Stillness
I had a tarot deck in its box, sitting on its edge, decorating what might be an altar or just an arrangement of random junk I think looks cool. Gifts from my partner on the other side of the world. Jewelry and makeup I gave up on wearing. A small plastic tree I bought one Christmas, decorated with necklaces. A secondhand yankee candle. A stack of books about sex, bodies and religion.
A few weeks ago, the deck fell over in the middle of the night. I was awake, couldn't sleep. When I went to pick it back up, the cards fell everywhere. I felt overwhelmed and went back to bed. The other day I finally pulled out the dresser to recover the fallen cards, and discovered a single card, the Page of Pentacles, stuck to the back. How should I interpret that?
I've noticed lately that when I'm around people, I've been moving and speaking extremely slowly and quietly. I accidentally sneak up on and startle people. People don't hear me when I speak. I disappear without meaning to. I don't know how to keep myself together. I'm alone. I'm overwhelmed. I'm broken into pieces.
That's dramatic, but I don't know how else to describe it. I'm just so tired, all the time. And that's the thing, I've been sleeping a lot, but not at night. Trying to fix my sleep schedule has only made it worse. My body decided to return to the shift work I was doing years ago and won't give it up. Even in my dreams. Familiar buildings and uniforms, faces and voices. I'm haunted by mundane horror. I'm not okay.
I am doing things to try and help. I've resumed my meditation practice. It's so difficult for me, painful even. Sitting still doesn't come naturally. I fidget, I scream, I pace around my room, I disappear inside my head. But stillness is fascinating to me. There's a presence there that vanishes in motion. There's something compelling about it, even while that stillness causes me distress.
Before I meditate, I use a script to generate a few random numbers, one for each of the books on my dresser. I light the candle. I read from the pages corresponding to each of the numbers, looking for connections. And then I dim the lights, put on some music or turn on a fan, sit on my meditation bench, and contemplate the texts. I don't know what I'm looking for, but it feels like healing.
The Page is me, of course. Curious, preoccupied, intent on examining something (unnamed and undefined, stretching everywhere, spilling over). I'm naively hopeful. I'm pessimistic. I'm a nihilist with too much faith.
I know what I want. I want everything to stop.
Picking apart my loneliness and closely examining every piece of it. Reverse engineering the absent hole in my chest. Building a better, more efficient form of stillness.