Lost

I get lost in my own mind sometimes. I know, that sounds cliche and meaningless but that’s the only way to describe it. You know when you’re on the phone, deep in conversation, you sometimes pick things up and place them elsewhere, then forget where you put them? It's kind of like that. I get so entrenched in the swirling abyss of the unknown and the unknowable, so disorientated in the fog of the past and future, I forget where I began and how I ended up where I am. I could wake with rose tinted glasses, thinking all is well, and end the day in shades, seeing everything as dark. A kind smile can become one of deceit, something wicked could seem justified. A field of happy children, playing, screeching with joy. But I only see the evil yet to come, or worse, a graveyard. I often find myself at these low points but I rarely reach the depths of existential dread. The kind that fills your soul until every breath you take is excruciating, where all you can see blackness. Deaf, dumb and blind. Trying to scream but your lips are sewed shut and besides, no one can hear you. No one knows what this feels like.

It's not all doom and gloom, however. Like the breath, which rises and abates, my consciousness sines between the peaks of joy and the troughs of deep emptiness, where all that exists is the void. Time spent at either causes me to forget the other. A dip or peak large enough can appear to be a straight line, continuing infinitely into the horizon. But like anything, it's never permanent. This is the only thing I can cling to when I find myself drowning in the depths. It won't last, I desperately try to convince myself, this too shall pass. I repeat it over and over like some crazed mantra, forcing it from mere words into the truth. This will pass, this will pass, this will pass.

For now the clouds are at bay, which is the only reason I’m even sane enough to write this. I’m not, however, at a peak or trough, but in the valley inbetween. The opposite of pain is not pleasure. I may not be joyful right now, but there is a calmness, a stillness, in the absence of emotion. This is the feeling I long for. Not joy, which by its very nature is impermanent, but calm, which holds a powerful promise of stability, of order. It's in this space I can see all the parts working together to pull me apart. All the tangles of doubt can be viewed from far above. Things lose the ‘intrinsic’ good and bad labels I applied to them. I see things as they are, and nothing else. The optical illusion of a narrative is broken. The woman's face turns back into silent craters and seas. The constellations turn back into stars, millions of miles apart, nothing connecting them outside of my neuroses. From here I can see clearly all the tools I have, and everything ahead as a blank canvas. Every person, every event. Any and all things that occur to me. I can connect these dots however I wish, deriving inspiration from anything. The middle-class, burnout housewife in the sitcom I’m watching isn’t crying because her husband left her, but because she’s going through the pain that I myself experienced. The cheesy motivational posters telling you to ‘Believe in yourself’ are not just generic advice, but they speak directly to me. The sun is not shining brightly just because of chemical processes deep within its bowels, but because today, this day, is a beautiful day, and no one can tell me otherwise.

On these calm seas, I truly feel like the captain of my own soul.