Out Of Touch (And Out Of My Mind)

Have you ever felt disconnected from yourself? Weird, isn’t it. I feel far off – like I’m behind a glass screen. I’m expanding, my mind draws back from concrete reality and spreads out to take up the whole room. It makes me feel a little dizzy. I never did like heights. I don’t feel my fingers, my toes or anything else – just my mind’s internal nausea. I know that I’m smiling though. I’m just going through the motions. No one knows what’s behind the mirror. The smile stops most people asking. They’re content if I seem content. It's reflecting it back to them.

The thing is that, at these times, it’s like balancing on the edge of a cliff just moments before gravity pulls you down. The calm born out of intense panic wraps itself around you like cotton wool, muffling everything. Deadening everything outside of this single awareness. Other thoughts, feelings and sensations fade to black. They’re still there, they’re just not part of me. The problem is that, when gravity does its bit, no amount of cotton wool is gonna help you bounce. The solutions? I don't suppose anyone has got a spare parachute handy? No? Just thought it'd ask. What if I have a lifeline – something to grasp hold of to pull me back? Maybe I could find a hidden pathway, carved into the cliff face, which could take me back to the shore.

Just for the record the cliff isn’t real in the outside world. It stands inside my mind – on the edge of oblivion where the tides are far too seductive and the way back to safety is not always clear. Sometimes it really does feel like I’m living on the brink. Unbalanced in more ways than one. I guess I’ve just got to keep on searching for the lifelines I can’t always see. As long as I believe they exist I know I’ll be ok. After all, it’s my mind - isn’t it?

Rachel Waddingham © 2002