I think that to write is to come to an understanding.
I think that, I think that.
I think that, to know what is in one’s own mind, one must express.
Does a feeling need a name to be known?
Sleeping has been a challenge for a while now, but last night’s experience was particularly interesting. I was part of a conversation that included two people who I know, only one of whom was making any sense. I remained alert for quite some time after awakening and mulled over what had been said, but it trickled away from me as fast as I recognized the nonsense that was happening. And then I remained alert thinking about the strangeness of these people having a conversation, and I noticed a feeling of something lost.
I wonder what people mean when they claim to understand others.
I wonder what people mean when they claim to understand themselves.
Can we understand others without understanding the self?
And can we understand the self separately from understanding others?
I am far calmer lying awake at 3am than 11pm.
At 11pm, my eyes are active. It takes effort to put the book down, effort that my occasionally rational brain insists upon because it’s late. It’s 11pm, after all, and I haven’t been sleeping.
At 3am, my eyes are tired. My brain spins but my eyes are tired and at least I’ve slept until then, which is comforting. I need to stop the thoughts from dancing but at least my eyes are closed and that feels good.
At 3am, I go back to:
How am I feeling about the move?
Aside from feeling defeated by the question, I’m terrified.
I was a different person the last time I moved, and that was in a different lifetime.
How am I supposed to be feeling?
At 11pm, I am alert enough to avoid the subject.
During a very dark period of my life, I used to record my thoughts in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. I used to turn on the songs that made me cry and play them over and over. I’d mouth the words until they became part of me and then I’d cry and be able to rest.
This is not that time.
But I am aware of how the patterns of behaviour that I developed out of necessity at that time have imprinted themselves on how I cope with challenges.
Adaptation is critical to human survival, and I wonder if I have become habituated to the sort of aimlessness I am experiencing now. This is not the right word, and far from an accurate characterization of my time and even my personal reflections of my time, but it is an accurate word to describe this feeling. It is a strange world when the reality and the feeling do not match.
Something is different this time, this move, this change. I cannot blame the pandemic, for blame is cause-effect, right-wrong, black-white. And the world is shades upon shades of gray and purple and green and blue and and and.
But I can acknowledge that coping throughout the pandemic has necessitated adaptation.
I wonder about our claims to significance.
Do we know at the time that a thought, a conversation, a shared glance, an observation will become signficant?
Or is significance developed through, over, across time? And then, is it the act or event itself or our memory and interpretation of it that becomes significant?
And does it matter?
I remember what it means to be excited and intellectually, I am. But my body does not have those feelings. The first inkling I had of what my body had lost was the moment when a friend reminded me, “This is an adventure.” As I write the word, I cannot keep from smiling.
Adventure.
My body knows what it is to have an adventure.
My mind knows what it is to live an adventure.
Does a feeling need a name to be known?
I think that, to know what is in one’s own mind, one must not be afraid of looking.
By Rebecca Michelle 