It’s something that envelops you. At first, it’s a half-formed thought. A silence. An emptiness. A something in your stomach that delays your dinner. A numbness that asks to be filled with noise, until you are tired enough to just drop to sleep. Not giving time to that cloud in your brain to become a fully-formed sentence.
You keep everything at a very low volume. You know the voices are starting to emerge, but at this stage you still have the ability to not hear them, even though you feel the low hum deep inside.
Then your lungs start to constrict. A bit and a bit and a bit. It’s like the air is on a strike and refuses to go down your throat. Your entire ribcage starts alerting the system that something might be wrong. A glitch. Perhaps it’s a false alarm this time.
Perhaps a little sleep will reset you.
Perhaps you will wake up brand new.
More than barely functional.
But then you don’t. Then comes the day when you don hear the morning alarm anymore. Or maybe you just don’t want to be awake, only to realize you are witnessing day one of a new episode.
As long as you just lay there, nothing has to change yet.
But then you need to just wake up. Get out of bed. Put a foot in front of the other. Be a working adult. And then you feel doubt creeping on your skin.
“Here we go again”, you try to encourage yourself. Or maybe you’re just a little cynical.
And now you contemplate running away from everything. Just going on vacation and staying there forever. Become a new person. As if that would keep it away. “Run away to Faroe Islands. There are many cliffs there”, a voice subtly says. I know what she implies. That’s how it always starts. She is obsessed with edges. With in-betweens.
You love the edges, too, but just so you can feel the beauty of what it means to still be here. “Sharp edges have consequences”, Chester’s voice is popping out of nowhere.
And how well you know how irretrievable going over the edge would be.
You witness these dialogues, and monologues, all overlapped, from afar. Because you are experienced enough with it to know that is how it always starts.
There’s news of someone losing the battle. They’ve been doing the same shit you’ve been doing: the therapy sessions, the weekly yoga classes, the meditation, the breathwork, the Hoʻoponopono mantras, the self-love messages on social media, the “look-how-well-I’ve-been-doing” posts.
“Who are you trying to fool”, another voice is viciously whispering.
And I am starting to wonder if it’s all been for show. Have I really felt like this or am I just a con woman, seeking for attention?
“Attention from whom”, I seem to counter-reply, “since there is no one to actually check on you”. And that is a fact. And I seem to come to terms with that wherever I am in a state of normalcy. Not anymore. The voices will not let me forget that there is no one close to get it. To get you.
“Shadows will scream that I’m alone”, I hear Tyler singing in my head.
You start looking for the trigger. But you know very well that what you call trigger is just a reminder. No one can run from it. Some manage to trick themselves into believing they are cured. The state of normalcy lasts more that it usually does, and that does the trick to your brain. That makes you believe and love that new you that inhabits your brain.
Until you hear that someone just like you lost the battle. And that they were also doing the therapy sessions, the yoga, the meditation, the journaling, the healthy eating, the “i-seem-to-be-better” assurance to all the virtual friends who never reach to you, anyway. You know no one believes how bad it is, how bad it can get – not even your therapist. You try to explain the half-formed thoughts, but it sounds almost to cheerful, too light, to superficial, coming from your mouth.
Speaking it out loud, even you start to wonder if that’s how it really is. Since you sound so well, how can you make people understand that deep down you’re in a state of decay? That you’ve been building a house on a forever shaky foundation, so every once in a while, the interior walls start to crumble, even though it looks perfectly well-adjusted from afar.
So you know the battleground is your own brain. It’s you against the other yous again. All the voices trying to push you over the edge, while you try to reason with them. So when you know there’s been another murderous attempt of the voices against a person just trying to be, fear is starting to creep in again.
“How long until it’s your turn?”
And I don’t know. I don’t know what is true and what is not anymore. What is the normalcy of me, and why I am trying so desperately to make myself get out of bed a day, and another, and the next.
What is my direction, if I fall into the same loops again, and again, and again. And why should I even bother to break the cycle each time? I don’t know anymore.
It’s doubt I know best.
The pondering of being.
Today marks the first day of a new spiral. It is not a fully bad day yet. It’s like a national mourning period over there in my brain. Quiet, and solemn, and grey. Mourning the state of normalcy‘s grand finale.
The day that marks the beginning of a new decay.
Until it’s time to rebuild again. Because we always do. Until we don’t.
Alta's World 