Saturday, May 30, 2009

Clockwork

There is an emotion that I don’t have a word for. Sometimes I describe it as emptiness or meaninglessness but that’s not what it really is. It's the feeling that you are not in control of your life, that your surroundings are sucking you in, making you a part of something that is not you, dictating the way you must behave, and destroying your soul in the process. You aren’t free. You are a slave, a cog, constantly being hammered and reshaped from the outside, constantly being destroyed and rebuilt one piece at a time. And you fight to hold on to what you were, despite the fact that all those things that comprise you were once hammered into you too, by your genes, by your parents, by some form of input that is beyond our control. So some of us go with the flow, like water taking on whatever form the earth demands of us, and some of us will take on the world to preserve ourselves, all the while never realizing that there is no self. We do not exist except as a part of something bigger, which neither cares about us nor is even aware of our existence. We can try to step outside ourselves, we can try to escape our genes, our upbringing, our needs, our wants, but even the desire to escape was put into us by the same force which drives everything. We can’t step outside the world because there is nowhere else to go. There is only what is. And we are a part of that whether we like it or not.

I feel this emotion several times every day. I feel it when someone talks to me and I’m obligated to respond within a narrow range of options. I feel it when I’m forced to figure out a way to continue to eat. I feel it when I’m surrounded by people and know that I must compromise a part of myself if I’m to connect with them. I feel it when I want the impossible. I feel it in my stomach and my throat. I feel it in my body telling me not to feed it, and trying to reject whatever I force into my mouth. I feel it in my heavy head and my heavy eyes. It is all heavy. Always.

1 comment:

Mr. Apron said...

I feel it, too.

And, when I do, all I can think is,

"Of course. Retard."