Cognitive Dissonance

by Lucas Jackson Peterka

This will be about white supremacy. I initially tried to trick myself into thinking I was writing about race, but my internalization of white power is so severe I have no choice except to call it what it is. White power. White oppression. White destruction.

I just got off the phone with my mother, who told me, “You sound tired or out of it.”

All I said was, “Hello.”

Can she hear the whiteness in my voice? Has my mask of ironic indifference finally given way beneath the avalanche of hatred?

I hate you. Not the reader, no. You specifically.

Don’t play dumb with me—you know exactly who you are. You’re the only one reading this who knows where I am going with it. I’ve chosen to confuse everyone else, but you know exactly what I am going to say.

And you don’t get to hear me say it right away. No, we have to sit here and suffer the snowstorm. I am not even close to getting to what I want to talk about and I can sense an inner urge to infinitely digress. I want to write nonsense until this piece is done. I want to blink and be looking at the end. I have literally no desire to be fascinated. It’s not that I don’t want to obsess, it’s that I cannot.

Yet, obsession is what I need to demand of myself. It’s not enough to simply exist—to write one sentence at a time. There needs to be a goal. Something I am building towards. Something I am doing otherwise I will just be here forever. Constantly, endlessly easing myself into the pool one inch at a time.

I don’t know how to swim. I used to, very briefly. Then they cut off my foot and I never got around to re-learning how to. Everyone else gets to only learn it once, why should I have to do it twice? It’s simply not fair. I would rather drown. I would rather find myself spluttering and sinking after my plane crashes somewhere in the Atlantic than in a swim class.

It’s not like they would know how to teach me anyway. I am so spectacularly crippled that the old tricks wouldn’t work on me and we both know that everyone else is too stupid to come up with anything new anyways. I am rebelling against survival.

I am re-learning to drown.

Right now, I am drowning in the impossibility of this endeavor. I sometimes like to pretend I am a writer. That lie doesn’t make it any easier for the words to come out. Each letter I hammer on the keyboard is supposed to get me in rhythm but each period stalls my thoughts in their tracks.

Every paragraph is a train derailment in East Palestine. The illusion of consciousness is undermined with every bomb dropped on Gaza. I am not real. My thoughts are not real. My racism is not real. My hatred is not real.

It doesn’t ever matter though. It all destroys me as completely as the real thing. The onslaught of external. Emotion way empty and probably conquerable but I am still lost beneath it.

Have I even made any sense? I made a typo some time ago, except I’ve read it back, and I think I’ll keep it that way. I feel it makes a statement. I want every inch of this thing to be dripping in irony. I want every mistake to seem like it’s on purpose and for every purposeful act I take to fall on deaf ears and blind men.

I want the racists to think I’m woke. I want the libtards to think I am a fascist.

I can’t stand anyone knowing I’m just a scared kid. They can’t be right. I can’t allow that. I didn’t let anyone in, I swear. Everything was fucked from the moment I got here.

I have a friend who I never talk to anymore.

That just made me real sad. I guess. I don’t know. I don’t really feel like writing anymore, I can tell you that, at least. It feels kind of pointless.

Like, I’ll have a lot of ideas and then sit down to write them all out and then nothing happens. I don’t say anything of value. I spit out something so convoluted, there is no possible way you could know what I was talking about. It is audacious of me to even write. Entitled of me to think I could be understood.

And always, I am writing about fucking writing. I can’t just write a story. I can’t just describe something. I’m all the racist and internalized homophobia of Edgar Allen Poe without any of the literary prowess. I am an ending—and just the ending—of a Twain novel.

Sorry, I’m stalling. I am stopping myself from actually addressing the problem. I am white and black. That’s the problem.

I have a white father and a black mother. That’s the thing I’m trying to talk about. But it’s stupid. I don’t even have a black mother. I have a half-black mother.

See? I can’t even be honest to begin with. It’s easier for me to say, “I have a black mother,” because it invalidates my imposter syndrome more effectively than, “I have a half-black mother.”  But it’s not even true. I doubt myself because I am so obviously white. So, I say, “my mom is black,” so I can say the n-word.

Technically, I’m black too. Though, for most black people, there is no need to qualify it with a technicality. My mother is technically both white and black.

Functionally, I am white. Functionally, she is black.

I guess that’s why I cheat with what I say. Even when I’m being lazy, it all ends up meaning the same thing in the end anyway.

This piece is a worse version of another I am working on. If I sound disjointed, it is because I am taking a break between each clause to smoke a cigarette and think about this piece’s sister.

I know I told you I am supposed to be writing about race, but actually I have just been writing about writing about something.

Is 2500 words really enough to tell the story I need to? Is one essay all it takes to span the divide? I feel I could write whole novels on the last few paragraphs. I don’t have the energy, though. I call this being more efficient.

Why do all the work when I can make you do it for me? How many things have I tricked you into thinking? How many times have you had to reassess what kind of person wrote this shit?

