.

Voices of loved ones echoed in my head, “just be safe.”

I couldn’t think about that now. My focus bound by my captor. The void had me, and all I could do was drive, hoping I would lose the part of me threatening to destroy me entirely along the way.

May 2, 2067

Madeleine says my voice is improving dramatically. I know she is lying, but I figure I might as well pretend to believe her. It is good for her self-confidence. 

Anyways it doesn’t matter much anymore. I booked my first performance. Probably my only performance too. The dates were filling up and you have to lock them in so early. Even if I could get another date, I couldn’t afford it. The cost keeps skyrocketing.

So I have to make my performance count.

Only one year left to fine tune my playlist set. Problem is I don’t know how many songs I need to have in my set. Probably enough to fill four or five hours of continuous singing, a challenge for someone that can actually sing… which I cannot.

It’s okay. I’ve got time. One year to be exact.

July 15, 2019

Water has always been my happy place. The sound of waves beating casually against the shore, relentless, occasionally terrifying, but always constant.

There is a certain sound smaller bodies of water make as they hit a shallow combination of stones and sand. It’s less powerful than ocean waves, which more so serve as a constant reminder of how much the ocean wants to dominate you if given the chance.

The softer waves are something simpler, more pure. A reminder from God that you are a part of something bigger and not alone.

Even when I am the only one for miles, tiny waves sometimes are the only place I feel not alone.

I found this place by accident.

My eyes had started to fade on the highway, unable to concentrate on what was in front of them so I had exited. Not so much to save myself but to save the people in the cars around me. I couldn’t risk the void taking them too.

With no place to go and no time to be there, I drove slow, oftentimes accelerating aggressively and still not reaching the speed limit. I followed the path of least resistance, traveling straight, left, or right as dictated by the changing street signs. 

I hesitated only once to text two words: “I’m sorry.”

Sent to those I love. Not because I was sorry for how I felt. I couldn’t control that anymore than a person controls the sun each morning. I was sorry I had failed to tame the void before it began to reach out to them, grasping at new holds in new souls.

I found the park by accident. A series of unplanned turns led me to a parking lot overlooking a river.

In the middle of nowhere I wasn’t alone.

The void had followed me every step of the way.

October 30, 2067

Madeleine finally made me tell her why I was practicing so hard. I guess I might have been getting a bit intense. I’ve been singing so much even the sound of my breathing sounds tired.

I wasn’t sure how I expected her to react when I told her, but I didn’t expect her to volunteer to join me in the performance. Still she did and refused to change her mind.

As memory serves her offer make sense. Something I’d forgotten, but it feels right even if I am still surprised by her offer. Madeleine is not poor, but a trip like this is expensive. I may have given her a lot of money in lessons but not nearly enough to cover the travel fees to get to this performance.

A duet.

I’d been practicing for a solo performance.

We had work to do.

Luckily, I still had time.

July 15, 2019

My phone reminds me of a missed call from my dad. I don’t want to talk to him. I don’t want to talk to anyone really.

The amount of energy required to lift words out of me hard to quantify.

They say the only way to get through it is to simply do it, but they don’t know what I face. They don’t know how they would cope if faced by the same future.

I know how I would cope. Faced with the situation. I would end up next to a river I had never seen before warring against myself.

I had lost.

May 1, 2068

Gig’s tomorrow. Too nervous to even look at my guitar or the full list of rules I’d placed alongside it. I have no plans to read them now. Besides I’d read them a thousand times over the years. The punishments for not following the rules explicitly was severe, so severe I’d signed the contract without reading the full list. Didn’t matter. What I was doing didn’t break any of them, far as I could tell. This gig is what I had done. It’s what I had always done. 

I was certain of it.

How could that be wrong?

Here goes nothing.

July 15, 2019

The water wasn’t helping. Not enough at least.

The void was too strong. Even the sun beating against my pale skin wasn’t enough to shake the fear, the doubt, the sadness.

I try to rally my energy again. Will my legs to lift me from the bench. Nothing.

Then out of the nothing, I hear something. Something I didn’t notice before.

A man’s voice singing and playing the guitar. Now there is a woman’s voice too. Somewhere in the distance down the river, I can almost make out what looks like a riverside bar. The sound is carrying across the water from there.

The singing is nothing special. I can’t make out every word but from what I can tell, it is a generic popular music hits set. Perfect songs to play for a random crowd on a sultry Sunday afternoon as they drink a beer down by the water.

As much as I want to ignore it, the average singing is having an effect.

I begin to see things that had always been there but I hadn’t noticed.

A kayaker floating by. Two people in a canoe. A police boat circling at a slow crawl with its double engines barely creating a wave. A family of three women walking along the shoreline. A crowded speed boat full of party goers wrapping up a Sunday thrill ride.

I listened to the couple’s duet for as long as I could until the sun started to burn my skin. Reluctantly, I got up to leave, wishing I could sit just a few more moments on the shore of this river listening to the man and woman sing their songs in the distance.

It was time to go home. 

The void wasn’t gone but it was quieter now. Hopefully that would be enough.

May 1, 2068

The gig is over. Madeleine and I played the full set list for four hours without stopping. She didn’t even look at me, simply focused on singing with all of her heart for every song, without knowing which song would be the most important one on that day. I did the same. It was all I could do.

My fingers are raw. My voice is gone. As I look at myself in the mirror, I realize it was a one time performance for this musician.

I hope it helped.

I know it did.

July 16, 2019