So...This Was SOME Surreal Experience...
aka: an endless piece that starts with my MOST SURREAL experience (Part 1)
Report
Part 1
April 8th, 2024…
I was two-and-a-half weeks removed from leaving BOTH of my jobs as a barista in the morning (for a cafe) and a hybrid of dining room/kitchen staff member (for a pizza restaurant) at night. I questioned my own existence EVEN MORE than I’d already done for the previous three years and flirted with suicide on April 1st for the 2nd year in a row…
I rode BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) and the bus up to Redwood (Regional Park) to try and feel…something—anything at all. After walking towards the cliff of the Golden Gate Bridge for the 2nd straight year…I was questioning why I didn’t follow through on throwing myself into the Pacific Ocean once more. As I walked along the paths and through the forest, I took in the sounds with the SNEAKY feeling that someone loosely followed me. Why? I don’t know, but I got such feeling that some guy was following me on the bus and went a separate way on the grounds. I always get those precautious feelings to not let my guard down, but this time felt like a legitimate worry.
In either case, I was thinking about how I used to be a bully in middle school, how I was such a bad friend throughout high school (and for all my life, pretty much), about how my parents should’ve never had a relationship because my existence is ultimately pointless—everything that stemmed from my parents deciding on a divorce around 3.5 years earlier was crashing down. I couldn’t bring myself to edit videos for ANY of my YouTube channels for months, the screenplays to my film series were still a heaping pile of rancid dung…~sigh~
So…in the midst of questioning my existence and feeling as if my dream was dead, I decided to hang in the background looking at cars in one of the parking lots of the MASSIVE park grounds…until something happened…
BAM—the guy I was worried about reappeared in my vicinity and he, somehow, had a bat this time? He saw a red Mercedes GLA and thought it was a good idea to…deface it? For some reason, he was smashing every single area of the car because he thought whatever was in there required extra effort this time? Or was he trying to figure out how to break into it after forgetting how he stole that bat from whatever kid’s parent’s car he broke into earlier? Or was he misdirecting his anger at the system by defacing the car of some (perceived) wealthy person like a group of characters in my film series? People often befuddle me…
The crazier part about this is the woman who owned the car noticed him defacing it—likely just finishing her run or something—and went over to handle him. Like, she charged him and started throwing punches and pushing him and such (get it, girl!). She was dominating that dude in defense of her vehicle with only ONE problem…
As she pushed him once more, I noticed him reaching towards his left hip. As I was watching that, I started to walk quickly AND discreetly towards him (for some reason, I tend to have VERY light feet to where people often get startled by my presence). Anyway…as expected, he pulled that gun, cocked it, and was preparing to shoot the poor girl who was trying to maintain her prize possession. Fortunately for her, I was discreet enough when walking up to his behind, until…
CRACK
In this moment, a lot of suppressed righteousness had been unleashed and that Plummer Genes/West Oakland-seasoned ex-athlete within me was off to the races… It started with me using his own bat (that, for some reason, he still had in his right hand) to redirect the gunfire into the soil and get the gun out of his hand. Then…I snatched the bat out of his hand, and that’s when it felt like my redemption arc was in full force.
For all the lives I probably altered with my verbal abuse in middle school (high school too), for all the underachieving that had been present since 7th grade, for ALL the times I was either a shithead or living below my means…everything felt vindicated with every single aggressive swing at the guy’s head. It *shouldn’t* have, but it very much did. I kept on swinging and swinging and swinging, until…he was unconscious. (Though, he was probably WORSE than that…~cringe face/face palm~)
At the end, I tossed the bat into the forest, crouched, and looked down at the ground beneath me knowing fully what I did, and not knowing how to proceed. All I remember after that eternity of lightly staring at the ground is the lady breaking the silence with an “Oh my god.” That’s literally it.
**Spoiler: I lied—there’s so much more I remember from this day (lmao).**
After she said that, I was brought back to Planet Earth and looked toward her direction. Her spooked face told me everything, so I said “I should go” and began to walk away...except…
I heard a “wait, where are you going?!” along with feeling a strong tug at my left arm that kept me in the area of everything that went down. We looked each other in the eye and she asked, with an encouraging smile this time, “Are you single?” — I said, “Yes,” and she said, “Okay,” and then pressed her lips against mine super hard (and I mean SUPER). If you saw the way I looked, you wouldn’t believe this was my first kiss (even though it surely was). That moment felt like an eternity and instantly made me feel like I was living a different day.
