The Raven and Writing Desk

"Have you any idea why a raven is like a writing desk? I’m frightened. I don’t like it in here, it's terribly crowded. Have I gone mad?" 

 "I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret... all the best people are." 

--Mad Hatter and Alice

Crowded, too busy, not busy enough. That's my brain. One minute I can't think, the next too much is going on. I do not like it inside of my head. Now that school is out, now that I have less to fill up the down time, my head...it's so busy, so full, so crowded.

I've even been around my family constantly the last few days. I've been surrounded by distractions and things that normally create a beyond joyful atmosphere for me. I can't see it. I can't feel it. Everything is far away. Except for inside my head.

Inside my head I'm still spinning.

I try to fill it up with watching people around me, playing with the kids, drawing on the sidewalk in the rain. Everything works for just a little while. Then it doesn't. I listen to stories, watch YouTube clips of physics professors explaining the string theory and the building blocks of life. I waste countless hours on social media, looking at the same posts over and over again until my children yell at me and my sister confiscates my phone. 

How do I do this? How do I be this?
Everyone tells me to give it time. That I just need time. Give yourself a year, they say. My friend says it took her a year-and-a-half to feel "normal" again. Time. I hate time. It doesn't even really exist, anyway. So I am this for a year-and-half? I am this for days and days? But days are years and years are infinite. I am this for infinity. I am infinity.

Spinning again. Still. Each moment I think I am finished spinning, I go back into orbit again. I have a few minutes, sometimes even an hour of not crowded, but then I start spinning. 

Make it stop.

I see my life as used-to-bes and nows. I used to be so calm and focused. I used to be in control. Whenever I felt off-center, off-kilter, I could fix it. I could choose to forgive the slight, I could choose to regain my composure, I could choose to calm myself down. Now, my choices are gone. My mind is no longer mine. I am buffeted by the cyclone of life and I resent it. I loathe it. I want me back.

I will get me back, or at least learn to make this new me something I can choose. Right now, it's a waiting game. A time game. Tick tock tick tock tick tock. The second hand is very slow, very loud. It echoes endlessly, reverberating in my brain. It hurts.

I'm going to see Alice Through The Looking Glass this week. Maybe she will teach me something.

Writing gives me longer moments of not spinning than anything else so far. I shall write write write. My writing desk shall be my raven. Spinning, never more.