The Story of "I’m Good"
She asked how's life. He almost told her.
Sydney asked me to tell her a story.
This was after. The sheets were tangled at our ankles. Her head was somewhere near my shoulder but not on it. We were two strangers who had stopped being strangers for about forty minutes and were now slowly becoming strangers again. That’s how it works. The intimacy has a half-life.
She asked for a story. I think she wanted something to hold. Some proof that this meant something. Or proof that it didn’t have to mean anything and that was okay too. I don’t know. Maybe she just wanted noise to fill the silence before one of us checked our phone.
So I told her a story.
A girl once asked me, “What’s up? How’s life?”
I said, “I’m good.”
The conversation ended.
I stopped.
Sydney waited. Waited some more. Then turned her head slightly, like she was checking if I was serious.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it.”
She laughed. Not a real laugh. The kind you do when you’re confused but don’t want to be rude about it. She was probably wondering what kind of man she’d just slept with. That’s fair. I was wondering too.
“That’s not a story,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because nothing happens. There’s no… I don’t know. There’s no point. No twist. No character. It’s just… nothing.”
“Yeah.”
“So why’d you tell it?”
I looked at the ceiling. There was a crack running from the light fixture to the corner. Someone should fix that. No one would.
“We’ve heard thousands of stories,” I said. “Lived inside some of them without knowing. We know what a story is supposed to feel like. Beginning, middle, end. A character wants something, struggles, changes. Hero’s journey. Tragedy. Comedy. Whatever. There’s a shape. A point. Something that makes you feel like the time you spent was worth it.”
“Right.”
“So when I tell you that a girl asked how’s life and I said I’m good and that was it, you feel cheated. Because where’s the drama? Where’s the meaning? What’s the takeaway?”
She didn’t answer. She was listening now. Actually listening. That’s rare. Most people are just waiting for their turn to talk.
“But here’s the thing.”
I sat up slightly. Not because I needed to. Because something in me was starting to unspool and I didn’t know how to do that lying down.
“When she asked ‘how’s life,’ there was a moment. A gap. Maybe half a second. And in that half-second, something happened.
“My brain opened a file. Not a file. A… everything. Every piece of data I’ve collected about what it means to be alive right now. And it asked me: do you want to tell her the truth?
“And the truth is not a sentence. The truth is a flood.
“The truth is I woke up this morning and checked my phone before I opened my eyes. The truth is I saw news about people dying somewhere far enough away that I’m allowed to feel sad but not obligated to do anything. The truth is I scrolled past it. The truth is I got an email from a company I gave my data to without reading the terms, and they’re selling my patterns to someone who wants to sell me something I’ll buy to feel like a person.
“The truth is I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel about the fact that I have opinions about brands. That I have parasocial relationships with strangers on screens. That I know more about celebrities’ divorces than my neighbors’ names.
“The truth is I’m tired in a way that sleep doesn’t fix. The truth is I have everything my grandparents dreamed of and I still feel like something is missing and I don’t know if that makes me ungrateful or just awake.
“The truth is there are children in some countries who will never taste clean water and I know this and I still bought a coffee this morning that cost more than their families make in a day and I didn’t think about it until just now and I probably won’t think about it again tomorrow.
“The truth is I watched a video of someone’s house getting bombed and then I watched a video of a dog on a skateboard and my brain processed them with the same emotional weight because that’s what the feed has done to me.
“The truth is I don’t know if I’m a good person. I don’t know if that question even means anything anymore. I don’t know if meaning means anything anymore.
“That’s the truth. That’s ‘how’s life.’ That’s what’s behind the door she knocked on when she made small talk with me in that coffee shop or that party or that wherever the hell it was.”
Sydney was quiet.
“So what did I do with all that?”
I let the question sit for a second.
“I ran the calculation. The same calculation everyone runs, all day, every day. I asked myself: does she actually want to know? Can she carry this? Will it help anything if I say it? Or will it just make both of us uncomfortable, and then we’ll have to perform some kind of recovery, some return to normalcy, and the whole interaction will become work instead of just… passing?
“So I compressed. I took the flood and I crushed it into two words.
“‘I’m good.’
“And she said ‘good!’ with that little uplift at the end. And we smiled at each other. And the conversation ended. And we both walked away relieved that neither of us had to be real.
“That’s the contract. That’s the whole operating system. I don’t make you carry what I’m carrying. You don’t make me carry what you’re carrying. We both pretend we’re not carrying anything. And the wheels keep turning.”
Sydney shifted beside me. I felt her looking at me but I kept looking at the ceiling. At the crack.
“So what’s the story?” she asked. Softer now.
“The story is that a girl asked how’s life. And I had an entire universe inside me. And I said ‘I’m good.’ And she believed me. Or she pretended to believe me. Or she knew I was lying and was grateful for it. And we both kept moving.
“That’s the story. That’s everyone’s story. Every day. Billions of people, all carrying their own floods, all compressing them into small talk, all agreeing to pretend that ‘I’m good’ is an answer.
“Maybe that’s beautiful. Maybe that’s the only way the species survives. Mutual mercy. A collective agreement to not break down in the grocery store checkout line.
“Or maybe it’s the loneliest thing in the world. All of us, walking around, drowning quietly, smiling at each other.”
The room was very still.
Sydney reached over and put her hand on my chest. Not romantically. Just… there. Like she was checking that I was solid.
“What story were you hoping for?” I asked.
She didn’t answer for a long time.
Then: “I don’t know. Something with a point, I guess.”
“Yeah. Everyone wants a point.”
“Is there one?”
I thought about it.
“Maybe the point is that there’s no point. And we tell stories to pretend there is. And sometimes the pretending is enough.”
She took her hand off my chest. Looked at the ceiling too.
“That’s sad.”
“Yeah.”
“But also kind of… I don’t know.”
“Yeah.”
We lay there for a while. Two strangers who had briefly stopped being strangers. The half-life continued. Soon one of us would check our phone. Soon one of us would say they should probably get going. Soon we’d compress this night into something small enough to carry. A story we’d never tell anyone. Or a story we’d tell everyone, stripped of everything that actually happened.
But for now, we just lay there.
Two people who had accidentally been real with each other.
It was uncomfortable.
It was something.
End.