Sudden Existential Apprehension

For some reason, I'm doubting everything. And I mean everything. I don't want to name the root of this feeling because that would bring it into the realm of the real – I'd rather it remained a thought-form so that it could sink back down and become buried.

But wouldn't that be worse? It'll be there, ready for another time and place.

No. No names or specifics. Just, I'm uncertain. It's deeper than you assume. And I'm not panicking.

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I keep a secret

I’m curious about what it means to keep a secret. The one I have isn’t a revelation but it has great personal significance and risk for me. It’s not something that I’ve been told but rather something that I’ve come to realise myself. Are your own secrets the hardest ones to keep? I’m getting a head of myself.

I keep a secret which means I hold it, act as guardian to it and conceal it from others. I prevent it from becoming common knowledge. I watch over it, prevent it from ‘being’ anything other than a phrase or image in the corner of my mind, only resurfacing if it’s touched by events, people, or words.

I allow the secret complete residence of my mind, the sanctuary of my forgetting and the dangers of being revealed.

To keep a secret is to harbour a fugitive. What if I gave it up? Would it ever trust me again?

What would happen if the secret was heard? I see myself letting it slip to all the right people, namely those who aren’t supposed to know, and watching as the world around me changes. Secrets are transformative; perhaps this secret holds my unravelling, my destruction, or perhaps it holds a moment of recognition. Maybe if I told the right person it would alter my life for the good. Is that a risk I want to take?

Back to my first thought: are your own secrets the hardest to keep? If you bear a secret belonging to someone else, what are the chances that you’ll tell someone? I carry secrets from years ago and I doubt I would ever give them up, even for personal gain (Note: extremes of torture may well make me part with them but I’d do so reluctantly and only after a good thrashing. Depending on how I coped, I might take most of them to my grave in such an event).

Keeping my own secret is harder; I want to share it, I want it resolved, I want to be reassured that my secret could garner a positive outcome. More than anything, I want to indulge in the fantasy of my secret; I want to hope that this could be real. Maybe that’s why we all kiss and tell.

And when the secret is released? It loses its power. But for me, the significance remains. Just because I’ve shard it with someone, it doesn’t mean it’s any less important to me.

Everybody wants to be a winner, nobody wants to lose their game…

The things we think are important in life are illusions, distractions from the voice that says “slow down, please slow the hell down” – and we ignore it. We fake it, wear a mask and all is fabulous.

Slow down.

I keep telling myself that this is what I always wanted, and it is, but it’s not what I can manage. I can tell I’m doing too much because I have to concentrate to relax my shoulders and I’m finding it harder to sleep, even though I’m so tired.

You’re pushing too hard, slow down.

But what if all of this slips away? What if I wake up tomorrow and I’m back in that place again – god I have to go there tomorrow and I’m not sure what day it is today, neither am I convinced that it’s the day people said it is. What do I do?

You slow down. Things won’t vanish because you put your feet up for a bit.

I have so much to do; it’s my fault it’s all piled up because only half of me is dedicated at the moment and I keep forgetting everything. I’m beginning to question myself more and more. Something happened somewhere along the line and I’m not sure if I can recognise it.

Take a break, find some trees. First organise what you can do, work systematically and then let it go. You will remember the things you’ve forgotten. Slow down.

But what if I…

Slow down.

What if I slow down? Maybe my heart will beat steadily; maybe my dreams will be lighter; maybe my feelings won’t screw themselves up; maybe I’ll smile.

Anon

I’ve been thinking over the past few days about anonymity. Very few people are able to exercise this remarkable feat, even if they’re dead.

You could be one of the most unacknowledged people on the planet, and there would still be something on you, somewhere. For example: the never-contacted-before Envira Indians existing near the Peru border in Brazil who were photographed in May 2008. Never heard of them. Never knew they existed. But now there’s something on them.

I often look over the blogs I keep, my email, twitter, Facebook and think: why the hell am I exposing myself like this? I’ve no real desire for recognition, nor do I hold social networking particularly high in regard, but I often have something to say and that’s probably the only reason why I haven’t erased my identity from the internet.  As far as is possible to erase.

Note: I wonder what will happen to all of these efforts when I’m dead…

I’ve got a fair bit to say sometimes but I’m aware that not many people take the time to listen and I don’t especially care. It only takes one person to listen and then it’s up to them to decide what to do with the things I’ve said.

I more or less have reasonable control of my presentation and representation in the material I directly publish about myself on the internet but I have virtually no control when having to relinquish my personal details to say, Amazon or my general practitioner.

