The Nausea

The cold air is escaping the vent and roaming freely in my room. It’s brushing up against my skin and making it shiver. My skeleton is shaking inside of my skin. My eyes are watery like flood gates. My hands are lifeless. My legs are odd appendages that bend at the knee and support my body. My toes are miniature skin-covered claws. My heartbeats are irregular and fragile, but isn’t everything else?

Four walls enclosed around my body, each representing a different aspect of my ego.

The wall to the right is covered with bogus images taken from music booklets. The day it was put together, I found myself thinking I was some sort of an artistic genius. I would gather images and put them together according to color and essence. I am not color coordinated or right to judge the essence of an image. It takes up space, just like everything else we do. We see an empty wall and we paste it with objects that appeal to us. Just incase a stranger comes into our room; they could look at the wall and question us about what they see. We always want to open our mouths and tell our greatest hits and shy away from our biggest flops. We see something untouched and we want to rub our fingerprints all over it. Our mark must be placed on whatever we witness. We are dogs pissing on every tree we come across. Our words are the poison to infect the rest of the population with our disease. Our disease is our lives and the plague is our ego. A stranger is another opportunity to know our name. We glorify ourselves. We are our own idols. I am not an artist.

The wall behind me has a few more images and an object given to me by a friend. It represents a friendship in my life that diminished for unknown reasons. The friendship is dead and I’m still holding on to a silly artifact of the past. There is a window underneath the object and it sits there with the blinds drawn over them. In the morning, the sun shines through the window, and in the night, it’s just another wall to isolate me from the outside world. It’s an escape. Looking outside gives me the sensation that a world filled with terror and beauty still lives. We place ourselves in environments where we are easy sailing through stagnate currents. We continually place ourselves in these environments because it allows us to become lazy. We sit back, recline in our favorite chair, and let laziness take over our lives. Nothing wrong can happen, we are in our comfort zone. The minute we are uncomfortable , we begin to realize that we are only small, minuscule beings in a world where we have no control. We must become paranoid and over analyze our safety. We must consider other human beings that have a different way of life that might collide with our path. The drug addict might grab our arms and beg for spare change. The alcoholic might stumble in our path and tease us with insults and angry words. The mugger might see us as a potential target and our wallet might be stolen. To live in comfort and laziness is to not live at all. Uncomfortable means that we are no longer in control. Someone else can ruin our day, someone else can determine our lives. We are fanatics of ourselves and control is our virtue. I am a sloth and an egotistical.

The wall to my right is where the bed is, followed by the nightstand. The bed is where I escape from reality. I place my head on the pillow, shut my eyes, and wait for the rapture. The dreams commence and my body is lifted. I’m sailing through clouds, I’m being chased by an angry nation. I’m in a theater with zombies roaming freely, I’m falling in love with a beautiful girl. The rapture of dreams is a realm that is untouched by others. The creation of images and visual stimulation is the build up of contents in my mind. There are those experiences where I feel my body tremble and the walls are closing in. I want to wake up, but my own body is in control and won’t comply. Some mornings I wake up unaware of where I am. I don’t know what day it is. I don’t know what just happened. The sensation is priceless. It gives me a rush of panic where I’m racing through mental files to answer my own questions. Nighttime is my reclusive escape and dreams are my hallucinogenic drugs. I am powerless in sleep, I am drifting away.

There is also two doors that lead to my closet filled with attires from the last couple of years. Shirts and pants with designs on them to place over my delicate, naked skin. The clothing is another item sewed into our ego-driven lives. We feel the need to buy expensive clothing, because it shows the world that we are wealthy. We wear clothing that others don’t have. It yells “UNIQUE!” and the world’s eyes are placed on our keen fashion sense. Color coordinated outfits are a plus. We wake up daily and stagger over which outfit is going to showcase our mood the best. There are different outfits for different groups of people we surround ourselves with. If we are spending time with old friends, we throw on dirty clothes and we recite, “ I was too lazy to look good.” We were not too lazy, we just knew that we didn’t have anyone to impress anymore. We are meeting someone new, we must impress. We are going to be around the opposite sex, throw on our best outfits and strut the sidewalks like our own red carpets. Our clothing is another layer of the skin. Except with this one, we can change it as many times as we want. I am a clothed, color-coordinated fanatical of myself.

The wall in front of me has a desk leaning against it. It has a white bookshelf with rows and rows of books perfectly lined up in descending size order. I look at these books I’ve read throughout the years and the information I’ve taken from them. Some of the books have made me hysterically laugh to myself. Some of the books have made me an insomniac with my own thoughts. We are centered around ourselves and we are own worshipers. We are our greatest fans, yet we search for escape routes from our lives. We can talk for hours about ourselves, but we can also search for hours for a way out of the boring lives we live. I’m constantly searching for ways to step outside of my handcrafted box. I’m relentless in ways to expand my mind, but I get excited when someone wants to know about me. I am bored with my life, I am a self-educated escape artist.

