Friday, November 21, 2014

Swings

As long as I can remember, I have been telling stories. In second grade we wrote and illustrated our own stories. I wrote a story about 3 little girls, princesses, who were slaves to their evil father the king. The oldest was able to save the day, and they all lived happily ever after. My teachers heavily edited my story when the words went from my pencil to the computer, but that's not relevant to the specific story I'm telling now.

As I got older, I started heavily reading to avoid reality, and my stories stayed mostly in my head as distractions for when I was doing any activity that books didn't fit into (like dish washing for example, I gave the utensils their own stories and lives to lead as they went through the wash). It's kinda my MO, life gets scary: crack open a book. Live somewhere else for a while, feel someone else's emotions for a while, and just pretend reality can be found between these pages.

Sometimes that wasn't enough though, even with any number of combinations of my vices to indulge. Sometime reality demanded my attention. So I would go to the playground, find an empty swing set and fly. The rhythm of the swing set creaking, slow, steady, calm. I would pump as hard as I could, going as high as possible, for as long as possible. The harder I pushed, the quieter my brain became, and once I had pushed myself to the point of physical exhaustion I could think clearly.

As an adult, anytime I've felt like my brain was going to explode, I've gone to a swing set. Tonight, I went to swing and instead of clarity I just felt lonely. Every other part of the experience was the same, right down to when I jumped off, except the clear thought was " Why aren't you talking to so and so about this?"
 Well, how about the fact that it's 1:15 in the morning brain? Or that just because I'm having an internal freak out about things of various importance that doesn't make it equal to others, especially factoring in the clock again? Or how about the fact that knowing what you need is an entirely different skill set than obtaining said need?


This was supposed to make me feel better. It didn't help as much as I had hoped. But it helped a little, so it counts.

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