If This Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe (John Dies at the End, #4)

by Jason Pargin

as usual, a few beers helped me get proper perspective on the whole thing. If you think about it, anxiety is also a kind of parasite. And isn’t it unpatriotic to spend America’s birthday distracted by nonsense? Sometimes when life’s Warning Light won’t stop flashing, the best thing you can do is just put some electrician’s tape over it.

I was going to have to get dressed and go, I knew that. John would just keep messaging me until I did. And yet, my body didn’t move. In my current state of mind, it felt like I was being asked to lie facedown and drag myself across town with my eyelids. Depression means expending all your energy to avoid having to expend energy. I wish someone would invent a pill that would give me the motivation to go pick up my Lexapro refill.

Yup

“Yeah, well, if you don’t have something to yell at, you just turn the rage on yourself.”

When I was a kid, I’d have thought being on my own like this was freedom. But this is ‘freedom’ in the sense that a severed limb is ‘free’ to slide down the throat of a shark.”

I had set to frantically cleaning the place so that it would look roughly the way it had when she’d left. After the laundry, the dishes were next. Fortunately, I hadn’t cooked even once and had just been reusing the same red Solo cup for two weeks. I tossed it in the trash. Dishes done.

If you want to imagine it, just picture a walrus attacking a rose garden with a jackhammer.

Omfg

They wanted it to always be at the back of your mind, almost as if some forms of modern entertainment are really about creating a continuous sense of low-level anxiety.

you’ve joined one of these groups when you’ve experienced something that utterly changes your life so thoroughly that you now share a secret language with others who’ve been through the same, a dialect incomprehensible to anyone on the outside. So, for instance, there’s a secret society of people who’ve been diagnosed with a terminal disease, another made up of assault survivors, or people who’ve lost a spouse, or been to war. Amy’s society—or one of them—was Those Who Live With Chronic Pain.

Welcome, sister Amy

Amy once heard that about one in five people are living in some kind of chronic pain; about one in twelve are in debilitating pain, so bad they can barely function. You always have to keep that in mind whenever you run into a cranky shopper in line at the checkout or an aggressive driver. There’s a good chance that person is in absolute agony, living in a world where the air is razor blades. If you know what that’s like, you’ve joined the secret society, an unseen subculture that was always around you but that you never knew existed because, let’s face it, you didn’t want to know.

Yes.

The devil is real, but he doesn’t turn up in a red suit with hooves. You have to imagine him as like a disease that you get—you pass it on and you don’t even know it. Educated people don’t call it the devil; they call it trauma. It rewires your brain and tries to spread itself down to the next generation and the one after that, the pain rolling down through time.

All that about the end of the world? The best and worst news you’re gonna hear all day is this: There’s no such thing. It’s another one of Dave’s fake painted-on exits. You try to end it, and instead of release, it’s just waves of trauma. The devil wins. You hate your dad and you should; he poured all his sickness into you. But if you want to fight him, the way you do it is by making sure you don’t pass on the trauma. That’s how you kill the devil. The only way.”

Never Forget That You Are Meat A. The one thing we know for sure about our possibly simulated world is that we are experiencing it via meat. All your thoughts are running through meat, and therefore, a lot of what you’re perceiving about the universe is just meat stuff. Feel like the world is doomed? There’s a good chance that’s only because your meat isn’t getting enough sleep. Mad at everyone? It might just be that your meat is hungry. In a state of panic? Take deep breaths—you might just not have enough oxygen in your blood. If the world feels off to you, always check your meat first. B. Your meat needs physical and emotional contact with other meat. Humans are social animals, and you need a pack to call your own, whether that’s friends, family, or whatever. Do you find your mind going to dark, freaky places if you spend too much time in a quiet room? That’s just loneliness corrupting your meat. If your current group makes you miserable, find a different one. Do not try to go it alone. C. Unless you’re a toddler, you shouldn’t need a list of rules about what exactly you should or shouldn’t do every day. Your meat has impulses, and some of them cannot be satisfied without harming yourself or others. Deep down, you know which ones those are. This is a battle you’ll be fighting every day from now until you die, and you have to take each situation as it comes. The good news is that you’re

not alone: Billions of other people are going through the exact same thing and, believe it or not, most of them are trying their best. We’re all in the same boat, united by meat and our desire to be something more.

of them are trying their best. We’re all in the same boat, united by meat and our des...