It’s just a normal day. So normal it feels almost real. But that reality is suffocating. There are sounds, smells. My clothes rub against my skin and I feel the chair beneath me. My hand rises to my mouth. Drag. Exhale. Back to the ashtray. It seems to work without thought. Like walking or riding a bike. No matter what.
Light hits my eye, flips and is translated to form the world around me. All my five senses contribute to create the three dimensional experience of living.
But I’m not there.
I am absent.
My eyes come to rest on a leaf, and my breath is taken away. Not because of it’s sheer beauty. Not because I even see the leaf. I don’t.
A thought, a feeling, a concept. An invasion, not always large enough to be aware of, steals me away and everything turns blurry at the edges. A tunnel appears in front of me, the edges blurring, until even the object of my sight, the leaf, is gone.
Where do I go?
There is a room in my head. It’s dark, like night time. There’s a little red too, like looking through closed eyelids at the sun. The room is round, shaped a little like my head, a head within my mind. And that’s where I am.
No windows, no doors, no light.
Raise. Drag. Exhale.
All around the room echo voices – thoughts. But far away, as though I’m hearing a conversation happening in another room. I switch between being the thinker, and aware of these thoughts, to the person in the room, unaware. Locked away. Safe. Ignorance is bliss, so they say. If only it wasn’t so dark.
Sounds leap out at me like monsters in a horror movie, startling. I should jump. Like every movie goer. They scream and pierce my skull like metal spikes, so loud I shake inside, barely containing the rage at their intrusion into my space – beckoning me back to the world.
But I don’t flinch. A storm, a hurricane, a tornado is whirling inside me, but on the outside – nothing.
I’m frozen. Experiencing the most intense emotions imaginable, yet unable to move. Unwilling to move.
The cyclone of emotions sends me back to the room. Quiet. Safe. Numb. Unaware. Bliss.
Raise. Drag. Exhale.
I don’t feel my hand, am barely aware of it’s movements. Like an alien limb, it belongs to some part of my brain that wants no part of this ‘stupidity’. This shameful, childish running.
I don’t care. I don’t care about much. Only a vaguely existent, lingering, almost-a-thought in the back of my mind that thinks I need to come back to down to earth. I need to ground, it says. I’m floating away again.
But the words are so far away. Like a stage whisper that dissolves into a whisper, into a breath of air, if I let it. Should I grab hold of it like a rope and use it to pull me out of this ocean, or just continue to float beneath it all, safe in my room, enraged by incoming noises, so upset, then back to the room again, over and over….
My body doesn’t answer. It isn’t its’ call. Not its’ decision to make, as if it could. My mind has to grab that rope, pull myself inch by inch out of the room in my head. Kicking and screaming all the way, sometimes. As each layer lifts, slightly lighter again, I see the leaf, my surroundings are born into my awareness again, as though the world is taking shape around me. Like a web page loading one section at a time, slowly filling up to it’s completion.
The blurriness starts to fade and sharpness returns.
I have to move my eyes. An instant thought. Not even a thought – just a microsecond of knowing, having been here a thousand times before.
Raise. Drag. Exhale.
Violently I wrench my eyes from the leaf and I’m back, trying to clear my thoughts, to make sense of reality. I tell myself what day it is, though sometimes it takes a while to remember. I tell myself to get organized. Ok, what are we doing today, what’s our agenda, what’s on our to-do-list?
I don’t bother trying to figure out the trigger. It’s a waste of time. It eludes me mostly, and chances are, if I do find it, thinking about it could trigger the entire process again.
So, I’m here. I’m back. I’m real. I’m on earth. Grounded.
And I realize how much nicer, how much cozier it was in that room. How much safer.
I almost wish I could go back there, and spend the day there.
My body shows the burden – being frozen is hard work. I realize every single muscle in my body has been tensed. I attempt to make an effort to relax. It doesn’t always work, and I don’t really care much.
Apathy has settled over me and caring much about anything is pretty much out of the window.
I shift on the seat, my buttocks numb, maybe a leg too.
I try to look around as much as possible, moving my eyes, not settling in one spot too long, blinking frequently. It seems to help to keep me grounded.
It doesn’t cure the inner pain, which has now come rushing to the surface with force again. It’s almost as if I could live with the pain for a little while. Then I disappear – I go away to the room, I leave reality and all thoughts and feelings behind.
