2024-08-17

As I woke into a blurred state of consciousness induced by a rather off balancing and new to me (both in quantity and from requiring zero mental health medication immediately previously) cocktail of medication few months back, an inner monologue began.

I was in the middle of a temporary breakup from my wife and partner of a 16 year time period and was staying at my blessed mothers house. I had felt that I had had to answer for every choice I made, and take responsibility for any mistake and current situation too; and nobody else could possibly be culpable.

The inner monologue seemed to be the voice of the world and the people in it, and myself at the core. The last line I remember, feeling detached from the universe, but still here entirely, said “Care to comment”. My inner voice, feeling calm yet hopeless, optimistic yet lost, trusting yet backed into a corner replied with “It is hard to comment when you are detached from the universe”.

Two things that I am trying to process from this was firstly: it felt like the whole universe shifted and realigned itself into reality; or possibly to a new reality; or maybe that was my mind realigning to what was real and what was not; or just trying to make sense of what was happening.

And secondly: the “you” I’m not sure if I meant myself, or the voice of the world, but it got me to thinking.

What if all of us lie in this state – detached from the universe, but an inseparable part if it; a universe of our own but, orbiting others as they orbit us; a centre of it, but rearranging ourselves to orbit around others at the same time.

The mind is a powerful thing / place, and in a way we do metaphorically sit at the centre of our own worlds – be it by scrupulously judging ourselves to hard; or by taking in every word of negativity that comes from the (on many occasions) overly critical people around us. We cannot escape ourselves and neither can others.

And metaphorically speaking, we do morph into other universes just by being; by being around people; by vision and sound and the other sense; and we rearrange our own universes (selves) on a daily basis to fit around other peoples centres – as we know deep down we are not at the centre of the universe; it just feels we can’t escape our own and then seems (sometimes from both sides of the looking glass) that that is what we believe.

I don’t know if this extrapolation of the psychology from my experience makes any sense to anybody else, but it helps my feel grounded when I start to feel detached from myself; I sense relief when the gravity feels overwhelming in my mind; that others may be and are feel similar things; that there are things and ideas that are unknown, but we are still finding the right combinations of words for them; and even when my own mind feels too heavy to sit between my shoulders; somebody is still out there picking up the pieces and putting them back where they belong.