Sometimes I feel like a child who has become lost in a strange and very different reality in which I grew old. As I sought a way back, I found that some of the things here can cause pain and others can cause joy. A bit like Alice who finds one pill can make you taller and one pill can make you smaller, in the Jefferson Airplane song White Rabbit. Now after many ‘years’ of wandering in this reality, I am beginning to feel that there is no way back. The denizens of this place all seem content in their places and since I was the one that is new, I had difficulty finding a place for me in their lives and their day to day. Even when I was able to dance with them, I found that when the music stopped, I was still alone as they had all returned to their homes and lives that were there long before I arrived. This is not a new feeling for me. Over the years I have written many stories about this sense/feeling and how I might approach ‘fitting’ in. I have never felt ‘bad’ being alone but have long fantasized that there would be another, perhaps like me, who found themselves transported into this reality. Maybe that was my way of coping with the realization that I was not like those who grew here from the beginning and were fashioned from the ‘God Stuff’ of this space and time. I sometimes get melancholy feeling I am not from here and as a stranger, I will never be able to fit in nor be accepted as a being of the proper kind, even if I am dressed appropriately and know the language. So perhaps in a sort of mindless delirium or a consciousness gone mad, I tossed out my preconceptions, my tools, my discoveries, and my hopes, walking now naked and exposed to whatever this reality might present. It is an odd feeling to no longer be wearing my armor and shields. The tendrils of existence that I have wrenched loose from my form, twitch and wiggle along the path where I know I will not walk again. The path that for most of my existence took me deep into this world and then back to the sanctuary I built for myself when I first found myself here. It wasn’t much. The sanctuary was like a cocoon with just enough room for myself and a way to close out the reality. It was a sort of perverted pleasure I derived when I recently destroyed my place, especially realizing that I could not ever build it again. Perhaps it was a way to force myself to proceed without a place to retreat.
I looked into the distance and saw the wilderness leading to a mountain. I allowed myself to believe that I had served some useful purpose here and perhaps brought value to those who called this reality their own. I wanted to be so much more than just alone. The reality sometimes beckons me with its siren song but it is no longer able to seduce me to seek its source. I am resting for now as I summon the strength to scale the mountain of my uncertainty and let my spirit free. There is a part of me that wants to feel sorry for myself. I have tried over the years to silence that part. This act of acceptance and trust, destroying my sanctuary, may have caused that part to whither and die finally. My vain and selfish ego was next. I took great pleasure in finding its hiding place and destroying the bridges to its lair and its nest within. Now like me it might know the feeling of being alone instead of having me to ‘run around’ like some puppet of its own, trying to convince me that I had some purpose and brought value to this reality. All the while it took the wonder and awe from this place and squandered it in the bliss and joy of its own perceptions.
I have lived long in this reality so strange and so not mine and so very far it feels from the home I can recall in my mind. It is a place where I have learned expression and art and how to communicate with the beings that I came across and got to know. It is a place where I learned to dance, to love and to cry and many other incredible and beautiful things. I leave behind all the wonder and awe I have found. It belongs to those who call this reality their home. To find and have as their own. The only thing I wish to take from here is the sense of being alone. Perhaps I can lock it in a place where it will not ever again find a reality in which to roam and take away the truly one thing that has value. Uncertainty is a destination I now embrace without concern. There is nothing left to loose.
A place called melancholy
Sometimes in life we find ourselves faced with uncertainty and a sense of being alone. Perhaps there is value in that.