A few nights in a row last week I woke up at around three in the morning, dragged myself to the bathroom and then was sideswiped by an epiphany. This epiphany was the same every time, and it was none less mind blowing and frightening. If I had to label it I would say it was a mystical experience. Whether it was the result of a still-dreamy mind state with its inhibitions weakened or whatever else it doesn’t make it any less true or real. It’s truly hard to describe and putting it in writing doesn’t do it justice. Trying to describe it to a friend was met with an empathetic glance, trying to give the impression of understand, but I know I couldn’t convey it in words.
This is the best I can describe it:
At that very moment, it became very apparent that I would die, not now but in the not too distant future. I don’t mean some premonition that I would die an early death, but rather the fact that since I was now living, I in fact had to die. The feeling was synonymous with the death of someone very close, once the knowledge that it was irreversible is finally accepted. In a way maybe it was exactly like that; after all, who are you closest to but your own ego? People know we die, everyone knows it, or at least they all say they do. The difference is that I actually felt it, I wanted to escape, to not be alive, because it meant that I would die. I felt like a death row inmate. I collapsed back on my bed and fell asleep and by the next morning I didn’t feel any of that experience lingering, but I still had the memory and it still seems very important. The next couple of times it became easier to accept, and now it’s a permanent component to my consciousness. I think letting go of things like this is important to living a more fulfilling life as cliché as that may seem.
So my point with all this? We shrug off all of life’s complexities and oddities and barricade ourselves in another reality. This is not the only reality, and for many this fact is particularly unnerving. To actually begin dismantling this barricade is frightening on many levels. Sure there are sciences and mathematics and things have logic to them, but all of these are within the context of the human reality. When you get down to the fundamental questions there are no answers as of yet. If you want proof just follow any branch of science backwards to its source. Why do we even exist at all? What is reality? Religion tries to answer these questions, which is a major point in my dismissal of it. Religion was invented by man to solve these fundamental questions, and as a result they are no closer to answering them. The answers cannot be put into words, and I’m not even sure if humans are capable of containing them. By expanding our minds we can get close to feeling the aspects of these answers, and that is mind-blowing enough as it is. So life is boring? No it isn’t, blow down a wall or two and you’ll see.
I hate everything I’ve ever written, even things on this page, even what I’m currently writing probably. I can’t stand to go back and read what I was thinking even a month or two ago. Can I really change that much in a month’s time? Even a couple of weeks? Maybe it’s that I can never really express what I want to say in a way that’s completely true, so it feels like what I wrote was trite or painfully forced into ambiguity. Ambiguity. My life’s been revolving around that word lately. I can’t make decisions, I’m not sure who I am, what I want to do, what I want to be. I have an idea for the future, but anything immediately pressing just weighs on my mind until I just shrug it off and do nothing instead. I should be doing a million things but I’d rather just sit here. I miss companionship and intimacy and close friendship. Maybe I idealize these things and I actually have some of these things and I just don’t realize it. I think about the past too much, about decisions I made even a couple of minutes ago, wishing I had chosen differently. Of course this is apparent just by reading the previous two entries. I want someone to pat me on the back once in awhile, congratulate me on something, just some sign that I’m not completely fucking everything up. I know in the back of my mind I’m not, but it’s nice to have some kind of confirmation.
