The More Things Change the New World Order

Self isolation, social distancing: it's cool, it's kinda my thing anyways. But as much as it is already my thing, so is feeling suddenly awkward and inside out; the vulnerable part of my flesh on display for all the people that aren't looking, are never looking, their too busy doing their own things, feeling their own vulnerability. Just alone. Everyone alone. Surrounded and alone.

But only for a little while perhaps, only until the early morning passes and the stories that lay on the tips of tongues, stories of the the way the world will be now, the eerie, surreal new world order, get drowned out by the needs and clatter of the waking world.

But for now, every post apocalyptic story you ever read or watched ticks like the second hand on a watch. It's happening...

Only, it's not. It's nothing new even. I'm sure our world has had outbreaks worse than this before. And now, we have so many other ways to manage and fill our time, to stay in touch, connected. This isolation is a non-issue for us: the strong enough, the (just) young enough, the progressed world enough.

But still, it lingers.

The entire world is shutting down. If that isn't the eeriest thing in my lifetime, than I don't know...

Wait, that's a stupid sentence. It's eerie but -

The eeriest actual thing in my lifetime was this time I was 21ish. I had been dating this coked up dummy. This coked up dummy and a (best at the time) friend of mine kinda-sorta hooked up, then shortly after that he brought a girl back to my apartment. All of this was great because I hadn't known how I was going to get rid of him. He was a very persistent leach. This made it clear and easy to him that there was no coming back. However, it fucked up my friendship, and although I had wanted to get rid of him, the whole sorted affair left me hurt (how could I have even let him in my life, am I stupid?) and alone.

Fast forward a few months and my friend and I start to try and mend the fence (chicks before dicks and all). The break up had left it so that I had leave my apartment with him. I now rented a room in a house with people I didn't really relate to. My prized fig tree died as if mimicking my upturned, dying in a dark room soul.

I go out one night with my best friend to the same tired bar, the same tired drinks, but I don't last very long. Everything in my life has changed, I have changed. I have no fucking idea who I am. I want more of and for myself. I want control.

I go home and I have such a bad headache. I crawl into my bed, the only space in the world that is truly mine and I begin to cry; I cry the deepest sad cry about nothing I can actually put my finger on. I just cry. My head is killing me and the crying only makes it worse, but still I shut my eyes as tight as a I can and I cry - deeper and deeper and deeper - until BAM

My mind blast open like - like lightening - and behind my closed eyes, clear as fucking day, there I am: a little girl tucked down in the corner of what looks like a makeshift closet built of plywood. I can see a work shelf and there's army paraphernalia hung about. I know the house I'm in, I know I'm in the cold, dark basement, but I don't remember this closet.

I sat up with a sort of gasp - eyes wide open - what the fuck was that?

And the tears stopped. The sadness stopped. It was all gone. Even the headache was gone. I felt, oddly, so oddly, at total peace. I laid my head down and slept what would probably be the best sleep of my life.  I had achieved a most amazing feat.

I had travelled back in time. I had portalled back into my body, into a moment, an experience,  that I had no clue of ever having experienced. I have many memories of that horrible chapter of my life but not this very specific one. I had scienced; and this achievement, this level of control, was... magnificent, beautiful, and enough.

Whatever the core of the sadness I was feeling was, it must have been the same as that little girl version of me: sexual betrayal, female abandonment, loss of faith all wrapped into one moment. And the depth of my crying, the hard squeezing shut of my eyes, created a portal back in time to a moment where the adult me and the little five year old me were exactly the same.

It wasn't eerie in the moment it happened, that was freeing. What was eerie was after the fact, after that less than a second visual experience, I had my life and myself back. It was as if a missing puzzle piece had been replaced and I was whole. I was more than whole, I was at least 110% now. And it was eerie that somehow I knew I didn't have to dig deeper into that memory, it was enough that we saw each other for that split second, and we were, once again, one. I had her and she had me.

So, perhaps, the eeriness I feel now is similar in that change is afoot, big change. A shift. An earthquake. And, like the rest of the world, I feel a little vulnerable. I didn't intend to draw a connection to these two events, but maybe there is one. Maybe it's just that even though everything is changing, everything will be the same.

After that moment of blazing clarity wherein I became whole, I still went out into the world and made more stupid decisions that put me in weak positions, it didn't make me smarter. I was still twenty. Even though my game piece had changed irrevocably, I still made the same moves.

Perhaps, I just cared less about them though. Perhaps I knew, deep down, that none of it mattered, not really.

And although on the surface, during this time of COVID-19, things feel scary and weird, it matters not in the big picture. It's but a synapse. A stroke of lightening.

And for all of us who, from time to time, feel this awkward, uncomfortable sense of vulnerability, it's only a matter of time, pressure, and depth until we experience that flash of clarity that will set us free once again.

And maybe, just maybe, there are magical properties about all of us that extend the existence we currently know. Maybe there is no timeline. Maybe, just maybe, we have yet to crack the surface of what we are capable of