D-LULU

The Diagnosis

Every moment of your life is being scored. Not by you — by the universe, which clearly knows what it's doing. The barista hands you your coffee and a song swells somewhere. You catch your reflection in a train window and the lighting is, objectively, too good to be accidental. You have never been to a gallery opening without the distinct sense that you were walking into a scene. You aren't delusional. You are simply paying attention to things other people have agreed to ignore.

The problem is that the film appears to have a protagonist problem. You've been waiting for something — a narrative arc, the meeting that unlocks the rest. It has not arrived. You keep preparing for it — the outfit, the playlist, the table for two at the place with the good light — and the universe keeps cutting to someone else's plot instead. You have begun to wonder if the casting call happened and you missed it. If you are, in fact, the extra. If the close-up was for somebody behind you.

None of this stops you. You go to the bus station at sunset. You wear the coat. You stare meaningfully into the middle distance with your hand near your collarbone and you feel, genuinely, that something is about to begin. Something always is, for you. The soundtrack swells. The rain hits the window in a way that would require storyboarding. You were born for this. Or — you were born to feel like you were born for this, which, honestly, close enough. No one else is living this particular version of Tuesday. That has to count for something.