I hate linear narratives.

There’s a way you’re supposed to experience life that nobody ever really explains. You’re just expected to pick it up. You’re supposed to feel in order.

Joy when something good happens. Sadness when something ends. Relief after reflection. Growth after struggle.

It’s clean. It’s legible. It makes sense to other people.I cannot work like that.

I don’t experience life as a straight line. My mind is a hyperdimensional network. Everything connects to everything else. Every moment shows up already carrying what caused it and what it’s going to break later. By the time something happens, I’m already thinking about what it implies. The world wants linear narratives. I can’t do it.

When the Seahawks won recently, everyone was happy in the correct way. Instagram flooded with posts. I literally redownloaded the app just to like them. Why? For a reputation, for a digital status I convinced myself I had. I commented. I said “yayyy” and “congrats team” like I was supposed to. I knew how to socially perform that moment.

But my first real thought was that every win means someone else lost. Not in a dramatic way. Cause and effect. That’s how systems work.I didn’t say it. Obviously I didn’t say it.Nobody wants that thought in a moment that’s supposed to be pure joy. So I kept it to myself and watched the happiness drain out of the experience before it ever fully landed. That happens a lot. I don’t kill joy. I overthink it until it dissolves. Happiness feels less like a feeling and more like a performance.

Parties are much the same.I get there and almost immediately I need a break. Not because I hate people. Not because I’m anxious in the way people expect. I just need time. I need acclimation. Like when you buy fish from Petco and you’re not supposed to dump them straight into the tank. You float the bag. You wait. You let the temperatures match or you shock them.

That’s me. Sitting down five minutes in. Watching.Everyone else jumps straight into it. Laughing. Moving. My nervous system needs to understand the room first. So I observe. I watch who’s comfortable and who’s pretending. Who looks like they want to talk and who looks like they want to disappear. I don’t think of this as not participating. I don’t enter things blind.

But recently, there’s always this pressure around my ribs. Not sharp. Just constant. Like an extension cord I bought from IKEA because I thought I’d need it and now it’s sitting in my room unused. Coiled. Holding potential.

Sometimes I join in later. Sometimes I don’t. Either way, I’m already thinking about the moment instead of being inside it. On buses I do this too. I look down at people walking and imagine what they’re doing. Where they’re going. What mission they’re on. My mind fills empty space with simulations.

I think this is why happiness feels hard to access. Not impossible. Just incompatible with how I think. Happiness wants you to let go. It’s too bad I don’t let go. I trace cause and effect. I want to understand what comes next.I don’t want to say I’ll never be happy. That feels dramatic and fake. I just think happiness doesn’t survive when you’re always aware of the consequences. When you’re always thinking about what this moment costs, or what it leads to, the present stops feeling sealed.People say “live in the moment” like the moment is a closed container. It’s not. It bleeds forward and backward.

After social interactions, my mind replays everything. What I said. How I said it. Whether it was too much. Whether it landed wrong. Every pause. Every look. I tell myself to stop. I tell myself I didn’t ruin anything.I don’t think this makes me broken. I think it makes me out of sync with a culture that rewards clean emotional arcs. We like people who are easy to read. We like joy that arrives on time and leaves when it’s supposed to.A hyperdimensional network doesn’t move forward neatly. It spreads. It overlaps. It contradicts itself. You can’t flatten that into a story without losing something important.

So when something good happens, I don’t react fast like I’m expected to. I wait. I contemplate. I think. Sometimes the feeling never fully arrives. Sometimes it arrives later when no one’s watching.

I don’t want a linear narrative.

I don’t want a beginning, middle, and end that pretends nothing spills over. I don’t want happiness that requires me to stop thinking in order to count.I want to live honestly inside the network, even if it means joy comes slower or quieter or not at all sometimes.

I’m not “sad”. I’m just not shrimple.

Maybe it’s just inconvenient in a world obsessed with straight lines.