the reality of time travel
creating in survival is both magical and heartbreaking.
I’ve been here before.
This state, this understanding.
And yet, the future stretches into darkness, the unknown forcing presence. The past becoming information rather than identity, the awareness unfolding into something else entirely.
Hollywood has a very simple portrayal of time travel and magic as a whole. More literal, less real. More external, less internal. But when you experience the deja vu of a lost memory or the out of body experience of a future you are now present of, time travel takes on a whole new meaning. Constantly being reminded of places I don’t remember or learning lessons I’ve forgotten, what is memory but discovery? And what is time travel but an expansion of your current reality?
Shifting constantly, there goes another apostrophe testing my autonomy. Taking a deep dive into my own psychology, expanding my philosophy. Traveling through space experiencing time consciously. My mind drawing blanks yet I feel things with such ferocity. Energy in motion, what is stillness but acceptance?
Knowledge becoming reminders, definitions becoming looser. Who am I outside of what I know of myself? Who am I becoming vs who I’ve always been? Embracing the present as opposed to understanding the idea of it. There’s nothing like the life you knew transforming into a life you can’t comprehend igniting an entire paradigm shift.
Destruction as embodiment.
I’ve been working through a block, one that has taken me a bit to digest. I haven’t been creating in the way that I was before, the heaviness requiring an entirely new approach. I’ve been elevating, my external crumbling in real time.
There are moments where I lose sight of purpose, wondering what’s the point of my existence. Spiteful because I believe in miracles yet I’m still in pain. Losing so much, loving so hard; my energy feeling misplaced like everything is wrong. Am I wrong?
Creating from nothing felt like my dreams were haunting me, the details always changing, a constant yearning. When will it be fucking over?
What did I want to be over, the pain or the creating? In survival, they fused together with my identity. Definitions belong to words not people. Yet here I was, defining my existence with what was happening to me rather than who I decided to be.
What do you do when you believe in magic but not that it can happen to you?
Creating in survival is magical because the feeling of possibility is like experiencing rain during a drought. Creating in survival is heartbreaking because look at what I had to go through to know such contrast.
Survival feels like punishment when you believe in abundance.
The grief doesn’t go away, only my perspective shifts. There will always be a part of me that was in so much agony that I didn’t want to exist. For what? If my joy can’t sustain me and only pain seems to find me, where can I go to experience relief?
Sometimes I feel light years ahead and other times, I feel left behind, occupying a place that people have deemed unworthy by a mere glance. I felt like I was crumbling under pressure because the pressure was coming from me. There was no escape from this painful reality.
Or so I thought.
Because what is reality but perspective in motion? A steady stream of possibilities that require action? Navigation is personal, your internal compass shaped by experiences and decisions.
“who are you but your beliefs translated into choices?”
To experience is to be in constant movement. A lack of decision creates the illusion of stagnation, an experience of sameness.
Or maybe you ask the universe for what you want and in order to receive it, you must become it. And in order for you to become it, you must become aware of what you already are. And in order for you to become aware of what you already are, you must face it.
There’s no running away from becoming. There’s no hiding from desire. There’s no acceptance without acknowledgement. There’s no growth without understanding.
In 2016, I graduated college. I stayed in Lithonia, Georgia where my family was staying before I moved up to New Jersey to stay with my college roommate turned into regular roommate when we moved to Brooklyn. In 2023, I was living in LA when my work contract ended. Not knowing what my next move was as I was building my business, I took my sister up on her offer to stay with her in Tampa as I figured it out in 2024.
In 2025, I became homeless, pushed out by a sister who couldn’t hide her truth with my proximity. With my heart broken and no where else to go after my airbnb was up, I stayed in Lithonia with the same folks who housed my family prior.
Before, I only stayed two months because I couldn’t deal with the chaos. This time around, I didn’t make it to two months before the masks fell and I was kicked out again by those who believed in a selfless fearful god, my gratitude not enough of a payment for my presence. Their contradicting beliefs manifested in their decision while quoting a prophet they couldn’t live up to.
For 4 months, I was withering away in my attempt to keep my head above water. In February 2026, I traveled back to New York City after the same roommate offered their home to me. Since then, I’ve been in a state of constant alchemy, extracting wisdom from my agony. I’m giving my pain purpose, a reclamation of self.
Growing up, I dreamt of a best friend in the whirlwind of constant movement. I didn’t realize that my dreams became a reality 13 years ago during my freshman year of college.
Staying with someone who let’s me rest, who witnesses my pain without pressure is a love I didn’t realize I already had. Understanding what reciprocity feels like has been a whole other learning process. A process that has been just as magical and heartbreaking. Sometimes you don’t know what you didn’t have until you encounter it.
So this is love.
When you have the courage to wonder, you develop the elasticity to receive.
My empathy always expanded beyond my reach yet somehow my humanity was always in question. Hurt people hurt people but why did I deserve the remnants of pain I didn’t inflict? I’m not the one who hurt you.
I was told that I made it look easy which is why my siblings didn’t think that I had endured any trauma of my own. Because I didn’t perpetuate the violence around me, I must have avoided it’s impact. I didn’t know what it was like to be the older two but they didn’t know what it was like to be me. I love them more than they love themselves.
I can’t heal people, a harsh lesson I’ve had to learn in cycles. I can only reflect. Maybe that’s why heartbreak feels like shattered glass, pieces cutting you as you try to put them back together wondering how will you survive this. Who am I without the people I love?
I was told that I made it out only to tumble back into poverty when the system deemed I wasn’t necessary. Tools replacing humans as if tools don’t need humans to make them useful.
There’s this feeling of dreaming of the future while being present. Creating as well as grieving, having the strength to carry two worlds simultaneously.
Alchemy as instinct, a survival technique, a mystery to those around me.
The transmutation of action, experiencing curiosity rather than intellectualizing it. Intellectualizing is an experience but experiences can go beyond thought.
Creating in survival has been a mirror for the ways I’ve been restricted. Growing up in poverty, “escaping” it by going the “right” way, only to end up at the bottom again. A mythical ladder only designed for a few.
Creating in survival has also been a mirror for the ways in which creativity has no bounds. For every day I thought I wouldn’t make it, somehow I did.
I was coming to terms with my story, recognizing the journey. Patience isn’t punishment, it’s love wrapped up in presence, a gentle acceptance.
It turns out my pain isn’t a burden, it’s love disguised as separation. I’d rather love hard than to isolate in resentment. What is heartbreak but evidence of a heart in the first place?
Would the blues exist without the pain that birthed it?
Would I?
The reality of time travel exists within the mundane. Our planet is not only spinning and moving around the Sun but traveling through space along side it. As the Sun moves, it takes the planets and asteroids with it, orbiting the center of the Milky Way galaxy. We don’t exist in the space that we were once in therefore we literally travel time every second of every day.
Every thought is potential and every decision is a portal.
Creating in survival feels like magic because it seems impossible. Creating in survival feels like heartbreak because it seems impossible.
But what is impossible in the face of infinity?
In the face of love?
In the face of creativity?
In the face of me?
m.c.
