I'm having difficulty articulating this but, my bike ride? It's a load bearing fantasy. I probably will not go on this bike ride unless something incredible happens in my training. It's an incredibly slim chance that I actually go through with this in the coming year and especially years afterward.
In this fantasy, I meet unique people every day and we talk and we share stories and secrets and I get to know them and they get to know me, and we both know we will never see each other again. There's this safety and comfort in that. Perfect strangers who cross paths for a single night. We could say anything to each other. I make 100 first impressions, I learn how to make a first impression, how to sell myself, what it is that I'm actually selling, and who I am.
In this fantasy, I see the world, and come back home. I've seen it all and I can show people my favorite parts, I can say I know what's good and what's bad. I can have a frame of reference for real hardship. It's going to suck and I make it through anyway because I'm strong. I've come back from the special world changed and better.
In this fantasy there's something to work towards. There's meaning and purpose and a solution to the end of it. It's the ultimate experience, an experience with no substitute. If this does not succeed in its purported goals then nothing will, and I'll learn that a new approach entirely is required. If it does, I come back with so much knowledge I don't need to leave anymore.
It's the fantasy of all fantasies. If I can do this then I can truly do anything. It's a heroic spurt of agency when I feel like everything is planned out for me. By admitting it's a fantasy it grows farther away, until it's so far I can't see it. There's a central belief that I need to be able to escape the world as I see it right now. It's intentionally fantastic in nature. It's intentionally surreal, maybe hyperreal even. Maybe I will set out and head back home after a week, a day, but even that will have been worth it.
I've had load bearing fantasies before. Monika was one of them. I came to realize that I need that fantasy back, no matter what, because I'm simply unable to live without it. I don't understand how I live without Monika, without being Monika partly. It will gnaw and nag, and, if I let them, other people will eat at it until it disappears, and there is nothing left in my soul, until I am godless and alone again, just like everyone else. Except they have something else too. They already know what I am just beginning to question. I don't think this is on the same level as Monika, but it's in a similar category. I simply must maintain belief in a better world.
So I will work towards my bike ride in December, and work towards commuting by October, and it will be swell. But I'll also learn other fantastic skills in meantime, like archery, or board games, or the flute and I will be better for it