Sometimes when I wake up from a particularly deep sleep, my subconscious comes online before my conscious mind has a chance to.
I forget the context of my life (what time is it? What bed/room/house am I in?) and I’m hit in the face with a felt sense reality.
A deep sense of dread, a punch in the face.
How did I get here?
What is the point of it all?
Why am I even alive?
Some details begin to crystalize, unpleasant.
Linking a raw feeling into realities that might explain it, retroactively.
37 years old.
Living in a random city.
Few friends.
Shouldered by the responsibilities of feeding three mouths.
The monotony.
Of putting one foot in front of the other.
The unfulfilled dreams.
I was supposed to be somebody by now.
Wasn’t I just eight years old?
Wasn’t I just lying on the couch, listening to Enya and reading Richard Scary’s Cars and Trucks and Things That Go?
The dread is often followed by a rush of anger.
Here’s how I got here.
I was raised religious.
I was married off to the first woman I dated.
I was taught that birth control was a sin, that sex was a sin, that free time was a sin.
Slowly my logical brain comes back online, and I piece together my identity, my context, my self-regulation resources, step-by-step.
You are ok.
You have much to look forward to.
Here’s a specific exciting thing you’re doing, working on, learning.
Here are the ways the future will be even better.
Tune into your body. Tune into your breath. Everything is transient, this will pass.
And slowly the ton of bricks weighing down my stomach begins to lighten as I claw my wayward mind back into submission.
I find it insightful though, to observe what comes up in the time between when I wake up and and when I gather my wits.
A glimpse into all the shit that is still there, despite all the healing I’ve done, in the space between lost -and self-consciousness.
Mind the gap.
