There’s a special kind of madness that hits when you’re trapped at the DMV. Not regular madness like frustration or boredom but a bone-deep feeling that the clock is fake the ceiling tiles are watching you and that you’ve never actually left. You just keep dreaming you did.
I don’t think time exists. Not in a real way. Not in the way we’re told. Time isn’t a straight line it’s a badly drawn circle on a bathroom stall door and the DMV is the graffiti written inside it. Every time I go there I age fifteen years. I leave with three fewer teeth and a bill for a car I haven’t owned since Bush was president.
And the workers there they don’t move like real people. They slide. They blink in rhythms too slow for mammals. They type things that aren’t even words. I watched a woman input “nublort-45879” and nod like she just summoned a demon to renew my license.
Here’s what I think. The DMV is a government-sanctioned liminal space. Not in the TikTok aesthetic way but in the real way that makes your skin itch. It’s a test. To see how long a soul can sit under fluorescent lights before cracking. You ever wonder why your number never gets called in order You ever see someone walk in after you and leave before you That’s a simulation glitch. That’s them resetting the loop to keep you compliant.
I once tried to leave without finishing the process and three workers blocked the door. One held a pen. One held a stack of outdated forms. One just smiled. I didn’t try again.
There is no present at the DMV. No future. Just a waiting room where time gets kneecapped by bureaucracy and buried in triplicate. And maybe that’s the point. Maybe that’s how they keep us docile. Distract the masses with Title transfers and Real IDs while the real world burns behind the cubicles.
All I know is I haven’t seen the sun since I went in. And I have this horrible feeling the expiration date on my license is the same as the one on my life.