Amazon pays attention to my browsing history and tempts me with similar items whilst the doctors don’t do much of anything except sit quietly with my details until another body contacts them and requests information. With my consent of course.

And this is where it begins to bug me.

Does consent even mean anything?

I have to fill in a CRB disclosure form, like most people, in order to breathe. I also need to apply for a passport to prove my identity beyond a shadow of a doubt. And it’s not even that now, is it? Not after recent events where it was shown that passports can be successfully made on a fraudulent and sophisticated basis.

I was under the impression that passports were to enable travel and free movement. Now they’re a fallible form of identity.

I have no choice but to give my consent for private information about me to be passed from one party to another. Sure, I can deny this consent but then that suspends my rights.

Perhaps I’m being far too cynical here but I can clearly see that by not disclosing my mental health to a potential employer, the said employer can, if they so wished, release me from my position with relative ease and no obligation to help or support me if I suddenly go off the deep end. I have to tell but I don’t really want to. Why?

Because sometimes, it’s nobody’s damned business.

This is the crux of my irritation. Why do so few have the right to know so much about my private life but I have no right to protect myself from them? Not without sacrificing my civil rights at the same time.

Disclosure isn’t for my own protection. It’s for interested parties to keep tabs on and exploit.

*Pang*

I shouldn’t be given the responsibility of making decisions. Not because I can’t make a good one but because I often start to wonder if I’ve made the right one.

There are a myriad of possibilities when it comes to making decisions, so I don’t believe that there is such a thing as a ‘wrong decision’, just bad ones. Or silly ones. Risky?

You can tell when you’re starting to question your judgement because you obviously make your choice, time passes a little and then the memory of it might surface through conversation with a friend or through random synapses firing; you get that sudden tug in your stomach, similar to the one you get before you’re sick, followed by the feeling that you’re missing out on something.

I’ve made some hefty decisions in the past year and most have died out already. Except one: postponing my studies. And I’m reminded of it at least twice a week where I find myself worrying that I was a bit hasty, if choosing this path will mean that I end up in an undesirable position next year, if I’ll even be interested in going back or indeed if it’ll even be worthwhile.

There are pros and cons; if I go back next year I’ll be able to finish the qualification, maybe get my life back a little, spend some time with a friend, get out of the house, engage in academics again but it also means that I could end up finding that I’ve wasted my time (after finding that I didn’t get much from the first year) and about£2000.

If I don’t return, I get that money back. Yum. I’ve potentially not wasted my time, I don’t have to worry about being unwell at any point, struggling with work or travel, feeling ostracised etc. but it also means I would have dropped out of an MA course. I don’t like that part. And I could actually be missing out on something big.

I could be stressed out and tired all over again in September (by returning early) or I could spend my year out worrying myself sick.

Money or opportunity? In all likelihood, both are bound to lead to disappointment sooner or later.

They’re like two doe-eyed puppies

There must be a point in your life where you’ve encountered the annoying instance in your chair being too low to type comfortably (check-amended) and being torn between two things: not ice cream or lovers or shades of shoes or truths or lies, but suitability.

“I’m right for this; you’ll have to dig but I’m right for this!”

“I’m right for this too; you’ll have to dig but I’m right for this too!”

On the face of it they might not seem to differ much, but you damn well know they do and it’s only on the face of it that you see where they are so similar that you understand why you’re in this mess to begin with: they’re both difficult to work with and they’re both insisting that they’re the right one for the job.

Nostalgia and a bizarre understanding of complicated ideas is making me yearn for not so much the comfort and safety, for there is no comfort or safety to be found here (oh no… not here), of dare I say it – Derrida – but his sometimes unnerving act to make me fall in love with these odd little symbols that you find scattered about all over the place. And they should make sense, right? Not in my life time.

Then again… the flirtatious coos of something I’ve not really explored that much and have only recently taken a fond interest in is in itself, creating enough emotional havoc in my already befuddled mind(s), lax and tired from being pushed too hard, as to leave my heart-strings in the throes of a perpetual, arousing hum – such are the movements that I follow in Cixous.

I feel familiar (!) with the former and at ease (!) with the latter but both shake up in me excitement, dumb-foundedness and liberation and all of the things that lead me to sit here on a Wednesday night wondering which one would be more suitable for what I want to do; so weigh it up they say and I do and discover that neither are going to give me an easy ride and here it is now, the crux of why I am so in love with what they have to say —

I only have to decide what I want to say.