Dread
I dread this feeling.
I fucking dread this feeling.
Emotions clashing like turbulent waves foreshadowing an imminent tsunami.
Confusion. Haze.
No clear cut boundaries. No contours. Just the feeling of being washed away, enveloped in a thick mist of pain, fever, heavy-headedness, just feeling uncomfortable.
I don't like this place.
But I know it so well.
Even though it's never quite the same.
A mystical land where physical pain merges inextricably with emotional pain. A place from which you escape from, over, and over again. But it manages to draw you back in. The slippery slope between “I can do this.” and “I can't”. A place always changing its terrain, but never its familiar scenery. It's dark, damp, cold. Sometimes even too hot. Hands are rising up from the floor, grabbing at your feet, trying to pull you down.
Delirium.
Which way to go??? Doesn't matter. YES IT MATTERS!!! No it doesn't. Just go down without a fight. Go gentle into that goodnight. I won't listen to you. Oh, you won't? I won't.
I keep moving. It is what I'll always try to do. I will keep moving. I've bounced back from this place before. I've split the seemingly inextricable. I've chopped at a problem relentlessly, until, eventually, a crack appeared. Nights plagued by insomnia didn't stop me. They enabled me. I am afraid. But I try, every day, and every night, to stare down my fears. To face them. Sometimes I win over them. Sometimes I don't. Even when I feel like giving it all up. I keep moving. Even if it's slow.
To hell with it all. Give it up. Is that how you feel deep inside?
I do listen to my inner voice. I acknowledge it. I face my own feelings, the ones I so keenly ran away from for too much time. But I filter.
“A man who cannot command himself will always be a slave.” ― Goethe
I filter because my aim is to grow.
You think you aren't able to get out of that slippery slope?
You are still here. Take a moment to reflect on that. How many things were there that annihilated you, yet you still came back? How many things did you think would destroy you, but barely dented you? Take another moment now to just... Breathe. Deeply. Do you feel all of that?
I am certain you do.
Do you appreciate it?
You might not want to appreciate it. You may say the cost is simply too great. And that may feel like the most clear truth you've ever felt.
Yet you are still here.
You are. Because you are resilient. Because you are fighting. Because you just... are. It sometimes feels like it's pointless. I know. But I've heard something ages ago, which I haven't fully understood back in the day, but I'm getting closer to understanding it now.
The will to live will always outweigh the ability to die.
Oh, yeah? That's wrong, so many people are just gone.
That's true.
But all of them are remembered for a while. Their actions, be it minuscule or grand, have affected the lives of other people one way or another.
We have presence.
Every second we are alive, in and of itself, is a miracle, even if it doesn't feel like it. Even if it seems worthless. You're a complex human being who is functioning to the best of your abilities, churning away at both the mundane and the extraordinary, experiencing it.
And that... matters.
So, the trick is to keep clinging to our capability of living. Eventually the will may formulate and manifest itself clearly.
“I want to because . . . “.
Keep holding on, dear reader.
It will make sense later.
I believe in you.
