I'm Not Here

I’m not here. Wherever here is, I am usually somewhere else. I don’t live in my body, I live in my head. Nitpickers will point out that be that as it may, my mind inhabits my body so I still live in it like it or not. I woke up the other morning at 4am from awful back pains. As those began to halfway subside I was wracked with a bout of explosive diarrhea. What I’m saying, and too much information be damned, I know that I live in my body all too well.

And nonetheless, I live in my mind. I’m not here. I am hiding out, between and behind my thoughts. The real world intrudes like a loud voice in a theater or an alarm clock’s ring. I react with panic, with terror, with confusion, as if I have just woken abruptly. I have developed defenses against this. I have trained my body to act on its own in all but truly critical tasks. I have trained my body, like a dog, to go through the motions mindlessly; an ontological zombie. And like a dog, my body is not very smart. I find myself walking in circles a lot, forgetting what my tasks were, and needing to consciously re-intervene, interrupt my thoughts, to set it back on its way. I have also learned pre-canned verbal responses, like a parrot, to hold my own in simple conversations with no thought necessary.

I’m not here. I am not in this moment. I am not in this spot. I am somewhere else.