There is a certain sense of peace to life. Sitting outside in the afternoon sun, listening to the busy life of others and watching the way of nature, it's peaceful. It's beautiful even, a kind of beauty that is hard to find now.
"Have you ever done that? When you squint your eyes and your eyelashes make it look a little not right and when just the right light comes from just the right side, you find you're not who you're supposed to be"
That's a quote from a song, it resonates with me when I sit in the afternoon sun. The sun hits my eyelashes and obscures my vision, perhaps it's a beautiful thing. It makes me feel sleepy, like I'm in a dream state. Sometimes I feel as if anything is possible. How if life really makes me this upset, why not just change it, change the way I function. But then I realise that this thinking is only part of this dream state. To change everything is unrealistic, and besides, you can change everything about yourself but you can never change your own mind.
Now I sit in the evening. It's winter so it's cold, but not too cold because I am in a warm climate country. There are fairy lights on the balcony railings in front of me, they twinkle as I look into the suburban night life. Things are still, people are inside, eating dinner with their families and watching television. Nothing is alive besides the road, the cars constantly driving past is the only constant. There are occasional bangs or thuds but with the night there comes a blanket of freeze that stops everything from moving. My thumbs type these words in the cold and they begin to turn stiff the longer they spend outside of the heat of my jumper. But I will persist through the numbness of this night, as my story needs to be told.
The cold starts to seep through my jumper, it reminds me of sadness. It seeps through whatever protection you put up against it. Like a mist in the night it moves slowly and with caution but ultimately is the strongest force. Sometimes the sadness recedes and it's like taking a breath of fresh air, like finally reaching the surface of the ocean to breathe, but then you only get pulled back down. I feel as if I'm suffocating, as if the walls are closing in on me and in my mind I'm trying to stop them but in reality I'm sitting patiently waiting for them to squash me. My mind is telling me to move, to run, to escape but I sit on this couch in the cold and allow the feeling to course through me. Of course the feeling is a sense of sadness, but at the same time adrenaline. I feel nervous for not just one thing but everything. My stomach twists itself in knots as I look around and try to decide what to do with myself. My body is limp but my mind is alive. The cold brings a breath of life, but it is fleeting and hardly there as the sadness continues to consume all that it can.
Someone has started to play loud music, the thumping baseline is all that is recognisable. It repeats itself over and over, always sounding the same. My head spins 'round and 'round as the base thumps and creates its pattern. Someone is having a good night, someone is having a bad night. I know which line I stand upon. The song has changed, the beat is different. The new beat is fresh for a few seconds before it continues to repeat itself. I tire of the thumping, it reminds me of having a migraine. I retreat inside.
Inside is warm, the walls protect me. As the cold subsides so does the spring of energy too. I feel numb again, my brain slows down. I can no longer hear the thumping music and I calm slightly. I close my eyes for only a second, the world stops and starts again. I feel safe in this house, I do not feel safe in this mind. As I calm and settle, my brain starts wondering. It wonders to what it could be doing right now, the usual thoughts kick in: should I kill myself now that I have the chance? Should I harm myself? Should I write a note? Should I speak to someone? Am I loosing my mind? I break from the spiral as I come to understand that maybe I can just rest in the peace of warmth and stability, even if it's only temporary and fake.
A siren breaks me from this serenity as I ponder what it is for. It seems to be an ambulance, they are close. I wonder who is hurt, I wonder what happened. The siren starts to fade, I start to wish it was coming to rescue me. The siren had peaked my interest, for only a few seconds I was distracted by something, the siren was a beacon. But now it is gone I return to myself, I shuffle to become comfortable again. It is time for sleep.
