“Hello? Is there anybody in there?
Just nod if you can hear me
Is there anyone home? …..
There is no pain you are receding
A distant ship smoke on the horizon
You are only coming through in waves
Your lips move but I can’t hear what you are saying..” Pink Floyd
I really don’t remember the first time it happened, the first time I went there and what precipitated it. I do know, however, with great certainty, the feeling that led me there; invaded me and then held on to me, completely consumed, as we both fell over the edge and down into the abyss. Into complete unknowing, into complete darkness, a total and complete surrender.
I remember being in that “fall” once before, however, this last time, I voluntarily pushed myself over the edge, head first, thinking it was the only way to try to balance this dark unbalance that was devouring me. I had lost my way forward, my mind a complete and total blank, any thoughts or hopes or desires failing to form. It’s as if the synapses in my brain had gone quiet, failing to fire, rendering me completely useless, completely non-operational.
I always had a plan, the next thing, what I was going to do, explore or what I wanted to experience; always plenty of ideas gathered through my life experiences, visions of how it would be, plenty of foresight. But now, it seems that I was at an impasse. There were no thoughts, no ideas, no visions, not even an inkling. This was extremely odd and unfamiliar territory for me. Something new, different, somewhat frightening. I began to panic. At this first pass, I calmed myself down and thought I needed more time. I gave myself three months and I would check back then. Five months later, still nothing. Again, I gave myself more time, another three months, six months and still, nothing.
I had come to a place in my life where I had dawdled long enough. Where I existed but was not living, where things had changed abruptly, radically. Where the proverbial rug had been pulled out from under me and revealed a great void, a black hole. I was standing on the edge, being nudged, with the terrifying fear of falling, and I knew I needed to make a decision about my life. It was time to start living again, embracing a life that I had been expelled from for such a long time now, complacent and quite comfortable to stay in the shadows, in the undertow, quiet and unobserved. It was safe here, no reason to think of going anywhere else.
But now as the edge became thinner and the black hole encroached upon us both, I became totally encapsulated in all sense of feeling. Uncomfortable, unbalanced at first, the momentum of time feeding its appetite, lightly picking at me. Subtle at first but then more pervasive, more persuasive. Then it began tearing at me from the inside out, unceasingly, painfully, deliberately. It assaulted my sleep, my waking hours, my very existence, until it took over, disregarding me completely, torturing me in this silent internal macabre dance. I was now beyond uncomfortable, being ripped apart, everything that was me from within; my heart and soul shattered into fifty-two million pieces, all connections severed. My mind had dropped out at the first sign of trouble with nothing to offer. I was on my own. I was desperate and wanted to do anything to get out, get out of this space, get out my own skin, get out to anywhere beyond this. I pleaded for it to stop, begged for it to stop, cried and screamed for it to stop. I had reached way beyond my threshold and knew that I could not survive here, not even one second more. I had no choice, I let go, betraying myself to all vulnerability, and dove head first into the abyss. And then I was falling.
Falling into total darkness, falling into complete and utter silence. Falling. And there was nothing, nothing to catch me, no one to hear me, nothing that I could see. The structures that had held me, that had defined me and my life, were gone. The only thing that remained and that I had become aware of was that it had stopped. The torture beyond endurance had ceased. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and allowed myself to become one with the fall.
I continued for years, falling from place to place, never staying too long in any one of them. And in that time, the pieces started to come back together, to regenerate. Me, unconscious, not fully aware, until the entire form had been completed and came to life; taking in its first breath and then taking over. Whatever was left of my former self was safely tucked away in a deep memory file. And I awoke one day to the unfamiliar, to me but not me. Who was this person? I didn’t know her. She was different somehow. I waited for the introduction.
My friend D called me the other day to catch up. She had been dealing with health issues for the last year, unsure of why this was happening and still continuing. She just wanted it over; she was upset, angry, frustrated, she felt tortured. And there was every aspect of her life; her job, career, family, that she knew for years was not working. Couldn’t continue. Absolutely no control and no thought in her head of where to go from here. She had come to her “last straw” and really couldn’t take it anymore. Helpless, hopeless and her, almost in tears, I quietly replied,
“You will be alright, I promise. You are just before “the fall”.
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