Am I ok? Am I alive? Am I sane? Am I really white? Am I a dirty, dirty liar?

Are the dog whistles bleeding through or am I failing even in that? I’ve set out to be the worst and the worst I can manage is nothing. The lowest I can go is zero. And I don’t think that’s enough.

They need me to be everything and nothing all at the same time. They need to see “impossible”; they need to hear “unmanageable.”

And I can’t do it. I can’t talk to you. I’m not strong enough to say what you need.

I don’t know how to bring it up. Whenever I try, I sound like a fucking idiot. You can’t just tell someone you love them and expect things to stay the same. You can’t expect things to stay the same, though. Ever. So why wait around for things to change?

Why not just do it?

Maybe it’s because my most profound conclusions are stolen from sneaker companies. It’s probably because even my desire to act is not my own idea.

It’s that damned phone, that’s what it is. I can’t write more than half a page before I have to spend an hour scrolling through Reddit. I went and smoked two cigarettes this time. All I can think about is how this is going to end, but I have no idea how I am going to get there.

I am writing about writing about writing about something now. We’re making progress, aren’t we?

Because I need to be making progress. You can’t sit there and tell me I’m back where I started. It’s just not fair.

Other people seem to be able to do things. Older people got to know what it’s like to not be nothing all the time. People generations before mine knew what it was like to feel.

I haven’t spoken to her because I am ashamed. I am in too much pain all the time to be the person I want to be, so I feel shame.

I isolate myself as penance for not reaching out. It’s endless. The torture, it’s endless. And the worst part—I now suspect it’s me doing the torturing.

Sometimes, I prefer the pain of hunger over satisfying it. I feel most alive when I have slept for three hours the night before.

Let me think something greater is on the horizon. If it’s this bad now, then how can what comes next be any worse?

I can’t write about Azra because this isn’t really about her. I would probably like it better if this was, but it’s not.

The truth is, I haven’t talked to anyone I know in years. It started out as a break from being social and that break has stretched into a full-time career. “Never do what you’re good at for free, kid,” that’s what I’ve always been told.

So, you see this particular friend isn’t that special. I abandon everyone. I ghosted her because I ghost everybody else.

I get paid in the habit of it. It’s the comforting sort of self-mutilation that my addictive personality craves. It’s the fear that I’ll fuck everything up in the end anyways.

They don’t deserve me. Nobody gets to see me at my worst, I didn’t sign up for that.

And I want to blame other people. This should be someone else’s fault. I wish they were all as terrible as you say, so my pain could feel like justice. If they hated me, I could tell myself that I am just taking my time.

“Soon,” I’d say. “You’ll be ready to face them.”

But there’s no one to face. The final boss is manic depression. The side quests are insomnia fueled rants in covid-induced isolations.

I try to talk to you and it is just me.

Everything moves so much easier in my head. I step away from the computer, and I can see this whole piece. I think about tomorrow and everything I need to say is obvious. Can see them handing me the Pulitzer.

I am, so far, right now, Pulitzer-less. Nothing I thought of saying comes up when I’m actually there in the moment. I can imagine the whole conversation—comma splice every sentence before it gets too racy—and still I always end up winging it. I’m winging it now. This is the grand showdown. A title fight I’ve been working my whole life towards and I’m fucking winging it.

Why didn’t I have a strategy going into this? How are you supposed to discuss the mental sickness induced by a digitally empowered patriarchy in a concise manner? I am not qualified to do this. I am not the man for the job.

I write nonsense, that’s what I know how to do. I know how to be alone, so why don’t you just leave me alone?

I wish I had my own white power. A down jacket echo chamber to serve as insulation from your assault. I might lose myself, sure, but is there even any personality left? It’s all fake anyway, what does a technicality matter? It’s the Internet, can’t we all just get along?

It never felt like a technicality around Azra. She could listen to me tell a story and say, “That sucks, your dad sucks.”

You call me soft.

Why would she care if I was soft? Is my toxic masculinity suffering from some sort of erectile dysfunction? Will my self-esteem’s micro-penis even respond to your knockoff Viagra?

Is this video sponsored by Roman? When does Andrew Tate walk through my door to let me know I’ve been white enough all along?

How come that never used to bother me? I was black enough around Azra, I can tell you that. And now, I can’t tell when I mean to write “white” or “black.” They sound the same in my head. I say, “white” and it sounds like, “black.” I say, “you” and it sounds the same as, “I.”

On the page, though? On the page, I pick the wrong word every time and always end up saying the opposite of what I meant to. Is it white or black power? Are you the patriarchy, or am I?

I can’t tell. I can never tell. I use these people like props.

I write to those I never talk to.

And it’s all for nothing. I still can’t tell.

But neither can you. You’re not her. We don’t know shit.

I know it’s different wishing I belonged.

Hours waste away on a Jersey summer afternoon. Doomed panic fills a page. We find ourselves with nothing to say. And I know it’s all over. I know this is goodbye.

You don’t get to hear me say it, though.

I don’t deserve to.