Downward Spiral

To be honest, there’s a lot on my mind. And frankly, I don’t know where to put it.

So here’s to you, choice blog of two, for being there when I almost decided to start caring about things again.

I didn’t choose to slip. No one does. You get so used to being invincible, being untouchable. Like that glowing turtle shell you hit on Mario Kart and suddenly the other annoying shells bounce off you harmlessly like raindrops. You build this idea in your head about who you are – about what you’re capable of handling. You think nothing can bring you down, nothing can shake you. Other people can be shaken, maybe. The weaklings. But surely you are on a different playing field entirely.

That’s what I used to think. But falling isn’t always a straight shot down to rock bottom. Sometimes it’s a slow, gentle slip that builds up speed if you don’t open your eyes soon enough to see what’s coming. Sometimes a single, pivotal event creates more forks in the road than you can possibly ever hope to account for. Variables you didn’t dream of suddenly come into play, and you learn to move before you can rest long enough to think about what’s happening. And you begin to learn you’re not so set-in-stone as you thought you were when you started your journey ages ago.

You see, things have become kind of foggy. Everything got a little out of hand, a little fuzzy around the lines, a little grey between the pools of black and white. There was room for exception, if I didn’t think about it. Things could be separated and quantified: my identity no longer permeated every thought, every action I committed, every observation I took away from the world. I could leave the things I had labeled truth in one hidden box close to the ground and walk away from it, as long as I knew where I had left it last. It was always in the background, always relevant, just never outwardly seen or opened.

With my convictions out of the way, I found there was all this room… Room for experience, trial and error, curiosity. And then slowly that tiny voice in my head that used to send warning impulses began to get softer and softer. My conscience was becoming duller, less able to slice through my sins. Half of me became unnerved at my own lack of care. The other half didn’t care because it was too busy being apathetic. The world could burn to the ground, with me in it, and I could smile and say I was satisfied. Which, to the other half of me, was alarming.

I remember what it feels like to have no worries, no secrets to tip-toe around, no shadows in the corners of your mind to fill the cavern void of thought when you’re trying to get some sleep. They’re only shadows for now. These daunting regrets and hints of downfall accumulating in the basement where late night thoughts reside. They’ve paired up with a series of questions I can’t look in the face, waiting to be confronted and stored into a new set of filing cabinets.

I know what I have to do. I always have. But it’s the act of surrender that is the hardest act one can ever commit to. To have everything stripped away- who you think you are, say you are, feel like you should be… irrelevant. And to trust someone else to know who your true self is. To trust your making in the ability of another.

Technically whoever made you should be able to form your identity as well, but where does that leave me? Dangling by a thread of hope and trusting that someone will find me valuable enough to save me from the consequences of sin, patiently waiting to eat me alive.

I feel like I’ve done too much. This time, I put myself in a pit too deep to climb out of. No one can get me out except myself, and at this point... I don’t even know who I am.

And then all of a sudden everything has stopped. Everything that kept me full. Every little bite I took. Every person I filled a spot of myself with. They’ve all frozen away from me, and I can only gape at the spots they used to fill in bewilderment and wonder if this feeling is how most people feel all the time.

There’s a silence, a stillness. But not one of peace or relaxation. It’s not a sigh of relief. It’s a pent-up breath held tight in the lips of a world that spins too fast for depth. The depth I tell myself I can live without, the depth I’ve convinced myself I don’t need.

I had come to realize my root issue was always satisfaction. I used to be sold out on resting in my savior. Nothing could tear me away. Not life, death, or anything in between. And then I slipped into that fuzzy grey. And suddenly the gravity of the situation shifted under me and I was floating. It really wasn’t important to be grounded anymore. I could float around as easy as others walk and be completely satisfied with the way things were. Until this standstill.

Before, I remember looking around and seeing everyone bundled up and having a home, and feeling as if my home was the stars and the seas and the earth, because that was where you were. Now, stained and guilty, I can’t bear to turn my face to the sky and hope to feel welcome. Not like this.

I just keep digging… and it’s not that it’s too deep to climb out of… now I’d rather stay at the level where I’ve sunk because it would be too hard to get out – too much effort put into vertical movement.

I keep trying to figure out a reason why – to trace the root issue back to something that makes sense psychologically. Or maybe just to shift the blame onto someone else. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Or do I. I do know. I do know all the issues deep down inside. I just hate saying them.

