A time I’ve felt alone.

 

My mind is like a highway continually running, my thoughts rushing around like cars, occasionally colliding and creating a catastrophic spiraling disaster.  Normally, I can just find something to ground me. A single thing to concentrate on whether it be a mundane task or checking my social media feed every 30 minutes. There’s always something. Until there’s not.  

My phone has a glitch where if it dies I have to charge it all the way before I can turn it back on, inconvenient yes, worth spending the 170 dollar repair fee no. I have no alarm clock so if my phone is at less than 40 before I go to sleep then I have to stay awake to charge it. Though I can’t charge my phone while using it. So I lie awake in bed and wait for the red light on my phone to turn green so that I can try to get some sleep. 

My phone is my sanctuary when it comes to keeping my mind on track. There are so many things to do with the amalgamation of metal and glass. I could listen to music, watch my favorite people online, text friends who are also probably having trouble sleeping. I could write and add things to my google docs that I’ll never publish. I could use the drawing app and create something that no one will ever see. 

I suppose that the dependency on electronics has become a problem for my generation, but maybe that’s just the future at work. What’s so wrong with our infatuation with the efficiency and ease that comes with our new boom in tech. My generation absorbers information at a constant exponential pace, there’s no way you can tell me that that’s not some form of processing advancement. The ability to multi-task and have several thought patterns running at once is easily one of the hardest double-edged swords to swallow. There is no end. However, this is a tangent.

So back to me in bed. Sometimes I can make up a short tale something a bit outlandish to occupy my main thoughts. I make up unique characters and situations for them to go through. Other times though I’m not so lucky the story I want to think about begins to escape me, then I lay there allowing the thoughts to cascade over me and control the pace occasionally they dance, sometimes they run, sometimes they jump, occasionally they plummet to the deepest darkest parts of my mind dragging me with them.

The light is still red.

I’m a passenger when it comes to my thinking like this. Sometimes I sit shotgun, I can drop recommendations, and more often than not I can remain calm and enjoy the ride. Other times I have a backseat view of the road. It is often obstructed I can only see in passing moments through the back windows, it’s not ideal but it’s seldom intolerable. Sometimes the partial knowledge the destination can even be is even fun.  Sitting in the trunk of the car, however, isn’t ever enjoyable. It’s unimaginably dreadful. I don’t know where I am, where we’re going, or how we’re getting there. I can faintly hear sounds from the outside. It is filtered through the rhythmic strumming of the mechanics of the car. 

There is only one thing I can compare to being in the trunk. It’s that feeling when you’re small and playing in the ocean. You go too far in. Right as the waves pull back and you feel the water slipping through your toes you think about how far you can follow the pull of the tide. but even if you don’t pursue it further, it’ll perpetually come back and crash right into you. You go under. Do you fight it or do you ride it out?  In all honesty, I find both options to be torturous. 

I can either fight my way to the top or sink. I usually descend deeper. When you tell yourself not to think about something, that within itself is you thinking about it. It’s tragic and depressing thinking that you’re not in control of your thoughts and emotions. So then that depressive line of thought now adds to the already overcrowded highway and now you lay in bed on your back looking at the ceiling with warm tears flowing from your face. 

Oh, the lights still red.

After your failure to pull yourself out of the trunk you decide to ride with the wave, bobbing up and down. Going with the natural way your mind flows. Sometimes it carries you off, somewhere far away maybe it’s dark there, maybe you lose yourself, maybe you begin to fixate and the anxiety. It sometimes sneaks up on you begins to crawl up your neck and bite at your ears. But we’re just riding this out rolling with the punches. We will wait whether that’s until the light turns green or when you think of something better or rather when you gain back control over your mind. 

The thing is though. To what end? Where does the riding it out end? Where does the fighting end? does it ever, can i do this, will i do this, i’m useless, i’m stupid, i can’t do this, i won’t do this, am i breathing like a normal person, am i dying, is this what a heart attack feels like, im sorry, no wait, why can’t i just be normal, where am i going, who am i, is suffering the point of life, i just want to- 

 

GREEN.

 

The lights are green now. Slowly bringing myself back, it’s green. Grabbing my phone looking at it,  green. Unplugging it, darkness. Holding the power button, white light, pink light, lock screen photo, my password is *********. I can go to sleep now. Maybe some music? What was the homework that I was supposed to do again? …. Huh, I don’t even remember liking the color green so much.

 

This is something I wrote a while back. I just edited it to be more readable. I like to write using little prompts the prompt was “A time I’ve felt alone, and it took me back to last summer before I got a new phone. I had a series rise in the amount of late-night half panic attacks and I kinda go through what it’s like using metaphors.