Sitting In Silence – Part One

[Note: I just spell checked it, nothing more. Bound to have errors along the way what with all the emotions tied in but I'm a writer not an editor.]

Balancing the counter balance. A concept within the mind to frail to grasp- like a living butterfly, far too easily crushed under hand and yet… the less I hold onto it the more I understand. My brain is full. Constantly thinking, thoughts flowing in and out as easily as air into my lungs and words from my pen though faster and less quaintly structured. This is normal but these aren’t what makes my head so full feeling, it’s everything between my thoughts. Things that are mine and yet aren’t part of the me I am. Silence and screaming, interchangeable though completely opposite in composition.

There are many of me. Many names all wearing the same face, walking the same path in different directions in a haze of guises that even I, who wears all and none, cannot hope to follow them in the luckiest and most functional of moments.

Moment. I like that word. So much more fluid than the generalized concept of time. A second, a minute, a blink. The time it takes to make a memory or to perform an action without counting on the clock. A moment is anything. We think back on moments in our lives and sometimes they stretch out for several days to years, whole periods of time that we’ve separated off into one event or another and so we call it a moment.

I have many moments. Most of them look alike on the surface. They’re all mine but some moments aren’t in my control. The ground falls away and I can see a chasm that I can see isn’t there. I see it with two different eyes and it’s hard to remind myself that what is really isn’t. Then the moment ends and I am the me I am familiar with again. The ground is closed over like it was never torn apart- because in reality it never was.

I move on to the next moment and the me that is me is almost convinced. Almost as convinced as the me who wasn’t was that the ground opened up that the moment where that me existed couldn’t possibly have happened. It was so quick and fleeting and there is no trace or remains to prove it wasn’t just a fancy of the mind because it was just a fancy of the mind and the only evidence I have to hold is that which lies in my head- a source I find difficult to rely on in those moments that aren’t entirely mine.

Counterbalance. A beautiful concept I raised myself on. I learned it from no one and yet have see in it all of my writings and beliefs. There are two sides to every thing. You cannot have the one without the other. As a thought starts so must it end but between every bit of balance there is the moment where one thing changes to another, the between. It is in everything throwing off the two halves rule because in actuality there are three. One, two, and three. If you have only the two sides it is perfectly balanced and thus unstable because perfection in and of itself is only a piece of a coin, an unreality born of false conceptions. It can’t be and yet it can.

All things are constantly in that moment of ‘between,’ change. One half and the other and sometimes many more.

There are many halves of me, two I see and several I don’t but between them all is what I am. It looks through a broken mirror to see the world in several different lights and perceptions, thoughts filter in and out and the emptiness between is filled with the everything else.

My stories are helping me so much. Not the stories themselves, the details, plots and such. Nor am I referring to the writing thereof though that helps me in a million more dazzling ways but it’s still not what I’m talking/typing about. My stories, the concepts and similarities I find in each theme no matter the change. The things that seem to follow my own life stories. It’s beautiful and strange and I find myself tempted to read up more on psychology just to find out what’s going on in my head through the third party known only as my subconscious imagination.

Some of what I feel I see is scary. Perceptions change, feelings urge their way to the surface and I’m left a little more lost and confused than before but yet… even with the confusion I feel more fulfilled. It takes up place between my thoughts instead of all the other things.

I’ve recently developed a new fear on my ever growing and occasionally shrinking list. Moths. They terrify me. If you’ve read some of my recent posts you may have seen the hints but I can seldom come right out and say things these days. So strange, a symbol of change in itself and it scares the crap out of me.

I used to stand atop my adoptive sister’s water-bed and hold my hand out to the light above, filled with streamers and tinfoil in hopes we could feel as cool as kids with black lights and disco balls. I’d reach out letting them land on my arms by the dozens and then run to the window swiftly to free them before we were even tempted to bring out the bug spray. I did this for hours on end for no purpose other than to save the little creatures.

