The Descent of Awakening

When you get a pit in your stomach and a feeling of nausea, the kind with weight that you feel slowly over a long period of time, and you think without much sense that you must be going numb.

When you lose yourself in a myriad of emotions, you cry, you run to the toilet to be sick, and you worry about the people you love with a keen sense of loss and grief as if they are already gone, and you realize you have been numb for some time.

This is not when you go numb. This is when you begin to wake, when you begin to feel again. And in the midst of the bitterest feelings of sorrow, you think this must be the beginning and that things must get better from here.

But you’re not sure you really believe it.

Perceptions of an Especially Sepulchral Mind

Some people have such certainty in things. They are sure of what they will do and who they will be and where they will go and how their lives will end up. I’ve never had that. Sometimes it’s difficult for me to believe I’ll even live through the day. I could never envision myself as married, even when the date was set and it was all I wanted. And yet here I am. I can’t envision myself having children and a family. And yet that’s what I want. Hell, I can’t even imagine myself making it through this mandatory overtime.

When I was in college, I didn’t try to picture the future. Sure, I’d imagine graduating and getting a nice job (isn’t that a laugh?), but I couldn’t picture it. There’s a difference between a daydream and what you actually think your future will be like. But honestly, it never bothered me. The future was an unknown: unknowable and potentially unattainable. And I was okay with that. I was happy to live in the moment, to love the days I did have as I lived them. At points I was sure I would die, and somehow that was okay too.

Now I feel perpetually caught in the future: a visionless, empty place. I can’t foresee anything happening as I plan for it to or even as I want it to. I am consistently and almost constantly aware that I will die one day. Of course, that’s a knowledge we all have. But I didn’t used to think about it daily. I didn’t used to wonder what all I wouldn’t finish, what all I wouldn’t get to experience before I left this life.

I am a soul too-well-acquainted with my own mortality. I am a mind adrift in a sea of understanding.

Equal parts certainty and uncertainty govern my thoughts, both negative sensations. Like the knowledge that I will die mixed with the knowledge that I can never know when. The knowledge that I have so many things I’d like to achieve and the understanding that I can never know if I will.

Hopefulness diluted with hopelessness, like the joy of a thought, of a dream, drowned out by the crushing weight of finiteness and the unknowability of my own future, by a nightmare of each instance that could determine my hopes unwarranted.

“How do people make it through life knowing that one day it will end?” Maybe that sounds ludicrous to you, the idea that death could be preferable than the uncertainty that comes along with life. It’s a paradox that only makes sense in my “especially sepulchral mind.” And even then it still isn’t an entirely satisfactory solution, because the end result is ultimately the same.

The thought of my own death is foreign to me and yet familiar. Like the way you know a good friend and still learn new things about them. Except morbid thoughts are less of a friend and more of a plague, a disease in an already diseased mind. And yet somehow still comfortable. Like the bad relationship you just can’t seem to leave behind even when it’s at its worst, because the uncertainty of life on your own outweighs the negative outcomes you deal with every day.

Thoughts of life are regularly tainted by the idea that it will not be how it appears in my mind. And yet I don’t want it to be completely predictable. I remember when I used to enjoy the unpredictability of life, the spontaneity that came with it.

Would that I could enjoy it again.

Would that I could appreciate the nuances of life.

Would that I could break this cycle of depression.

A Vision of Ireland

It's a mountain, but it feels more like a large hill from this end. It’s not like you have to do any mountain-climbing to reach the top. The cost is two euros a person because it's on a farmer’s land, private property in a way made public. The path going up slopes gently to the top, straight through pastures filled with sheep. The sheep don’t really bother you, but they’ll run if you get too close. Mostly, they simply sit and stare at you, unhappy you’re there but not afraid, as though their glares are saying, “Why are you here? This is our land.” But that land has been shared against their will and the occupants begrudgingly allow passage.

The other side of this mountain is less forgiving. There is no path down, and though the cliff isn’t sheer, it would be a long fall with many ledge-like crevices, mostly rock in nature. The view is that of the ocean. Hidden bays void of anything but saltwater, rock walls, and a fishing boat, only visible because of the elevation. To the left, more ocean. To the right, a stone wall, built years prior, running the length of this stretch of land, down the sloping hill as though it owns it. Behind, Dingle Bay, the houses, the little streets, the boats coming in and going out.

Like a centerpiece to the whole expanse, on the crest stands the tower, solid all the way through, so far as it seems. Built of blackened rock, uneven pieces forming a perfectly cylindrical tower, its presence one of many established to avoid shipwrecks in years past. To its right lies a WWII outpost, cement, clearly of newer making, though now overcome with graffiti and lack of upkeep. Two sentinels of time, these physical markers represent the motion of history, the passing of what is finished and yet the continuance of the same. This is old land with old history, with new history, with the now barely impressed upon it except through the life of the land itself.

[Two lives, colliding intentions]

Two lives, colliding intentions:
One life of the mundane,
One life of inventions.
Always, the sliding
Towards the habits of the insane,
The life I’m deriding.
The search for prevention:
My want will not wane
For the shift in attention.
Tired of the hiding
Amongst ordinary and plain,
I would halt this colliding
If this sudden detention
Of thoughts less than sane
Guaranteed my retention
Of what I’m confiding
I could never feign.
I find myself siding
With my only suspension:
A joyous refrain,
One artistic intention.
The time has been biding;
Now waiting is slain.
Now it’s coinciding,
This tricky convention;
It follows the strain,
Removes apprehension.

[I Lie in the Dark]

I lie in the dark

Wait for the sun

Surrounded by art

Like an unfinished sum

Expansion elusive

The finish unseen

The darkness intrusive

Like an unraveled seam

Allowing reentry

To worlds yet unknown

As I stand here sentry

In a darkened home

The dark is a curse

I cannot explain

The light its reverse

The removal of pain

Spirals

Spiralling:
The downward circles sapping energy,
Extracting wakefulness.
Plummeting:
The circles of slow descent abandoned,
All but forgotten.
Settling:
The stasis of hopelessness weighing down,
Breaking resolve.
Acclimating:
The knowledge of placement accepted,
Resigned to.
Stirring:
The spirals of activation gaining momentum,
Rising faster.
Rocketing:
The circles of slow ascent ignored,
Determined useless.

Something I'm Unaware Of

There was a void deeper than sleep before my eyes. Death. Or so I thought. My body and mind battled, their desires blatantly opposing one another. To give in...to relax. Or to fight...to stay alive. Just in case I die, I love you. You're not going to die. I feel like I am. I haven't been in that place in my mind since I was a child, maybe eleven years old. I didn't think I was going to die then. Maybe because I didn't fully understand death yet. Get her children's Tylenol, she weighs under a hundred pounds. I weigh 101 now. It was important. They couldn't even understand me. The same dream overandoverandover. Every time the same. There was an elevator. The world will end if you don't stop this from happening. I didn't understand death. I hadn't lost anyone yet. A whisper in my mind. Nothing is right. A voice in my head. Everything is wrong. A feeling in my stomach, or maybe in my throat. It's so hard to tell where it is, where I am. WhereamI? Sub-consciousness bleeding into consciousness like a red shirt in the washing machine turning all the whites pink. Unconsciousness on the corners of my baffled brain. A void deeper than sleep. Dark. Empty. A feeling of no control. But what control do I have anyway? Everythingiswrong. A sense of letting go, of never feeling again. But what would I feel anyway? Nothingisright.