I’m still bitter. About so many things. Things I thought I was over, things I thought weren’t an issue. It’s not so much value anymore as it is spite. It’s being dissatisfied. It’s looking at what I was given and deeming it unfit, deeming it less than what I’m worth, deeming it somehow a reason for me to do the things I do. I’m looking for justification for these sins I’m staining myself with. But I’m not finding any. And yet my fingers continue to grasp at the straw in front of them and prod through the thin strips of emptiness for some kind of reasonable excuse for my ever-growing selfishness.

There’s no logical reason for turning away from all the things I used to have. And I hate myself for it. I hate myself for being an idiot, for slipping away, for becoming numb, but I can’t bring myself to fix things and start living like I know I should.

I know I’m hurting myself. I know I’m going to end up in a place I won’t be able to talk my way out of. I’ll end up helpless, and wounded, and full of regret. But I haven’t reached that stage yet. I can keep fighting, I can keep striking out and being this creature I’ve become. I find a strange satisfaction in these claws and teeth I hide behind.

I stopped caring. I don’t care about anyone I left behind. Anyone who made me what I am. I can forget about it all. I can blot it out and walk away. Haha. A tattoo might have reminded me of whose I was… good thing I didn’t get one, or conviction might have guilt-tripped my heart.

I don’t care about where this puts me. I don’t care about where I’ll end up. I’m not there yet, and until that day comes, I’m going to keep on carrying on. I don’t care about the past. I don’t care about the words I’ve said or who I thought I was. How satisfied I used to be.

I’m not convinced satisfaction is what I’m chasing. But I’ll admit to a strange restlessness that eats me up inside. When I’m alone. When I stop to breathe. There’s an unexplainable stirring in me that urges me to move, to thrive, to keep myself occupied so I can’t stop for a moment.

It’s a hunger for feeling. Because I’ve discovered all this rejection of truth has put me in a state of apathy in which I feel nothing, and any emotion from this point on gives me a strange high. I’ve heard all these promises – these ideas and notions that the world would have me believe, about what it has to offer me and how it can make me feel.

So here I stand.

Back to the past, arms open to the future. Stone hard as a rock. Wanting to feel the elation I’ve heard of, wanting to be able to be my own without giving up the things I crave, wanting to find a way to be independent and pursue my own ideas of freedom.

Chasing after cars that I know I’ll never catch.

Because nothing’s good enough. Nothing satisfies my craving for MORE that is consuming me. If this is high, there must be a higher. Each new step up the staircase makes me crave a step more, but the stairway stops and I know I’ll find myself tumbling down toward reality sooner or later. But I can’t stop.

I know I’m going to get hit. Maybe that’s why I do it. Hoping sooner or later I’ll crash, careening into something strong and hard and firm that won’t change. But I’m still freefalling through the list of things I have to try until I feel again, and nothing has stopped me yet.

I feel like the whole world could blow up right now. All the people, all the children crawling along towards their futures, all the landmarks and pinnacles of human accomplishment crumbling to the ground, all the time-tinted lands aging under my feet… it could all blow. Gone. Disappear. And I would sit in the middle of a dark, empty world, without a tear, sitting and staring ahead of me without a flicker of response to the fact that something was wrong.

I don’t even know how it came about… it’s not a moment in time that I can pinpoint. As mentioned before, it’s a gradual slope… you don’t realize you’re falling until you see the ground you’re rushing towards but by then you’ve accepted it.

So this is it. This is where I am. Climbing slow the stairway to my own destruction. Knowingly. I can’t stop. I’m far too curious and resentful for that. Perhaps I have decided that freedom to destroy myself is better than submitting to someone else’s idea of how my life should be. I can’t say anymore. A part of me is scared. A part of me regrets it. But I can’t give it up. And I can’t say I’m sorry. Because I’m still sincere in what I do. It makes me tremble, but I still can’t feel the tears I know would bring me back to my knees.

I feel like I’m too far gone for that. I know in my head I’m not… but the feeling doesn’t seem any less real. One part of me begs to crumble, the other part can’t let go of what it knows it will have to surrender.

I suppose the only thing left to do is to just keep running. Conflicted, again.

Everyone runs… the difference is there are those who run towards the hope of promises, and those who run from the shadows of broken ones. Or at least, that’s what I used to think. Now I’m starting to wonder if there is indeed a third kind of runner. The ones who run for the sake of running, because sometimes falling is the closest they will ever come to being able to fly.