What happened after? She took me out for coffee—where I also learned her name was “Katherine” but that she didn’t have a surname, for some semi-odd reason—and we subsequently went out to dinner that same day. I think she might’ve dropped her car off to get fixed before we got coffee or between that and dinner—I don’t remember very well, for some reason. In either case, despite the trauma on both our ends (especially hers), my prediction of meeting a partner through work or a heroic act had finally come to fruition.
AND THEN…
I woke up sometime in July of the same year…three months removed from having a pivotal conversation with my mother-in-law and father around the same-ish portion of the calendar.
Why did I write about this dream (aka Crazy Dream 3)? It’s sequentially the third craziest of my entire life following—(Crazy Dream 1)—the Helicopter-Playhouse Disney dream from 1st or 2nd grade in which the car I was in fell off the Bay Bridge, but was kept from hitting the water by a helicopter, AND I was subsequently taken to multiple different buildings on the same street with EACH “unit” representing a different Playhouse Disney show (Handy Manny, Little Einsteins, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, etc.), AS WELL AS—(Crazy Dream 2)—the Vampire-Type Taunter dream from 5th Grade in which the melody the figure who was after me (and one other person) sang still burns in my brain, despite the lyrics NEVER returning to me.
The Chase: **Crazy Dream 3** stuck with me for months on end until I finally had sequel visions to it during February 2025, AND always felt like it meant something. I don’t know, it just did.
The Conclusion (sort of): This dream was an alternate timeline in which I played my cards “properly” and didn’t allow myself to put my life into other people’s hands the way I did in reality.
Speaking of reality…
April 8th, 2024 — The Day of the Total Solar Eclipse
For some reason, I can’t quite remember if the day I was addressed by my mother-in-law and father was during the Total Solar Eclipse, but I know it was around that time because I remember it being a few days before my birthday (April 10th). In either case, while my alternate self was out with Kathy and coming to his own realizations to get back into the creator economy stratosphere, my reality self was bashing his head at the wall as a creator, leeching off his mother-in-law and father, AND receiving a short-sighted pep talk-esque approach from them.
And here’s the thing…
I only got to that point in reality because I had already spent enough time being out of my element as an Autistic individual and had shown higher results as a creator than lots of other people (over 600K total views, 3rd-ever video getting 2k views in 2015, having the required watch hours for monetization AND being very close to 1K subscribers—the proof that I’m a capable YouTuber was already in the pudding to where even my *actual* mother recognized this). In general, I don’t do hand outs, but they (especially “he”) were trying to assure me that I wasn’t burdening them. I know how pretentious this sounds, but I’m not meant to work for others in ANY capacity which is why I shouldn’t have entered the workforce in February 2019.
So, their general thesis—especially my mother-in-law’s—was stressing the mindset of “I don’t want you to stop working on your passion, but you need to handle your business” as if I wasn’t already aware of every goddamn financial problem within my orbit that couldn’t be fixed with some $20/hour job (in the SF Bay Area) without adding more autistic burnout and, by extension, autistic meltdowns that could’ve led me to getting fired this time (when I usually quit before getting fired)…
This is why I think she isn’t as intelligent as she carries herself out. She’s a knowledgeable and resourceful individual who has been of *some* help in *recent-ish* years, but I don’t think she understands things (also, one can argue that none of her help would’ve been necessary if not for the actions of her and my father in 2020 and 2021, but I digress). Granted, I don’t think my father fully understands things either, but YouTube and content creation aren’t my “true” passions. In fact, I don’t particularly have any—I’m just an individual who gets passionate about things that resonate with or intrigue me (Music, Sports, and Cinema especially). I know that sounded contradictory, but it’s sensical to me. ~shrug~
The YouTube thing was an act of building upon foundations I’ve had since I started HIGH SCHOOL (2015), yet she was out here acting as if I just decided on a whim, “Oh, look at all these successful content creators—I’m gonna try that!” Even if that was my mindset, it’s not like I had just busted my ass the past few years—including averaging 1.5 days off per month with problematic malnutrition during the middle 1/3rd of 2023—just to survive in industries that make my existence absolute hell as an autistic individual (even L1). What people don’t understand is this: I like working; it’s better than school. The problem is I’ve merely reached my threshold as an autistic person, AND…no job sufficiently values my extraordinary hard work since accommodations don’t come and…my differences in speech are seen as a major detraction, apparently. ~face palm~
Side note: Growing up around two people with gravitas was the best thing to happen to me, but being raised by two trauma-ridden individuals was the worst thing to happen to me.
