Consequences

TW: Mentions of drug abuse and mental health themes.

I think I am dying. I’ve certainly felt that way prior, but this occurrence appears to be distinct. Before, it always felt as if I was insane, being incredulous or ridiculous. For lack of a better term, it felt as if I was out of my mind. But the sadness was so intense, so powerful, that I couldn’t help but feel any differently. Every breath, every step, every anything, was simply painful. I could hardly wake without being racked with half-choked sobs of self-loathing and guilt and remorse. The memories of the past, the terror of the future, or the melancholy of the present: there was no hiding place, no nook or cranny to run to. Nowhere was safe.

I suppose that’s changed. The sadness isn’t gone, but the term no longer seems to apply, or at least it doesn’t seem to accurately to fit the description of the emotion(s) I experience. And why should it? For all intents and purposes, I accomplished my mission. Years and years ago, I set out, I embarked on a journey to discover myself. I sought understanding: understanding of my mind, my identity, my-self. Or something like that, something akin to understanding and something akin to myself. I would fail to acknowledge when this journey began, as I didn’t realize I was leaving back then, but I know when it concluded. I know when the recesses of my mental were found, illuminated through the use of psilocybin. I know when I reached acceptance, discovered me amidst solitude in the nighttime. Perhaps I could even say that I found love for myself, but it may be more correct to say that I found only a like for myself, or parts of myself, and that I was able to forgive the rest. Regardless, I succeeded. What I struggle to recognize is what I gained, or rather, if what I gained was worth the price. Queries surrounding the opportunity cost of my actions revolve over and over in my reconstructed brain.

I long have said, to anyone that would listen, that I wanted to escape. That I wanted to leave and get away from everything. To move, maybe to Alaska or one of the Dakotas, and to live in a little cabin amongst the woods. I would escape the pressures of society, the pressures of existing, and the pressures of the other, and I would be alone. Alone with my twelve dogs, that is.

It's not as if this was decided for naught. There were extensive motivations, maybe even justifications, behind my wish for seclusion. For as long as I can remember, though my past is admittedly somewhat obscured to me, I did not belong with others. It wasn't difficult to meet people, it never is when you're younger. But of everyone I ever met, thousands of individuals across countless experiences, none gave the feeling of genuine camaraderie. None except for one, but their companionship is not accessible to me. Despite this, I still endeavored to conform, always trying to fit myself into the center of a puzzle in which I was a corner piece. My attempt was pitiful and half-baked. I assumed that by shaving away parts of myself, I could align with the rest. But a facade is only effective in the shallows, anyone who examined me with miniscule effort could see me for what I was, a faker. So, I resolved that, one day, I would leave them behind and find companionship with my lonesome.

But what I failed to notice, what somehow managed to slip through the cracks in the midst of it all, was that I was already gone. I must have lost sight of things during one of the nights I spent alone and high, higher than any normal person ever reasonably is. It would be impossible to determine which night, of course, but surely in one of them I got hopelessly and irretrievably lost and never again was able to elucidate where I had gone to. Until recently, that is, but so I’ve already mentioned. My physical body remained trapped in Midwestern hell, it may have adjusted location periodically (no part of Indiana is really any different than any other part), but my identity, my person, had already begun to depart to the grassy or frozen plains that I so desired.

It was a slow process, and certainly not one that was streamlined. But over time, person after person was systematically removed from my life, some quite literally, while others, namely those who I could not completely rid myself of, I simply disengaged from. Even more left of their own accord due to various mistakes: mistakes that I made or mistakes that they made, typically both. It doesn’t really matter; either way, they still left. More often than not, these happenings were unintentional, but hindsight reveals most, and looking back, I can follow the patterns. I can see how, whether through continuous self-sabotage, intentional disconnect, or a destructive conflict, I eliminated every threat to the pursuit of my self-discovery, and I did so all in the name of authenticity and the disalienation of the self. It’s rather obvious that this would lead to the alienation of the other, but my idiocy prevented this idea from forming.

Now I stand. I was brought to my knees, and I remained there for the majority of my conscious experience, unable to move, but I stand now: I stand among nothing. There is me, fully formed and intact, and there is the lack of everything else. Maybe the ruins of things are still present, but they hold no power anymore. The memories still exist, still haunt me, but my feelings towards them are lackluster. Any notable reaction to anything is brief and passing, only to be replaced by a consuming nothingness. There is still a sadness, and an anger, and a terror, but their strength has been traded for an empty heaviness, one that encircles and envelopes me in all directions of my view, should I care to look up from the ground. It’s closing in; my defenses are giving way.

When my grandmother passed, it was rather sudden. She had recently fallen and broken her hip, sure, but to all, it appeared as though she had nearly completely recovered. She was tough, arguably one of the toughest and most stubborn individuals I have ever known. No fractured bone could keep her down, as she proved twice-over. Then she caught a case of pneumonia and was gone in a matter of weeks. The doctors posited that, in her very advanced years, she had expended all of her body’s remaining energy and had none left to fight off the infection.

Likewise, this body has been retooled, its weaponry re-honed to their sharpest. It’s no longer especially as fast or as brawny as it once was, but it currently exists in a well-structured balance between the two. Comprehensively, it has never known finer form. This came about from a significant amount of disciplined work that was done for no purpose at all, but still, it was done. And yet, this body strains under its own weight more than ever. It’s failing me, or perhaps, I am failing it — crushing it under the mass of my isolation. Yes, it is unquestionable now that I am dying, and that I too will fail to defeat this infection.

The lack is killing me, the lack of her more so than anything. But it’s not just her, her and her long black hair that is increasingly brown towards the roots. It’s the lack of anything, anyone, any meaning at all in any tangible form. But at times I question why I bother to complain. In the end, there is truly no one to blame but me. In chase of the self, I forsook the other. The covenant I made has been fulfilled in its entirety, and the consequence is a vast landscape of quiet loneliness, one that I have no hope of traversing and have no desire, or strength left, to even attempt to. I don’t really feel as if I am dying anymore, I just know it to be true now. But unlike Florent in Serotonin, I am not “dying of sadness”, no matter how often my mind repeats the phrase or how accurate it may have been in the past. Rather, I am plainly dying of nothing, nothing at all.

For no reason that I can discern, this seems to be much worse.