What is it that we are so desperately searching for? The quickest way to become a millionaire. The easiest way to find the love of your life. The best way to lose weight while still being able to eat that fatty chocolate cake. There is always a search going on in our lives and it’s always to better ourselves in the quickest, easiest, best way possible. Are we truly happy with who we are? Everyone has a story to tell and an experience to shout the world’s audience. We open ourselves up to strangers because we want to be heard. We want to fool ourselves into thinking that people are almost as fascinated with us as we are with ourselves. The stranger becomes the listener, yet the listener becomes the betrayer of trust. We are tiny thieves running around stealing everyone’s spotlight because we feel that we deserve it more than they do. We complain about not being able to trust anyone, but we are willing to stab anyone in the back as long as it benefits ourselves in some way. We are hypocrites. We extend our arms and point the fingers at others. We pick at each others’ flaws like vultures picking bones clean. We are afraid of being humble and vulnerable. We push aside our flaws because we’ll deal with them later. We are scared of ourselves. We are terrified of the people we are becoming. Glorification doesn’t make sense but it’s the only thing we know how to do. I am a work in progress and the progress is headed in all directions.

My body is still cold and the air is still rushing past my face. Nothing has changed in the last couple of minutes. My skeleton still needs a blanket. My hands are still dead and my legs are still pointless to look at. My heart beats at different patterns. My body functions and my thoughts are wicked.

The strangeness of this room is overwhelming. I do not live in this room, the objects in this room live for me. My life is in the objects surrounding me. I’ve been too busy pouring my life into objects, that I haven’t had enough time to tell myself who I really am.

The sun will be rising in a couple of hours. The sunrays will shine through my blinds and warm my exterior. I’ll wake up just as self-indulgent as tonight, but maybe I’ll be taking a step forward towards the loss of the ego. Maybe I’ll wake up realizing that happiness lies inside of me, not in the materialistic society we live in where our bodies and thoughts are commercialized. Maybe I’ll wake up a different person with a different name and a different set of ideas. I’m contemplating sleep and wondering about the dreams that will visit me tonight.

The world around me continues to exist and breath in the toxics we feed it. I’m going to continue to live my life in the matter that fits me best. I’m going to strip each day of enjoyment and embrace those around me. I’m going to share my flaws with strangers and beg for guidance. I’m humble and flawed, but the world is telling me that I’m not alone in this. I exist and life is beautiful. Goodnight and tomorrow will be another day to find the secrets we seek and the beauty hidden inside of each and every one of us.

Enlightenment

The sun is warm against my pale, shivering body. I feel the warmth and I feel the uplifting. I close my eyes and see a blood red color slowly turning lighter. As I sit there with my eyes close and looking directly into the inside of my eyelids, I see the color start transforming into a beautiful white. The sunrays are penetrating my skin with the UV rays rejoicing in the lack of sunscreen. I can feel my skin begging me to run inside. They tell me they don’t want cancer as a neighbor. I place my quivering finger on my lips and hush their pleads.

My body is on fire, with embers falling on the ground. The sun has gripped my body and chased away the shaking and bitter coldness. I open my eyes slowly and my vision is distorted. The landscape is still there. The trees are still standing straight. The grass is still thirsty for a few drops of rain. Realism is still in the sky and I close my eyes in retreat.

Eyes closed and now I am transported, no longer in the complicated realistic nature of life. It’s me and the sun beaming down my body and sending his greetings. It’s the essence of simplicity and feeling as if the world has diminished. The traffic has been silenced. The words of others have been muted. It’s as if God has paused the world for me to take a few minutes to feel his warmth.

I’m pleading for an uplifting; an uplifting that will reach inside of my head and begin altering with my brain. After finding the right spot on the brain, a smile will run across my face. After pressing hard enough, I will begin to stand straight up, without that pathetic slouch I have inherited recently.

I find myself in between moments of shivering and utter steadiness. The shivering is remarkable and it shakes me from side to side, whispering “Never again”. The steadiness holds me with its invisible arms and yells with enthusiasm and gratitude, “Have faith!”

The shivering begets coldness, which begets wreckage. The steadiness begets warmth, which begets order. The shivering and steadiness hate each other and they fight for my attention.

Let me stand up straight with a smile across my face, the sun peering down at me, and hope gently gripping my hand, while whispering, “Trust me”.

Uplift me. Uplift me. Uplift me.

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.