ON THE CONTRARY…
One makes a valid case that I could’ve put myself in a position to avoid enduring such predictable approaches that came my way from the path I chose. The path where I chose the “better” route saw me enjoying a day with a dynamite lady I saved earlier in the day, AND where I was still living in my original spot in West Oakland (since I was still able to afford rent). Despite the fact that my alternate self both continued and amplified the excessive autistic shutdown and autistic meltdown frequencies by putting off creator economy work to stack the deck financially (from July 2023 to March 2024), he DID stack the deck and gave himself ample time to take off in the creator economy once he decided to leave both jobs.
Even though my alternate self didn’t realize he was going to meet someone, he still did. One constant theme about myself is that going through challenges leads to the BRIGHTEST moments of shining.
The Aftermath
Now that we’ve gotten the contrast of my two realities under the Total Solar Eclipse out of the way, the split was becoming more and more distant.
The words from my mother-in-law and father that my reality self endured didn’t change his perspective—all it did was reinforce the idea to never hitch your wagon to the wrong people. He kept trying to swim upstream in the creator economy and, though he did see results and an increased sub count, one can make the case his results would’ve been higher ***in the right environment***. He still did not think returning to the workforce was the right idea since he knew it would ramp up the autistic meltdowns…but no one in his direct orbit at the time—because his mother wasn’t really in his direct orbit—would listen or understand.
I’m not here to drag my mother-in-law and father—I’ve done that enough with people over the past four years—I’m merely pointing out the newfound, mentally agonizing path.
***On April 20th***, my surrogate grandmother’s birthday party took place to where I saw people I hadn’t seen in years. This was where another key convo that involved one of my surrogate aunts, my surrogate grandmother, and another person took place to where my surrogate aunt was making the point of people succumbing to the system too often and the absolute pile of horseshit such system has been feeding us. She called out people for holding back those who tried to be unique and different, which reminded me of all the motivational, fuck-all-the-noise-type videos I had been consuming after my mother-in-law and father proved my point that I couldn’t count on them where it truly matters.
Before my mother-in-law and I left the party, my surrogate aunt told me the most legendary words out of all the statements I can’t remember. What I remember about what she told me is it had the sentiment of “Don’t let anyone hold you back”
The month of April also saw my surrogate grandparents giving me a BIT of a financial boost and my tax returns doing the same. I don’t recall going out again, but I do recall newfound optimism…sort of. I was still trying out a bunch of things in the creator economy, getting ideas, trying to do too much. All the fuck-all-the-noise motivational videos and “regular” videos I was watching wouldn’t cure the bigger problems at hand DESPITE my attempts to use them as such.
In hindsight, these were the moments that started the true internal realization…
While my reality self was going through a new kind of mental agony by leeching off his mother-in-law and father, my alternate self was enjoying himself with his new (and first) girlfriend while reeling in the rewards from the smoothie guidebook that fell out of him after the Total Solar Eclipse. Seriously, those smoothie recipes he devised while in the midst of working and working and working found a way to pay off.
Side note to my alternate self: YOU SEE WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DON’T SPREAD YOURSELF TOO THIN????
Anyway, Kathy and I were two individuals who thought we always had to go at things alone with how our lives had gone up to that point. With her, it was the abuse and exploitation from being in theater during her teenage years; with me, it was FULLY becoming a monk between July ’23 and March ’24 from the ruins of the failed recovery attempts from the ashes of my parents’ divorce. I wasn’t quite ready to upload on YouTube again, but the smoothie guidebook did what I needed it to do anyway.
Something to keep tabs on: I started reading the Throne of Glass series once and for all with the idea that I was FINALLY going to adapt it for the big screen.
So, Kathy and I both enjoyed our time together and emotionally unloaded on each other about each of our problems that spanned in the past few years for me and a lifetime for her. One day, at Fourth Street Berkeley, we decided we’d go to Montreal (for mid-May through mid-June) since it wasn’t as expensive as Vancouver, was still in North America, and played into a language she knew (a little bit).
Do not call this “far-fetched”—it’s a goddamn series of visions, leave me the fuck alone lmfao
In either case…
If you enjoyed this piece, here’s the full version as a PDF (it looks better that way for formatting reasons): buymeacoffee.com/jackserafwest/e/453011
I’m not trying to bait you into donating btw—the PDF is free and [the full paper] really DOES look more efficient in PDF form.
BUT IF YOU WANT…
here’s the direct link to my tip jar :) —
