Lost In e-Motion: Sucks To Be Stuck
No solutions here, just emotions…
This is what it would look if it was a bad dream. It would be like getting chased by an invisible anxious feeling that bites one’s consciousness so much it urges you to run. You mobilise your heart, ready to engage your feet, but terror grips you as reality hits like a punch in your gut – your feet are glued to the floor.
You keep turning your head backwards to face the darkness unknown led by a curious animalistic instinct that maybe, just maybe, if you knew what beast you may soon lock eyes with, your feet may listen to reason.
There’s not much to see there, however when you turn around. Behind you is an abyss, deep and dark, abstract in nature. You’ve been there before. Of course, you have, if you hadn’t your feet and mind would not be stuck where they are now. Chances are what’s behind you has seen you defenceless and has been a part of what you’re made of deep down to your bones. Most likely it’s an abyss that once swallowed you, chewed you up merciless, only to spit you out into the frozen world, a frozen state of mind. Now you’re stood there bound by invisible chains that keep your feet tied together, unable to move, unable to run.
So, you close your eyes and turn your head to face your front determined to ignore all the darkness roaming behind you. If you cannot run from it, you might as well pretend it’s not there.
Hence, you brace yourself with your eyes still widely shut for the light ahead. The one that may give you the strength to move on, to unclench your fist and loosen the weight on your shoulder.
‘Relax’, you tell yourself as you pick bravery amongst all your tattered emotions. Then you set your eyelids free and open.
As your eyes greet the beaming light, you allow it to calm you down. The rays of its intense glow feed you with good energy and a warm comfort you lacked once before. All the restless feelings you struggle to hide disappear with the invasion of light. Now you feel like you can make it; like you can take a step forward and walk out of the grip that held you bound. If only you’d try, you are certain you could ace the race that began before you gained full consciousness but something stops you in your tracks…
The light that was once bright begins to change rapidly. It’s taking on new colours, changing shape like a rainbow melting into itself. It is a kaleidoscope of colour now; beautifully unstable but beautifully terrifying.
Its glow is mesmerizing yet insanely intimidating.
What do the colours all represent? What is the rule to this madness?
If you run towards the flickering lights will you find the things you so earnestly crave? What if they are not there? What if they lay there ready for grabs?
You want to know what lies ahead but you’re also too scared to. You’re ready to run but your knees are weak to.
Your mind dances through all the possibilities in your head and all that stomping makes the million decisions you do not take more painful. Bravery? Well, that’s gone too – gone with the lights – and right now it doesn’t seem much can bring it back.
So, you stand there; right in between everything you had but don’t want and everything you want but don’t have. The discomfort pierces through your mind leaving with you an icky feeling unpleasant to the obnoxious degree of fingernails on a chalkboard.
It’s uncomfortable, to want to move so bad yet with every step you take in your mind, reality reminds you indeed you’re going nowhere. Your feet are still glued to the floor, and a time when they weren’t is lost in a distant memory.
It is the kind of nightmare that needs no interpretation, in fact, some may say it’s screaming its sad truth at you with a megaphone.
The abyss you gathered all your courage to look down into is the past you no longer feel one with. If you were to fetch a ladder for a trip down the pitch-black void, you’d meet all the versions of yourself you no longer are nor want to be. It’s the chapters that are now over to which you wouldn’t return even given the promise of closure once longed for.
The alternating lights in front of you represent the future – blinding, ever-changing and unknown.
When you feel stuck every small step feels like a big leap, every option a life-defining moment. Change can be a pair of uncomfortable shoes, but in this state of mind every choice feels either too big or too tight. Nothing fits. Nothing sticks – for now at least.
Your restless romantic roamer
