AM I REAL
Space. It can be different things to different people. My current situation has made me realize that the more space I have the more diluted of meaning it becomes. Due to the current tiny home movement it seems I’m not the only one who feels this way.
There was a large three story home in my recent past. It took a year of going through things. Going through memories of a life lived in marriage and raising children and then divorce. Of course I held onto the most cherished memories. I either stuffed it all into a storage unit, a graveyard of boxed up past lives, or tried to pawn it off onto my now adult children. Some day I hope to unpack that storage space when I find myself the best space of all. Land. Land with trees and water and dirt and an ecosystem that will live and breath life back into me.
Now my space is in a tiny 17 foot camper with two adults, my son and his girlfriend, and two cats. Things have changed considerably. But for now I have a space I cherish. Not one inch is taken for granted. Every tiny thing in my space is there for a reason or has a purpose. A fresh current purpose. Not an old stuffed in the back of a closet purpose.
On the good days I can lay on my bed in my tiny space and feel like I’m wrapped in a colorful, crafty hug. I put my crafter skills into use on this space. I pull the privacy curtain closed and it takes me back to when I was a kid hanging blankets on furniture to make tents. Safe places for me and my stuffed animals to read and pretend.
On the bad days when mental illness, or what I like to call mental deviance shows up, this hug tightens into a squeeze and I cant take a breath. I look around at the pointlessness of everything around me. All the happy colors I surrounded myself with take on a mocking tone. “Really?” “You thought you could be happy?” And then, a memory.
A distant memory tickles the very edge of mind. I’ve tried to hang onto it but the true experience, the feeling, is gone. I suppose it’s a good thing. I can’t imagine I’d be able to live in this reality very well while not feeling real. It was an experience I had of space. Not a tiny personal space but all space. It was a saving space for me as it saved me. From what? I’m not sure. Maybe from a complete mental breakdown?
“Close your eyes,” the memory whispers out of the suffocating static that is now all I see and feel filling my body. “Close your eyes”. “Give up”. “Let go”. So I let go and close my eyes. And just like that the walls fall away, the tight squeeze opens up and my body slumps as it releases me, or rather, shoots me into limitless and empty space. The monkey-mind has lost its voice. It is quiet and emotionless. I am in the space and I am the space. I have no beginning and no ending. No separation. I am connected to everything and nothing matters as much as this reality would have you think. I don’t know if I am even real.
It’s funny how the mind works. How consciousness works. How we think we are partitioned into our own separate spaces. Fussing over them, changing them, organizing them, reflecting who we think we are in them. I'm sure there’s probably a good reason for everything we do. I imagine from a certain angle we humans probably look like ants scurrying about.
Lately, I’ve been having a lot of good days. A lot of hugs from my tiny space but with a little more understanding and humor of it all. Like an inside joke between me and God. This is my Medium introduction story. Within this story are many other stories I would like to expand on. Stories that no doubt some among you will be able to relate and connect to. Any mental deviants out there? And the ones that can’t connect or relate just know that we truly are ALL connected on a subconscious level.
We really are like ants or bees in a hive just doing what we need to do in all our colorful, dark, beautiful, ugly, combative, agreeable, creepy, hilarious ways.
