Prophecy

It's 2019. I'm 26. Unemployed, uninspired and uninterested in the life I have fallen into. The voice in the back of my head now screams "failure" on the hour like an alarm clock. A few years earlier it screams "success." Office. Employees. Reputation. A dead end. Nearly two years is spent out of work. Peers seem well ahead of me. High paying jobs. Living overseas. Their first property. In 'perfect' relationships. The lucky ones. Life seems so simple for them. Not for me. Empty on the inside. Lost without a map. Feeling like I just wasted ten years of my life. Unable to look at myself in the mirror.

It's 1993. I'm born. My parents choose not to vaccinate me. Dad reads the newspapers daily. He watches for propaganda. His father escaped a civil war. He believes in freedom. He hates political correctness. He questions authority. Follow the money he says. He cares a lot about humanity. Mum is into Dad. She likes the way he thinks. She rarely admits it. It's funny to watch. Marrying him was her wildest leap. Courage. They are one team. “Keep that needle away from our baby.” It appears I am a minority when it comes to these needles. I wonder if they make me sit at the back of the bus one day. So be it if they do. The back of the bus is where all the fun is had anyway.

It's 1994. I'm 1. We live in the suburbs. A family of migrants in the land down under. Dad is a Greek that grew up in the projects. Mum is an Italian that was not much better off. Survival. Small business. Enter the rag trade. Dad is the vision. Mum is the last line of defence. Marriage and business. They run a network of Italian Menswear stores. Before anyone knows what Armani is. Innovation is not enough though. If only it were. Overexpansion. Inexperience. Natural order. They make bank super quick. They lose it even quicker. The brutality of business. Two babies to feed. They start again from scratch.

—

It's 2020. I'm 27. Covid wakes me from my coma. The year the world stops, my life truly begins. I fall in love—for the first time. She is a nurse, heading up a virus ward. I am an angry young man, protesting the prison my home has become. She gets me.

We live in the most locked-down city in the world. Melbourne is now worse than China. The government invades our bodies and homes—forced penetration. My family fractures under the regime brother against brother, father against son. Just as they intended.

I want out of Australia. Out of the world I've wound up in. I can count a few people who matter to me. The nurse tends to my wound. "If you want to leave forever, I'll come with you." I pass. I am not ready for her love. I am not willing to be her man—a man, the man.

I get on a plane and leave without her instead. She slips a parting gift into my luggage: Panadol, condoms and a letter goodbye. I take her medicine with me. I’ll need every bit of it for the hell I’m about to enter.

It's 2021. I've lied my way out of Australia, like any non-consenting prisoner would. I am now an international 'criminal' for my escape, answering to nobody but God—though I don't even know who God is. So, I turn to the devil instead. He knows me well.

Overseas, I nearly kill myself—not with a rope, but with nearly everything else on the menu. I no longer know who I am. The darkness is real, and I don’t want anyone to see it. Totally alone, totally on the edge. I feel worthless as a son, and pathetic as a man, but I've promised my family I will return. I am my brother’s best man, after all.

Brother marries a Scientismic Jew. Only God could write the script: a matrimony of two tribes, diametrically opposed. My parents lie their way into their own son's wedding. In case the vax police were watching. It nearly kills my father. There is little place for unclean filth in this brave new world. Will we wear yellow stars or striped pyjamas? As history repeats, so do its dramas.

As God intended, I make my speech. And love wins. I thank my new sister for coming into my life. Despite all of the clashes, that bitch is still the best. I do the Hora like a good Jew. I feel that Bazouki like a true Greek. Embracing my Yaya on the dancefloor, in all her majesty. The matriarch of our tribe. The last one standing. Falling to my knees in front of her, weeping, as the pain washes away. I am my family.

It's 2022. I'm 29. My birthright feels wrong. I resent the country in which I was born. America is the solution. Perhaps Dubai. All I can think about is escaping the matrix. Or at least everything woke. Crypto, multiple passports, freedom. I meditate on it. A voice appears. A clear command. "Unite the clan." I didn’t even realise it until years later, but it was the first time God had ever spoken to me. I make plans to move to America, but he laughs at my plans instead.

By no rationale of my own, I am sent to Athens. The city of my father's birth. I spend the year lost, lonely and longing for love. Cocaine, whores and cousins. I connect with relatives across the Mediterranean. I am seeking God, but I don't even realise it. He gives me family instead. All one hundred of them, across Italy and Greece. A Trojan Horse to open my heart.

I build out our family tree. It's the only meaningful thing that gets me up in the morning. I trace every home, every house, every story I can find. From Constantinopoli to Venice, from Thessalonika to Rome. Both sides of my blood love me with all their soul. I'll get married on this sacred land one day. Whole towns will be invited. As it should be, as it once was. Our clan will be united from all around the world. Together, as one.

I speak very little Greek or Italian, but I understand one thing. One word in particular. I love it when they say it. I feel it when they scream it. In the most beautiful, broken English. In the most perfect, universal tongue. "Kristian." My name. My birthright. My prophecy. A call to loving arms. The clan unites me, and I unite the clan. For the first time in my life, it is clear to me. God is real.

It's 2023. I'm 30. My name is Kristian. I am baptised Roman Catholic. I grew up in Greek Orthodox Church. But I never considered myself a Christian. The word Jesus felt like a bible-bashing slogan from the pits of America. But when the war in Palestine exploded, I found myself immersed in the question of God, properly, for the first time. Disgust dragged me into the conversation. I am now an uncle. My nephew and sister are Jewish, but I feel for the Arabs. And I feared this war would spread inside my family.

