Release and Repeat

My mind feels like it has been hammered into concrete for nine days straight. My body is weak like a soldier crawling back to base after having his legs blown off. The cars driving past me are in slow motion. The sky is overcast and a sudden downpour is expected. The silence is overwhelming. The silence begets thoughts; thoughts beget the treacherous instability of the mind. It’s nine-twenty in the evening and my mind is turning on me.

A simple fix is a gathering among complete strangers. The fix utilizes the humanistic nature of wanting to be surrounded by others and never experiencing alienation. We dread being alone because the minute we are by ourselves, our mind begins ravishing through our thoughts. We begin to convince ourselves of ridiculous scenarios. We begin to believe the slightest fiction and we write it into our lives. Yet, we surround ourselves with strangers and our mind falls into a coma and the thoughts are silenced.

It’s a matter of time before I start convincing myself I’m mentally insane. I attempt to occupy myself with tasks that will drive away the thoughts. The tasks are temporary and last until my ego grows weary and unimpressed. Sound stimulation becomes repetitive and falls into the category of annoyance. Visual sensations embrace an hour of my time, but afterwards fall short of enlightenment. There is no cure except the one that I can manufacture.

I touch the bars of the cage and the rusts flakes off like a molded cheese on a hamburger. I’ve been sitting Indian style for several days and I feel as if I may bring offence to the natives. There is no room to situate myself or shift positions. Starvation is only hours away and my stomach is begging me to escape. My pupils are dilated and my eyes are the color of rotten strawberries. My fingers look like wooden sticks, shivering when the temperature is not even cold. I’m extremely limited.

I woke up in this cage on the twenty-six of June. The night before I was in perfect condition, but the fear of something terrible was engaging. The “something terrible” is manufactured, fictional, and unrealistic. It doesn’t have to exist. I’m the creator of this cage, yet I cannot fully understand how to escape. There are no guards watching my every move, waiting for me to complain in order to strike me on the head with their club. There is no alarm system rigged to the mechanical device holding the cage shut. There is no key except for the one I can invent. There is escape or insanity. There is freedom or limitation.

I feel as if the entire world is plotting against me. The world wants to convince me that I have no trust in anyone around me. The world wants to persuade me that nothing good comes in life. Everything negative is thrown in a duffle bag and attached to my ankle. The only way to make the load lighter is to empty the bag little by little. The more I empty it, the more negativity escapes and enters my existence. Do I empty the load so it can be easier on my back or do I carry the negativity until I find it’s destination?

The line drawn between reality and fiction has been erased at nine forty-seven. The cage door swings open and I leaped out to freedom. The cage door was never opened and now freedom is waving goodbye to me, laughing at my inability to result my issues. I’ll pick slavery over this. I’ll pick a POW camp during World War II over this embarrassment.

I’m deteriorating and my bones have wrinkles in them. My eyelids are like theater curtains held by an obsessive-compulsive stage manager. The audience doesn’t know when they will open; the playwright has no control over the opening scene. A gravestone appears in front of me. It has a rounded top and cracks running down the center, like glaciers breaking apart due to ever-changing weather. It’s blank. It’s a reminder like death is in Hamlet to the deranged antihero. The gravestone refreshes the balance between what is morally right and what is absurdly wrong.

I close my eyes and envision myself on a mountaintop. The scenery is majestic and surreal. The trees are endlessly tall and reach towards the blue, cloudless sky. The green leaves are waving in the air when a sudden gust of wind rolls by. The wind is strong enough to present its presence, but soft enough to wrap you up in nature’s blanket. The flowers are arranged by color and they emit an essence that enters your nostrils and tugs on your sense of smell. It’s the smell of everything beautiful in the world. It’s the smell that many of us never have a chance to inhale.

A drizzle falls from the heavens and forms a cocoon of wetness around my body. The water runs down like children riding bicycles in a park. The water washes the imperfections and drains them into the dirt underneath my feet. The sun emerges behind a parallel mountain. It’s like reaching the top of the world and realizing that worrying was just an illusion created by the fearful. The top of the world is unlimited and the air smells of gold.

I open my eyes and the cage settles around me. The rust is still peeling and the limitation is still haunting. A cold draft runs by and sends chills up my spine that pokes against the skin. If one were to run their hands up and down my backside, they would think they were touching a miniature version of the Alps. I look around the outside of the cage and a flashing light appears in the distance. It flashes a yellow light several times until it changes to a pure white. After flashing a white light twice, it flashes an image of the mountaintop. The mountaintop with the endless fields of rainbows transformed to colorful flowers. The bars of the cage are cold like an Icelandic popsicle. The cage taunts me like a civilian taunting the town drunk.

I so desperately want to reach the mountain top that I continuously rack my brain with illusion and mental manifestations of worst-case scenarios. The mountaintop is the only hope I have in my life and losing it would be like losing your favorite child at the county fair. You are shown a glimpse of a lively atmosphere that is brilliant as it is magnificent. The sneak peek is so influential that you begin thinking of every way possible to not reach it. You’re not a pessimist, you’re just scared. Scared of losing the one aspect of your life that makes you feel alive. That mountaintop is the cherry on top of my ice cream, the finishing touches on the wedding cake.

In the realistic judgment of the present, the mountaintop is one hundred percent reachable. The cage is the place where I go when my mind wanders and I throw the duffle bag of negativity over my left shoulder. The cage drains me like leeches attached to a baby calf. It creates illusions that interrupt the climbing of the mountain. It creates instability of the worse kind and it ties me up with its bandages. Insanity smacks the cage. Depression rattles the lock. The cage must not contain my ambitions to reach the top of the mountain. The mountaintop is beautiful and everlasting.

I take a deep breath and my lungs expand. The rich oxygen enters my system and the blood bounces from enchantment. The nervous system is on alert, but reclining on a comfy chair. My arms are dangling by my side. I lift my hand towards my head and run my fingers through my silky hair. The atmosphere is inviting me for brunch. The sun is returning my phone call for movie night. The moon wants to wrap her arms around me and sing me to sleep.

The mountaintop is weeks away and I can smell the flowers, see the rainbows, and feel the drizzle. The wind will lift me up in a gust and form nature’s hammock for me to rest in. I will drift towards the mountaintop. The limitations are endless and the hope is empowering. Beauty is knocking on my door and I’m leaving the cage to embrace her.