My Phone Won’t Collect My Data Like I Asked It To

I made up a password with the universe. I said, God, whoever you are, whatever you are, wherever you are—when it’s all going to be okay, say “Jungle gym.”

I haven’t heard or read jungle gym once. Never saw one either, and believe me, I’ve been looking. I could have gone out and found one, or looked up a picture, but that’s not what I wanted.

I see people on TikTok say, “Ask for what you want! I asked God to show me a dolphin in a top hat, and the next day, would you believe it? There it was on the side of an imitation crab container!”

Hence, “jungle gym.” I’m not asking for a mammal in tap shoes here. Anyway, I practically begged. I held my phone to my mouth and shouted “Jungle gym, jungle gym, jungle gym,” into the speaker.

Nothing.

You know, they did a test on in-home listening devices, phones included. They found that within a week, whatever you said was in some way advertised back to you, shown to you, whatever.

I added this finding to my “Proof Someone Hates Me” list. I mean someone hates me up there. They don’t even collect my data.

They are purposefully depriving me of jungle gym.

I think I want to be miserable, but I haven’t decided yet. Uncertainty makes me anxious.

I saw a single tarot card for sale at the antique store, which was weird in itself. It had a unicorn bucking up on its hind legs, and across it said, “Love vanquishes fear.” It made me cry.

I wanted to buy it—it was so dumb, but I loved it like a mother, in that I believed giving in might save me. If what I have isn’t enough, let my creation be stronger than I. You can’t give birth to a tarot card, of course, but my life, up until that point, had delivered the card to me.

If you haven’t caught on, I look for meaning and purpose everywhere. I was distraught at not having 50 cents to ask the shop’s Zoltar for my fortune.

I’m serious, and I’m searching for salvation at an antique store. I’m an oxymoron, emphasis on moron.

I tell myself even Jesus asked why. “¡Dio mio!” or “My God!”

I’ve always felt this was a cry into nothingness, a scream of total anguish. I prefer “Dio Mio.” How similar they sound, only one letter of separation. So close you wonder if the difference was an accident.

If I am you, how could I forsake myself? A love that represented both sides of the coin: the father, the son, and what lay in between. That ghostlike body of duality, of love and terror, of Geoffrey Hinton and AI.

All that to say, when I walked into the antique store, the lady at the front said, “You’ve been here before,” with a mystical look in her eyes. She said it like a statement; she wasn’t asking anything, it was a matter of fact.

I hadn’t been there before, and a part of me was excited that there could be a mystery surrounding me that I wasn’t aware of.

The mystery was solved shortly after when I saw her up-selling jewelry to anyone who passed by. That was her line. Apparently, it made people want to buy gold lockets.

I find my role in life painfully small and gaping. I sit on my phone, scrolling through millions of lives, and stop on words that could mean something, but most come up like bile. Words are the result of feeding time.

I’m so sick of seeing beauty confused for genius.

Venus rhymes “golden hair” with “despair,” and people comment, “You make me believe in God.”

If only it were that easy!