It seems, though, that when I come rushing back, the pain is sharper, the sadness deeper.
Raise. Drag. Exhale.
Light hits my eye, flips and is translated to form the world around me. All my five senses contribute to create the three dimensional experience of living.
But I’m not there.
I am absent.
My eyes come to rest on a leaf, and my breath is taken away. Not because of it’s sheer beauty. Not because I even see the leaf. I don’t.
A thought, a feeling, a concept. An invasion, not always large enough to be aware of, steals me away and everything turns blurry at the edges. A tunnel appears in front of me, the edges blurring, until even the object of my sight, the leaf, is gone.
Where do I go?
There is a room in my head. It’s dark, like night time. There’s a little red too, like looking through closed eyelids at the sun. The room is round, shaped a little like my head, a head within my mind. And that’s where I am.
No windows, no doors, no light.
Raise. Drag. Exhale.
All around the room echo voices – thoughts. But far away, as though I’m hearing a conversation happening in another room. I switch between being the thinker, and aware of these thoughts, to the person in the room, unaware. Locked away. Safe. Ignorance is bliss, so they say. If only it wasn’t so dark.
Sounds leap out at me like monsters in a horror movie, startling. I should jump. Like every movie goer. They scream and pierce my skull like metal spikes, so loud I shake inside, barely containing the rage at their intrusion into my space – beckoning me back to the world.
But I don’t flinch. A storm, a hurricane, a tornado is whirling inside me, but on the outside – nothing.
I’m frozen. Experiencing the most intense emotions imaginable, yet unable to move. Unwilling to move.
The cyclone of emotions sends me back to the room. Quiet. Safe. Numb. Unaware. Bliss.
Raise. Drag. Exhale.
I don’t feel my hand, am barely aware of it’s movements. Like an alien limb, it belongs to some part of my brain that wants no part of this ‘stupidity’. This shameful, childish running.
I don’t care. I don’t care about much. Only a vaguely existent, lingering, almost-a-thought in the back of my mind that thinks I need to come back to down to earth. I need to ground, it says. I’m floating away again.
But the words are so far away. Like a stage whisper that dissolves into a whisper, into a breath of air, if I let it. Should I grab hold of it like a rope and use it to pull me out of this ocean, or just continue to float beneath it all, safe in my room, enraged by incoming noises, so upset, then back to the room again, over and over….
My body doesn’t answer. It isn’t its’ call. Not its’ decision to make, as if it could. My mind has to grab that rope, pull myself inch by inch out of the room in my head. Kicking and screaming all the way, sometimes. As each layer lifts, slightly lighter again, I see the leaf, my surroundings are born into my awareness again, as though the world is taking shape around me. Like a web page loading one section at a time, slowly filling up to it’s completion.
The blurriness starts to fade and sharpness returns.
I have to move my eyes. An instant thought. Not even a thought – just a microsecond of knowing, having been here a thousand times before.
Raise. Drag. Exhale.
Violently I wrench my eyes from the leaf and I’m back, trying to clear my thoughts, to make sense of reality. I tell myself what day it is, though sometimes it takes a while to remember. I tell myself to get organized. Ok, what are we doing today, what’s our agenda, what’s on our to-do-list?
I don’t bother trying to figure out the trigger. It’s a waste of time. It eludes me mostly, and chances are, if I do find it, thinking about it could trigger the entire process again.
So, I’m here. I’m back. I’m real. I’m on earth. Grounded.
And I realize how much nicer, how much cozier it was in that room. How much safer.
I almost wish I could go back there, and spend the day there.
My body shows the burden – being frozen is hard work. I realize every single muscle in my body has been tensed. I attempt to make an effort to relax. It doesn’t always work, and I don’t really care much.
Apathy has settled over me and caring much about anything is pretty much out of the window.
I shift on the seat, my buttocks numb, maybe a leg too.
I try to look around as much as possible, moving my eyes, not settling in one spot too long, blinking frequently. It seems to help to keep me grounded.
It doesn’t cure the inner pain, which has now come rushing to the surface with force again. It’s almost as if I could live with the pain for a little while. Then I disappear – I go away to the room, I leave reality and all thoughts and feelings behind.
It seems, though, that when I come rushing back, the pain is sharper, the sadness deeper.
Raise. Drag. Exhale.