Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Reflections in the Waters of Reality (January 15th, 2014)

For years, I've wanted to be totally insane... wanted to have to depend on others just to survive. I've wanted to be broken, busted, and overall useless to the world. My perceptions of reality often shift and switch like the sands of a desert, or the waters of a sea. The surface was never the same, but what was deeper often was, even though I couldn't easily see it. Usually, the only times that I came face-to-face with what was below, I was choking or drowning on sand or brackish waters - sometimes both at the same time. I realise now... just how often I use metaphors involving drowning, and I'm beginning to connect that to the few times that I nearly drowned in my childhood, keeping me from learning how to swim until I turned 9. I only learned how to swim because of my bipolar mania egging me on, taking away all my inhibitions. I'm beginning to realise just how relevant all these small events are in my life.

And water really is a great descriptor for me. Sometimes, life becomes very... very silent and calm... like when the water has filled your lungs and your consciousness begins to fade, your body sinking slowly into darker and darker waters. The water is cold, and yet you don't feel cold... You feel... feel... happy. Everything slows down, becomes so peaceful... But, if you're lucky, you're pulled out of that delusion, things suddenly go black and then white as the water you choked down comes pouring out of your lungs. You're no longer under the surface, drowning, but coming back to the world with air back in your lungs. You feel pain... such... sharp pain, much unlike the soothing calm of drowning slowly. Unreality is a terribly... soothing - horrifyingly so - thing. Reality is always sharp and cold like millions of tiny razorblades cutting deeply across your insides. Waking alive, or fading toward death - reality and unreality.

I like to fade into oblivion... “Illusions allow us to feel good instead of bad,” I believe I’m paraphrasing Freud a bit. But the problem with illusions is that they aren’t real. Or are they? It gets too fucking hard to tell, sometimes. What’s one person’s reality is rarely another’s, and connections are often forged over the few times that two people’s realities overlap. But instead of flat, transparent sheets, which can be laid one over the other, my realities are warped and contorted in ways that don’t often allow others to see eye-to-eye with me, or vice-versa, and yet I can often contort it just enough that it does suitably overlap, even if it shouldn’t. Do I forge false realities to create false similarities? Share experiences that never actually happened?

I occasionally and periodically have these tears from reality like jumping headfirst into that pool. The waters break and burst as I fall in and rip through that thin, yet powerful, barrier - the skin. If I hit too hard, I smack it like cement, but if I dive or gently fall in, I glide right through and into the other realm. I may not quite get psychotic where I’m hearing voices and seeing things that aren’t really there - not anymore - but reality does change and become difficult to grasp. It becomes like water and pours through my fingers, not meant for holding it. My dreams start to fade into reality, and reality into dreams, until I can’t so easily distinguish. And when I wake? Soaked, like I came out of a pool... It’s like I came back out of that lullaby-like drowning state and returned to the realm of the living. But I’m soaked in the dream and can’t get it out of me... It blurs with my daily perceptions. It blurs with what I think to be reality.

Really, in the end, the most I want to do with my life is have someone to love and who loves me back... My love would be unconditional - I know it for a fact. I’d live my life dedicated to that person, have a family if possible, and love the children unconditionally, as well. I’m just a sucker for love, in the end. I feel like I would do just about anything to find it, and there are nights that I just stay up longing for it...

I don’t have anyone like that... No one to show my affection to, to move on in my life with... No one to fight for: both my own personal battles, and our shared battles. I have no one to live for, to dream for, to hope for, to fight for... I have no muse to keep me waking up each day, and bring meaning to my life. I have an empty shell just waiting to become filled and invigorated. Nah, vigor is something I utterly lack. I’m just a step or two from dead inside, with those seeds begging for water and good soil to dig roots into. If I could find that water and soil - my life and foundation - then my seeds could take root and grow into vast, lively trees or ferns or bushes... a plant that blossoms, basks in the glory of the sun, and loves life, as well as helps create it. I’m a romantic without any romance... a lover without love. I’m becoming so terribly, embarrassingly desperate for human connections that I sometimes actually think about slicing my arms wide open, just because I’d want to feel the love of a worried family member... or anyone who would offer it. I think time and time again about getting the razor - not to end my life, but just to elicit something from others and from my own heart. It would be like a defibrillator, shocking my heart back into existence, but with cold steel and scarlet tendrils.

Empty, lost, alone... These words I’d use to describe myself. But what words would I want to describe myself with? Loving, joyful, warm, compassionate, endearing, soulful... Oh, how I can dream.

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