Stop Spinning

Written 11/18/19

It's hard to be on time when you don't care. When you're going somewhere you don't want to go, when the world is both too dark and too bright. When what-ifs come too easy. When something about how you exist feels wrong. When the world is loud and you are soft and quiet and calm. None of it settles in my soul the right way.

I spend too much time lost in my own reflection, not in its imperfections or lack thereof, but more in the fact that I am a human with a physical form. I stare at my face until it doesn't look like mine anymore, and then I start to question things. That's when I realize that it's too late, that I'm late, and run outside to my car and leave. I can't fix the problem, but I can minimize the damage. What even is the damage, anyway? Why do I have to live in my world and not someone else's? There are too many other worlds, in bound paper and film and neurons in my skull, for me to be satisfied with this one.

I'm not. That's the simple answer. Why can't I just melt into a puddle in the corner for a few weeks? I would miss things, but what am I not already missing? It's a fair question and you know it. I don't care about this, none of it, because it doesn't matter. It's hurting me, but getting rid of one thing doesn't stop the flow and all of it just keeps coming, a river that never ceases. Maybe it will someday, but right now it doesn't.

I'm rambling, the other world from my brain spilling over into this one in the form of words. It's almost the same world, but not exactly. If an eye is a lens and a brain is a filter, how could it be that two of us have the same brain, lens, and world? Impossible.

I notice that the world is darker, and the traffic lights gleam off of the cars and the wet street. I feel like I'm waking from a trance. I move my head for the first time in minutes and it feels heavier than it should be. Why is it like that? My thoughts are scattered and I don't know. I remind myself that I'm driving and need to pay attention, but the sky is pretty, and sights drag my eyes away and away. I'm grounded in air and the chill that makes it through my clothes, which is to say, nothing at all. The planet doesn't stop spinning and neither do I.