Thursday, July 20, 2017

I rock.

I rock back and forth in my seat, trying to tame the electricity in my stomach. I rock, and sometimes I lower my head between my knees, and sometimes I cover my ears. I sit down in the middle of the crowded sidewalk and I cry and rock and lower my head and cover my ears.

Because the world overwhelms me. It's the world surrounding me, the people getting too close to me. It's the overstimulating sounds of screaming and honking and elbows in my face and sides. Even with my ears covered, I hear the judgmental comments by passersby. I hear when they say I'm a mess or a weirdo or having a bad trip. It is a bad trip, one which I can't turn on or off.

There are times when my head begins to flail back and forth, too. It starts with my knee bouncing, my cuticles raw from being ripped and torn, the skin on my lips bright pink and scabbed. This isn't enough, the energy and raucous inside isn't at ease. It spreads to my eyes, darting back and forth, my neck jolting my head around and around and around like I'm possessed. I am possessed by the hurricane inside me.

Without time to eat or sleep or even fantasize, all my efforts are put into the task of senseless ticks, tacks, taps, and tones. The kind that forces strangers to place a hand on my knee. "Please stop." The kind that drives any sane man insane. To the point where I begin holding my own knee down and I look utterly bizarre as I struggle with my own inner willpower. A will to fidget and an opposing will to slow down, to rest, to make it stop. I am standing and bouncing and my calves are getting a work out, but there are no headphones on my ears, there is no tune to incite such enthusiasm. It is just my mind coaxing me- play, play, play.

Picking up a guitar requires too much focus and I certainly don't have the attention span for reading a book. Movies and television and even listening to a song is too dull and slow and precise for me. I crave speed and action, to gnaw and suck out the blood of an ocean crashing against plated glass. That CRASH, that is me pounding without rhyme or reason at the wooden table. Knock on wood if you simply can't sit still.

Seconds turn to days to weeks, and it all feels like one moment that cannot keep up with me. We are racing to infinity and I am in the lead. Without a sense of accomplishment or victory, just with deprivation and dilapidation; disintegration.

One's body begins to fail when it lacks basic human needs. When the sugar dwindles, the fats and carbohydrates and proteins have been used to keep my leg bouncing to a silent song, then everything begins to weaken. If only this put things on hold. Despite the weakness and fatigue, my nerves are still on fire, aching to react to fight and flight and leaps and bounds.

And when I am down there, on the ground in the middle of a crowded sidewalk, I close my eyes. Because if I open my eyes, I may realize that this is real. That I can't escape.

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