The world is ending and no one even cares. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. We tell our stories in order to profit from them. At least that’s what they tell us. The stories, I mean, not the listeners. Not the tender ears. Not the end of a sentence but the beginning of the end of a question. A mark. A pox. IDK.
I’m in a dark place as of late. Not a lot of people know about it, by which I mean, nobody. But I keep it to myself. It doesn’t even come out in my writing because truth be told I don’t even write anymore. So what is this? Don’t worry about that. I don’t even read anymore. So what am I? Don’t worry about me. I’m fine, I’ll be fine, always have been.
What trips me out the most is that mental health doesn’t take a day off. You know, it’s pretty resilient stuff. I miss my therapist. I miss my after-school program. I miss my friends at the masjid. I miss all the routines I had in place which gave me a sense of belonging to a whole greater than my self. I miss working towards something alongside people who believed in the truth of that vision. As social creatures, we crave connection. As spiritual beings, we seek salvation. But sometimes we get in the way of our own saving. We are almost always the instruments by which we write our own demise. The sky is blue, though, the sky is blue. Cheer up, chap. Stiff upper lip and all that.
Grown boys don’t cry, they stop themselves.
They set their lips tight, brows tight, eyes tight wide.
This is another period of rapid transitions and if I know anything about myself it is that these times give me the most grief. They are the most trying. Because routines are what keep me grounded. And once the familiarity of routine is disrupted, I feel like… like… like one of those prisoners from Krypton sent to the next dimension, silently screaming inside a 2-D pane of glass as it floats through space for all of time and all of space. And all I really need is to get a new routine started and the sound returns to my screams. And I ask myself, self, what are you screaming about? There’s nothing to be screaming about. There’s nothing but happiness here, can’t you hear, the smile on my face? Yes, self, yes.
Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of news coverage about famous athletes and their mental health struggles. This seems to be groundbreaking territory because it shatters the illusion that rich, famous people have everything one needs to be happy. It makes people realize that the grass is never greener on the other side. It makes them question what they’re working towards, and what it means when the things which keep them going no longer suffice. How do you swim when there is no island to be seen?
We swim because we have no choice. And when we make it to the other side, we tell ourselves stories about why we swam to get to this place. And this place is not that place, and neither is the journey in between, but when you are here looking back at there, it’s easy to forget how much it cost you. How much it would have cost you had you not ever left.
Or something.
I don’t know, man, I’m just rambling. I’m just wasting time at work, don’t mind me. Get back to your day. And smile. Even if you don’t feel like it. Fake it. Make it. Reset. Game.