Oscillate

Yesterday I had a technology overdose. With an unusual lack of any work to do, I whiled away the afternoon reading blogs, surfing the internet, playig countless games of computer solitaire and watching way too many programmes on 4oD. And today, I felt too sick of the sight of the colourful desktop or flashing TV to go anywhere near it. So instead I rested, read, and cried; releasing any pent up emotion in a long stream of inexpicable tears. Lying there, my mind uncrowded for the first time in a long time with long lists of so many things to do, I wondered what would happen if I wrote. If I wrote what I was feeling at that exact moment in time, not in retrospect or anticipation or in an attempt to be literary. Naturally, out came the pen and the paper and a flow of writing littered with tense switches, bad grammatical structures and a rather unforgivable amount of similes, alliteration and flowery vocabulary. That's what happens when you ask me to write in stream-of-consciousness.

It is only one moment in time. I lie in my bed, throat strangled with anger and tears cascading down across my face. I feel them prickling my cheek, my nose but I cannot match the sensation to any cause. What’s wrong, people like to ask? The irritating, disingenuous answer is after all true: I don’t know.

At that moment I felt discomfort; cold, bored and unhappy my self-pity drowned me. Yet lying and clutching the thin blanket, the nothingness of my empty surroundings triggered a switch, reminding me if that unbearable ache of loneliness. If someone came in right now and hugged me, kissed me, wiped the stinging tears, would the sun come out and dry the sadness away?

No. Painful, the impossibility of that action is also entirely bearable. I close my eyes and try to wish away the day. Sleep, natural painkiller, does not come and I can do nothing but watch recent recollections play before closed eyes. Moments in time which had never existed before today. Events, true and tangible happenings, which would not have happened if this morning I had not woken up. Moments which (if they still matter tomorrow) will certainly not mean a thing next week, or next month.

I begin to ponder on my personality, characteristics shaping behaviour. Such a harmless word: ponder. So happy and careless sounding for such painful poison. Pondering, analysing, flipping different words around my silent tongue: passionate, clownish (not just funny) and simply so hopeless because if I do not like myself, what hope is there that other people will? Opinionated yet indecisive. Thoughtful yet careless. Except I have many cares; too many trifling cares and too many question marks.

That’s the trouble, the black ominous cloud looming over my anger. I know, I always know when my tears are futile or my wrath unreasonable or my irritation pointless. As I rant and rage, weep and wail the other me – serene as ever – watches from far above. Chuckling to herself: hormones. It’s those silly young girl’s hormones. She’ll grow out of it. But even when it is only me whispering into my own ear, the words can still be razor-sharp. The superior, intellectual brain which always analyses or ponders materialises into every person there ever was who made me feel an inch tall. Belittling her.

And although it is so very normal, it feels entirely unnatural; struggling to piece together brain and heart, two ill-fitting pieces of a jigsaw. So I oscillate between this thought and that thought, even in tears swinging back again towards laughter.