I’ve never been able to stand them flying at me, I duck and shriek reflexively like I do from any bug that comes near me without my permission but still- there were times when I could tell myself it was alright. They were just bugs and I would set them free and have fun doing it, giving each of them a strange and exotic name just to be funny.

Then a week or maybe a few days beyond my perception of them changed. The night before the change I’d caught a handful in a cup to set thm free because a kitchen work place is no place for a moth to fly. Their lives were already soo short and only doomed to be shorter if they stuck around, but the next night… I was working alone instead of with others.

I’d felt it all night. This annoying sense of guiless and sourceless panic rising up through my stomach. I had this feeling from time to time, anxiety. I knew it well and it was usually brought on by social situations, strange environments, changes beyond my control. Things I could identify. Occasionally it happened for seemingly no reason whatsoever and I have accepted that as part of my nature as an internally scared person but this was different. The feeling just kept growing and soon it was urged stronger with a feeling of unfounded adrenalin. I felt my heart pulsing in my throat.

I started looking in the shadows then. The dark corners filled with silence. There were no people around, no noises save for the ones I made and still I felt like I was being watched, like if I looked to carefully at the darkness I would see faces staring back at me though I knew I wouldn’t. If I walked too far from the noise of the radio I would feel like I was being followed and as my anxiety and my anxiety of my anxiety increased the feeling of being followed turned into the feeling of being chased.

I hurried through the last of my work and put my headphones securely on my head before turning off the radio. So long as I kept the silence away I felt some form of safety. I called my husband to come pick me up and then turned off all the lights. The darkness was inside and as I left the building, locking the door behind me and closing it all too quickly my mind was on the impulse that I was locking the darkness inside and I felt momentarily relieved.

The logic kicked in and I felt… vaguely sick.

I knew no one was following me. I knew there was no one in the shadows and though I knew the entire time that I wasn’t being chased I still ran through the building at break neck speeds that could have killed me if I just happened to trip over my commonly ungraceful feet on the stairs.

I knew it the entire time. One part of my brain was telling me I was being silly, it could see nothing there and knew I was perfectly safe but the other part of me still fed adrenalin into my system half-hazard. The first part spoke with logic, shouting ‘Hello, what the hell are you doing?’ why the other part held no thoughts at all, only the most basic feelings of fear and the impulses that sent my feet hurrying one over the other as if my life depended on it. The first said to be calm, asking what was wrong and can’t you see what I see? It’s just a table in the corner, while the other part of my mind said ‘feel your heart beat? hear how fast it’s going? That means something. Fear. You’re afraid. Run. Now. Panic.’

I stood there in the night, the cool breeze blowing the stench of the dumpster right into my lungs and took a deep and regretful breath to steady myself. I’d ran and then I’d locked the door behind me even though the lock was on ‘their’ side because the part of my brain that for a moment controlled my body and how fast my heart was beating told me I was locking the darkness inside and I was safe.

The logical part of me chimed back in but then it was the wrong time. Was I stupid? You can’t lock darkness in a building, besides it’s night out here. That’s just silly.

The other part of my brain agreed and if that wasn’t the first sign of impending doom then all the actions and feelings that followed were sure to be.

I wasn’t necessarily afraid that the darkness was everywhere. Darkness couldn’t hurt me, but being alone in the silence that was wrapped up in darkness… it couldn’t hurt me either but still I felt the fear rising again.

I quickly turned on my Mp3 player, adjusting my headphones and turning up the volume. If I could drown out my own thoughts I’d be fine. No thinking about unreal fears then how could they be present? It had worked several times when I was a child but now it was a matter of finding the right songs to fill the silence inside my head. That was even more dangerous than the thoughts of unreal fears. Silence was bad. I was afraid of it and no logic would ever cut through. It wasn’t even the silence of not speaking but the silence of being all alone. It’s always frightened me and the more I look back the more logic and I feel sick.

Forgive me if I fall out of my writerly rhythm. I had to pause to use my inhaler and I fear I’m in need of a break to eat. Be right back.

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