Rambles

I feel a swelling of something, I start to fiddle with my hands, or touch my face in an anxious fashion. I notice it. I feel ashamed. I loose focus on whatever is in front of me. I feel a sense of hopelessness, of nothingness that just feels like I am broken inside.

I try to stop the feeling, to stop the crying before it begins. My hands get more restless. The touches on my face more forceful. I can feel a pressure in my face from the welling up, the subtle change in my sinuses around my eyes and cheeks. I rub my hands frantically. Sometimes I feel a slight rock, a motion as if to dissipate the thing thats happening, dilute it gently away. I notice how crazy I must look. I feel ashamed of myself, and a tiny flash of inquisitive wonder as to how bad I must be. Is this fake? Am I fake? am I an attention seeker even when no one is there? A drama queen? Can I just pull myself together? I feel no pity for myself, no empathy. I am tired of this show.

I focus on my breathing, which is strained. I wipe away the water from dithering on the edge of my eyelid. I catch the other that has made it to my jawline. It’s been a few seconds of this now, maybe a dozen. A flash of something comes to mind. Fear of something current, something pertinent, of the moment. A reminder of how she looked at him, how he looked at her, or how he doesn't look at me anymore. Just a flash, then it's gone and I find my hand gripping the side of my neck by my ear, I move my hand hastily, realise it has found my mouth, it covers my lips as if to shield where thoughts come out.

So much has happened, so uneventfully in such a small space of time, and yet enough to make me wonder if no longer being is just easier. Is logically sound. Has more reality in it’s consideration than whatever I am experiencing in this moment. I remember that mindfulness is ‘good’ for anxiety and depression. I try to focus on something from my senses. Usually my breathing, or my feet on the floor. This seems futile, even idiotic to expect that to work, but I try without hope, but with desperation. But I am beyond a method in this moment.

These feelings are automatic, they are not part of me. Not in the same way my mind wonders on a normal day, to where someone bought their shoes, or how underground signaling works, or what priority at work is the one to focus on. Those things feel like me thinking. This feels like something else than thought. I am just in it suddenly, then it IS me. But I also know it’s not me without even having a sense of who I am. It’s foreign but unforgivingly familiar. Not happening to me, not part of me, but something all the while I should be ashamed of, I should hide. I should not subject anyone to.

I can’t integrate it. It’s not an inspiring struggle. It is not a personality, it is not me entirely, and yet nothing came and hit me, nothing entered me or struck me. It can only originate from within.

I have realised this is a timeless experience, by definition an altered state of consciousness.