Up until this point, religion itself was very much split from my spirituality. However, spirituality never really cut it. And, to be a practising believer of Christ was not on my agenda. I believed in a God and that he had created the world, but I didn’t believe God cared about my life in the present day. I believed in ‘the universe’ or a ‘lifeforce’ but not a personal father who watched over me, who loved me. Everything was ephermal. Little was personal. How much that was about to change.

After weeks of rabbit-holing the history books to make sense of the conflict in Gaza, my brain froze and my heart sank. My arguments for or against either side stopped. No amount of mental comprehension or socio-political analysis was adequate for the void that sat in my heart. One thing was clear. My own soul wanted a union with God. And for the first time in my life, I got on my knees and prayed. I prayed for answers to my own life’s problems. Kristian wanted home.

I prayed to God to help me understand the chaos of this world and most importantly, the chaos of my own life. God answered clearly and promptly. “Walk with me” he whispered. And the very next day, I did just that. For the next 40 days, I walked 8 hours a day around the city of my birth. Melbourne. The place I once loved, then hated, now loved again. A baptism of fire. A total resurrection. A complete miracle. Walking with Mother Nature. Talking with Father Creator. And with that humbling first prayer, my relationship with the world changed forever.

It's 2024. I'm 31. Christian, with a K. A born-again Kristian. Or so I thought. I can't shrug off the ketamine. A dissociative drug is taken by a dissociated drug taker. Add in LSD, MDMA and DMT, and we have a recipe for self-induced torture. Karmic loops repeating themselves, a total lag in the video game, trip after trip, all leading back to the same harsh truth. I am an addict. And the simulation is frozen in time. And the snake keeps eating itself.

My New Year's bender ends in tears—the pain of being Kristian. Sobbing at 3 a.m., alone in the park I grew up in. "I don't deserve to live," I call the only real friend I have in the world, the only man standing between me and death. A Jewish Christian, of all people. The first soul who ever shared his love of Christ with me, the man sent by God to send me home. "Kristian, my brother. Your father on earth and in heaven loves you. Christ is with you. Go home."

It's 2024. I'm 31. Christian, with a K. A born-again Kristian. Or so I thought. I can't shrug off the ketamine. A dissociative drug taken by me, a dissociated drug taker. Add in LSD, MDMA and DMT, and we have a recipe for self-induced torture. Karmic loops repeat themselves over and over. Lags in the video game. Trip after trip, all leading back to the same harsh truth. I am an addict. The simulation is stuck in time. And the snake keeps eating itself.

New Year's ends in tears—the pain of being Kristian. Sobbing at 3 a.m., alone in the park I grew up in, as high and as low as I’ve ever been. "I don't deserve to live," I call the only real friend I have in the world, the only man standing between me and death. A Jewish Christian, of all people. The first soul who shared his love of Christ with me, the man sent by God to send me home. "Kristian, my brother. Your father on earth and in heaven loves you. Christ is with you. It's time to go home."

I return to my father's house in the dead of night, trembling with fear. Father, Mother, Brother, Sister—I need your help. I confess everything I am; I own everything I am not. I have nothing to defend. For once, my armour is laid down. I stand naked, well past humiliation. My life is on the line, and it's time I came clean. I'd been on the edge for five years, maybe more. I needed those that I loved to know that I was at war with myself and that it was not their fault. My call is answered. What follows is the most edifying year of my life.

It's 2024. I'm 31. I'm flown out to America for work against my will. I wanted America years ago, not anymore. But I am desperate, and I need the cash. I speak live at conferences to guide investors and founders in the art of simulation. A method of consciousness I've spent a decade developing whilst internally feeling like a fraud. I am unmarried, I am living off a credit card, and I can’t go more than a day without jerking off. I fake it until I make it, but I can’t make it another day living this lie.

The last place I want to be is overseas. I just started to like home. My loneliness turns to horniness, my horniness into helplessness. I polish whiskey like it's water. From Colorado to Texas, from California to Hawaii— I smoke, drink, snort and cum. I don’t practice what I preach because what I preach is impossible to myself still. The “impossible” is only possible with perfect faith. And perfect faith, I don’t have. I still live in fear. Faithless. I read a book called The Surrender Experiment on the flight home from LA. I surrender and fuck the girl sitting next to me on the plane. We do it doggie in the airport bathrooms. Unmarried, unhinged, and unhappy— just like me. She is also a Jewish Atheist. All I think as I blow my load is, “This woman needs Christ.” Back to the book. Its message is profound. I spend the next 30 days in total silence. I make a vow. No speaking, no lying, no begging. If I surrender totally, then God will appear, then I will know perfect faith and Christ will make the “impossible” real.

It's 2024. I'm 31. I break my vow of silence. The very first hour of the very first day. My old boss yells my name from across the street. I respond, totally unconscious. We exchange pleasantries. He asks about my life. I tell him the version of the story that makes me look important whilst also wanting the conversation to end. “I just got back from America. Startups, investors, that kind of thing.” My words feel like a lie. He was more engaged than I had intended. Turns out his business partner just died. A mutual friend. Turns out he needs 1M dollars. Not my problem. I leave the conversation concerned about one thing. The vow (or two) I just broke. He messages me hours later. “Want to help me raise some cash?” Let the madness begin.