The Glenn

My hands are digging into my hair wishing they could penetrate my head and grab my brain right out of its safe space. Sometimes I think it is taunting me, like it's a kid playing tag, sitting in the designated safe space laughing because there’s nothing I can do. Expect, of course, if I broke the rules, stepped right into the safe zone and laid two hands on his shoulders.

But no, the rules tell me that I cannot just pull my brain out of my head. Instead, I have to try and reason with it. Reader, do you have any idea how hard it is trying to win an argument when your opponent has the home advantage? Every claim or well argued point is met with a glare and silent threat.

So where do we go from here? I suppose you came upon my story because you too wish you could pull the brain right out of your head. So maybe you want to know what you should do to help with that. Very well, here is what I do.

Oftentimes the throbbing comes at night. After a long, technically productive day, when I sit down to rest. Not long after, I become absolutely overwhelmed. Do you feel this reader? It is as if my mind recognizes that below its high temple all the little people of the village have ceased their work for the day. Constructed on the highest hill in the land, The Mind can see every piece of uncultivated farmland, the sheep that have separated from the flock and are now wandering near the wolves den, and the storm brewing out in the east. Angered, it demands the little villagers to pick up their toothpick pitchforks and adorn their acorn umbrellas, the work must be finished. How can they rest when there is so much to be done, The Mind wonders. And as the rules stand, The Mind is never wrong. That is of course the most important rule of them all.

I am getting sidetracked, you wanted to know how to fix it. Well at this stage I must say I become desolate. Unable to get comfortable in any position and sweating under even the lightest blanket, I begrudgingly slid off my bed and pad over to the kitchen for some water. I love water, it washes away all of the black dots in my throat and ceases the burn of the fire raging against my skin. Water in hand, I climb the stairs once again. The carpet under my feet grips at my skin with every step, it wants me to lie down right there on its surface. When my mind is throbbing all of the lights turn yellow. Yellow lights make everything else look gray and pointless.

Here’s what you will do, dear reader.

Flick all the light off except for your closet and sit on the hardest chair in your room. Lower your head into your hands and feel the hollow area between your nose that holds your eyes securely in your skull. That skull, it’s still pounding and pounding, it’s thinking and laughing and wondering. Close your eyes. Let it consume you.

You are now walking down a trail. Do you wear shoes? Can you feel the cool rich dirt filling in the spaces between your toes or are your feet safe encased in foam? As you walk, I want you to notice how the trees around you bend. Do they arch up into the sky or invade each other's space? This is your trail, dear reader. Your trees and your dirt. Your feet. Are you timid as you walk down the path or does each step hold confidence that the ground beneath you will catch you as it has always promised to do?

What is that? Over there! It’s off the path, next to the bush with the perfectly round red berries.

No! It Moved! You are chasing it through the woods now, bounding across tall roots and around large oaks with trunks the size of corn silos. You don’t know quite why, but you have to have it. It is so familiar, so close and warm. There! The chase has ended and you have emerged finally in The Glenn.

The Glenn. That glorious little patch of grass hiding at the very core of your mind, the one you only stumble upon when a certain song starts playing or when your mom says something that pulls you right back to bed time stories and math homework at the kitchen table. Its the feeling you get when you see planes leaving cotton trails in a clear blue sky. You stare at it, determined to follow it as far as you can but it just gets farther and farther until it disappears into the calm like everything else. All of the noise has begun to quiet now, but your heart still races with determination. You feel you need to take off onto the sidewalk, sprint in the direction of the plane waving your arms, yelling for them to turn back because they forgot you. But wait. You were just in The Glenn! You were in the calm! Why did you run away?

As much as I hate this pondering mind it comes in handy for deciphering questions such as these. And the answer it spit out to me late last night was that I will always feel safer continuing to chase what I know will never be mine than I will feel remaining there, in the Glenn, in the calm.

Yes, I know you are unhappy with me, reader. I have no answer, I cannot stop it, I do not understand it. I cannot reason with The Mind. But I cannot follow its rules either. So I suggest, instead of waiting for some brightly lit screen or soulless machine to explain your life to you, you go get a cold glass of water, turn off those damned yellow lights, and think about your mom.