(no subject)
Being buried alive by your own mind is treacherous, seems impossible, like a figure of speech, like an explanation for some phenomenon of a rare neurological disorder. But it is wholly possible and altogether terrifying and near impossible to depict in words alone. Because it is a wordless, protracted process, so slow it is hard to believe it has occurred until the comparison of a time hidden deep in the past is recognized and the tragic disintegration realized. Your own mind. How can the one thing that you alone own betray you and hold you captive? How can you lose control over the one thing you should inherently be able to control? How can the simple passage of time steal your very soul away? It makes me want to kick and scream and throw a terrible tantrum because I can no longer choose where my actions lead me. I am driven by some external force that masquerades as my mind. But I no longer have what most consider a mind. I do not possess the ability to make decisions that are my own, to do things that consequently bring joy, I hesitate to even write this in the first person because it’s scarcely me who writes these things. I suppose there is some semblance of a me left, although it is hard to recognize when it is me who emerges, or the strange imposter who seems very much like me, except after much analysis, it cannot be me, because I would not purposefully make myself miserable. Would I? I envision my brain as this separate entity from the self. It is hard for me to see the mind and body as connected in any fashion whatsoever, save for the fact that the brain is encased in a skull, which I will concede is part of the human body. But generally, I envision the brain as some extraneous being capable of performing all these intricate functions without any connection to the body whatsoever, which I know is not at all the case, but for the sake of imagination, let’s remain here momentarily. I imagine it like this: The gyri and sulci begin twisting and writhing into convoluted shapes, into positions that have heretofore been unobserved or experienced. The entire organ begins to engulf itself, the delicate insides bursting forth through the cerebral cortex and causing a massive hemorrhage. Where previously the neurons communicated in an appropriate fashion, synapses operating normally, there is chaos. Axons branch in directions they should not, they become tangled into a messy web of confusion, suffocating one another as they uncontrollably burst forth, delivering messages that make absolutely no sense. And the body is a puppet to this bedlam. This is the only way I can rectify the dissonant and unfathomable idea that my mind has been usurped by itself. The mind and body must be separate. There must be two selves that make up the self. And yet I know that this is not true. Our minds, our bodies, all of organs and cells work in tandem so this cannot be so. But to even continue existing, I cannot say living because I no longer live, but to exist, to continue to not physically slaughter one of these selves, I must believe that that is the case. That there are two selves. How else can I possibly make sense of this calamity? How else can I even formulate an understanding of this torture? I have to believe that I control over one of these selves, or that perhaps someday there will be a reversal of this destruction. Years have passed and I ponder why this transformation is not complete. It seems impossible that something can stay in motion forever. Can my brain surely still be squirming within the confines of my skull, grappling with itself? I don’t know that these words do the experience justice. There are not words to describe such things. There are not words for madness other than madness. But what does that even mean? I sometimes wonder if the complexity of the human brain reaches far beyond that of our language ability. I wonder if there are perhaps, a select few people who have surpassed all that language allows us to express, but are stuck with the current dictionaries and words of this world because there are too few people to have created novel meanings. Or what if the human species is truly capable of thoughts so intricate that they cannot be rightly expressed. This seems a sharp sting of injustice to those buried within those thoughts. I do feel as if there is someone else out there in the universe that could read these words and truly read what they do not say because within their hearts, their brains, whatever it is that makes them, they have experienced this, they are capable of knowing something deeper than a superficial overview of our world. But on the whole, most people will disregard these words as mere pontification, as insanity, as egotistical banter, or will say they do not understand and never look to question themselves as the source of their ignorance. Too few are blessed, or even have the desire to be blessed with empathy. Or maybe too many are just cursed with ignorance. I am lost. “I” meaning the self that I strive to remember, the self that once was able to create joy out of the surrounding circumstances, the self that was not literally sliced open and apart by masochism. I am lost. I fear that it is a type of lost that cannot be found, a type of lost where I am not only missing and non-existent, but broken and fragmented into a million little pieces that can never be adequately glued back together.