Bits & pieces

Today I wrote this just to make sure that I still have the ability to write

My throat is jammed with a lump that doesn’t get the hint that it needs to leave, even though I’ve tried to gulp it down 23 times by now. Let me try a 24th? No. No, it doesn’t work. 

I’m hungry, but the lump makes it hard to eat. It doesn’t hurt, because the lump is honestly quite incompetent at its job of ruining my day, but it is a little uncomfortable. Then again, most things about being alive are uncomfortable. Why wouldn’t they be? I have a layer of spikes embedded beneath my skin, running through the middle of the dermis. Every day I feel them under the surface, like tectonic plates beneath the continents. Each movement makes me aware of them, even if it’s only in the back of my mind. I can try to ignore it as much as I want, but it will always lurk and I’ll always be squirming.  

But eating properly makes me squirm just a little less. And that’s worth a lot. Making what’s horrible a little less bad. So I try & eat a meal. I need to do it in small bits & pieces, so the lump doesn’t get in the way, but food is food. Nourishment is nourishment. I feel just slightly better and it’s NOTHING compared to the squirming and– see, I think it might be getting worse. I think THAT’S why the lump emerged. People keep trying to tell me things, but I’m so much stupider these days to the point that it’s hard to even think. I have to take all their information in bits & pieces too, because otherwise it’s all BLOCKED. The lump in my throat is in my mind too, there’s some or the other neural pathways connecting my ears and eyes and audio processing centres and whatever other electrical circuitry is involved in understanding, do the specifics matter? It’s all falling apart. In bits & pieces. 

See, everything is in bits & pieces. None of it is connected. All so disjointed. Moments of discomfort & moments of slightly-less-discomfort (relief?) happen but they’re not connected by the threads of time. No actual flow, they just happen at random & maybe there are patterns, maybe there are. But I’m so much stupider these days and it’s hard to think, it’s hard to observe, it’s hard to SEE the patterns. And and and and and I’m actually LUCKY to be seeing the disconnected bits & pieces, even then, because I could be seeing nothing nothing nothing easily because the collapse could be– it’s constant, it’s ALWAYS there, it’s ALWAYS happening, ALWAYS there. 

Let me try a 25th? No? Of course not. The fact that I can even TRY to gulp is a relief though, isn’t it? No worries(?!), I can still eat the bits & pieces of food. Every little bit counts, all of it to keep together the precarious arrangement of skin together so the spikes don’t come to life (again) & rip up the skin so all my guts spill out, and my spine spills out, and my lungs spill out, and my brains spill out. 

Precarious. The threat is always there, but the will to do something about it is also ever-present. All precarious. I wonder every day, how easy would it be for my will to break? How easy would it be to give up, to not be able to keep going? Because it’s getting more & more confusing, what if I get so confused I stumble off the path & I can’t keep going & I fall down a cliff because I couldn’t see it, couldn’t understand it was even there or even that I ever stumbled at all? It’s confusing, it’s hard to think. All precarious, all precarious, a few chants here & there are all I have. A 26th? A 27th? A 28th? No? No! No, it doesn’t work. 

One day at a time. Take it one day at a time. 

Spikes hum within, perhaps reacting to the change in my bloodstream as the nutrients enter. I shiver. A 29th? No. Oh well, oh well, oh well… one day at a time, precarious precarious precarious but one day at a time. One day it could be– no, I don’t know what it could be one day. There’s so much to account for if you want to tell the future, and my accounting books lie scattered on the floor. Pages fell out of some of them. One day at a time, the wind makes the pages flutter around the floor and that’s all I can focus my eyes on. It doesn’t make sense why there are pages on the floor, does it? What are they, where from, what do they have to do with anything, I don’t understand and all there is to do is to eat my bits & pieces of food and– yes, the food makes sense. Because it’s nourishment. The paper pieces are in my vision and I can focus on them, so the fact that they exist (disconnected? who cares), there’s another thing that makes sense. 

Piece of food, get it past the lump, feel a little better. Paper, moving paper. Fluttering, floating, flirting with the other pieces. Maybe they feel a little better too, because they finally get to dance their little dance.