Sensory

I am in the middle of nowhere or maybe I want to think that I am in the middle of nowhere. Can you ever be alone in this world with so many billions of people? That’s besides the point. Right now, I am in the middle of nowhere because that’s where my mind wants to be.

Nowhere is solitude in the forest, surrounded by green, a vivid deep green that almost seems black because it forms a canopy before the blue that is the sky. I can hear the birds chirping away, participating in this symphony called life, the crickets, this school of music.

Typically, I am worried about bugs, but not today, because today it doesn’t matter. Reality can’t touch me, as I am anyway, lying in bed, feeling everything I want to feel yet feeling nothing at all.

When I started thinking about this post, it was a constant nag about all the ways I was awake even when I was not paying attention. Sometimes, I am a zombie, wading through life, hopping from one deadline to the other.

It’s not even about work, it is more about all the little pressure to be ON that comes with being an adult in the 21st century. You juggle navigate a career, building a family, sustaining friendships, meeting strangers, new budding friends, acquaintances, networks, community groups, and everything in between, you are trying to keep up with. Flowing through all the other lives that are intertwined with yours.

It hits me then that being alive means to keep feeling, to move through accelerated consciousness. Even when you think you are not conscious of this fact, you just seem to still participate inadvertently.

In the middle of being happy, randomly remembering that some people are living in this world are not as lucky as you or maybe luckier, whatever that means… Sometimes, it is remembering some distant family member that you really know nothing about other than your connection by blood, but hearing that they lost a loved one and somehow partaking in the little haven of their sadness, even though it is brief.

It is like constantly stepping into spaces and stepping in and out while constantly being in yours, or like having to wear different shirts, in various colours, styles, and shapes and taking them off to match the vibe based on all the other colors you are already wearing. I think that’s what empathy feels like, only this time you are not stepping into any shoes.

It is being in the middle of this happy scene and remembering the time you were crying your eyes out in the bathroom because you just discovered middle of the night, that a love betrayed you.

It is hanging out with a lover and remembering another lover in another lifetime, not because you want to go back, but maybe because something in this new love triggered a part of the love you have shared and given away before.

Sometimes it is like stepping into the future and wondering what it’d feel like to hold your child in your arms, to watch them fall in love, to watch yourself grow old. Sometimes, it is just fast forwarding to the very end, standing at the edge wondering what diving into nothingness would feel like.

Seeing yet not seeing, feeling stuff you cannot mould into words because they just won’t form. You know it all ends, you know it must end,  yet, you do not want to get to the end, and sometimes, you wish it’d end. In those moments when your feelings go into overdrive.

It is living your life and watching others live theirs, yet their life rubs off on you. It is carrying little mini feelings that do not even belong to you, but affect you. You are happy, but you are carrying daily the feeling of a bad decision you made, the trauma of rejection, the spark of a dream, the warmth of love and friendship.

It is all the other memories you carry with you that form part of what you remember, but do not completely belong to you.

Like remembering that your aunt once held her stillborn baby, your cousin passed suddenly, that your friend has buried her mom, another one her dad, that some miscarried their baby, that a teacher in your secondary school passed away, that a classmate’s mom kicked the bucket, and you know exactly the second her life changed forever. It is to remember strangers that passed you on the street, in public transport, at a restaurant that you didn’t like or that you admired.

As you waddle through life, it is supremely important to wake up to what really matters, to reform your spirit as that’s what your body seeks to contain, to remember that all the things you feel is a testament to being alive, to not resent your experiences but seek to make them count.

Xoxo,

Dcconnoisseur.