2 Minutes. Go!

Let the sun heal you, warm on your skin like caramel. The breeze will wash you clean, the flower scent will calm you. Give yourself up like a baptism. This is the way you honor the mother. This is the way you can reset yourself. No chanting or hymns, just wind and sun and maybe a small stream. Maybe a pond. Maybe the ocean, but, wherever it is, you need to be near water. 

Just because you live in a box with temperature control doesn't mean you aren't part of the network - you're a circuit. A microchip. Just like Queen Anne's Lace and cow shit. 

Try to distance yourself and you'll stumble. Too far, and you might get lost. So, get your ass to the forest, the beach, the river. Plug yourself back into the heartbeats all around you. Stop staring at screens for a few minutes and just live. Breathe. 

Think about your place. 

2 Minutes. Go!

You lay in bed, thinking: Please let me die. Please let me die. Please let me die. 

Not that you want to die, but the mantra works - calms the riot in the skull. The thoughts that ramp up, then fall to their deaths. Sisyphus except every time he climbs the hill, he jumps off to start again, broken and twisted and scared. 

Some people have brains that are fair. Some people have brains that make excuses for them, that let them go on feeling like they are the victor. Or victim. And some people have brains that are like Guantanamo Bay. Cold. Heartless. Torturous. Unjust. 

This isn't depression. This is your human condition. This is what happens when you dress someone up and shove them through trauma. This is what happens when your brain blames you for everything that goes wrong, even if it is not your fault. Somehow, your brain will make it your fault anyway. 

You get up because laying in bed doesn't feel good. You go to work because being alone with your thoughts, alone with your failures, alone with the dreams you let fall by the wayside ... man, because you had no choice. 

You can't control yourself, how could you expect to control anyone else. Choking on your selfishness. Hiding from the truths you can't accept about yourself. Looking, squint-eyed, into the mirror and making excuses. You are a tree that hides its inside rot. When you fall, everyone will be surprised. They'll say you stood so tall, looked so strong. Never saw it coming. 

Then, they'll get the hatchets and part you out. 

2 Minutes. Go!

It is the smell of blood. Always. The smell turns my stomach. I don't let on, of course - they would have a field day with that, the boys. Charlie a Nancy. A nonce. A baby. The images didn't bother me - they happened in strobe-light flashes. The screams faded quickly, but the smell never left. I swore I could smell it on my hands, lifting a pint...hands scrubbed pink-clean. 

But the smell.

It is a thick smell; you can feel it entering your lungs, taste it's tackiness on your tongue. 

I drink quickly, trying to wash away the smell. It doesn't work. The blood smell gets mixed up with the bite of the whiskey. Everything gets thick, sodden, swollen. A tick gorged on blood, ready to be smashed into a red-smeared revery. The tick is always feasting. 

Always hungry.

The curtains are blood-red, and they will descend any minute. You will blink your way back into sunshine, and I will slither under the rug, biding my time, choking on the smell in the air.

2 Minutes. Go!

I'm not crazy; I have a vivid imagination. I'm not lazy; I'm writing my thesis on stagnation. 

Look...

Everyone has something they don't want to talk about. Some quirk or twisted wire. Some fear or bad desire. This is the way humans work. We have a poker face for the world, but it is a mask covering sickness. You crave love or drugs or fear or adrenaline. You fear people seeing the soft parts of you. You hide the way you're broken because owning it would make you vulnerable. You judge others because your brain tells you to. You screw people over. You're selfish. You're human. 

Thing is, you're probably also pretty smart. These aren't stupid people worries. These are the things that an overactive brain creates. This is habit. This is dependency. This is coping. This is you thumbing your nose at the universe, saying try me. 

You, hiding. 

You shouldn't be surprised when a mosquito bites you. By the same token, you shouldn't be shocked when your cousins talk shit about you behind your back. It's not meant for you. Don't take it as a sneak attack. 

If you stand under a tree canopy, looking up, you have already done more with your day than most of us do. Chase a butterfly. Run as fast as you can. Don't worry about what the other humans think of you. It's simple, sure. Don't mean it's not true.