I woke up numb. This happens sometimes. I feel almost medicated, as though sleep has robbed me of half my consciousness, as though it took with it the last few shreds of feeling. Everything doesn’t matter. Everything is so far from where I’m at in my head that it must not matter.

It usually takes me an hour to get out of bed on these kind of days.

I lay there, staring up at the ceiling or over at the door, wondering how many people in the world are awake at that moment thinking the precise thoughts I’m constantly tangled in. Get up, the voice commands. But I lazily roll onto my side and ignore it. This morning music was playing in my head—something I was listening to the night before.

I got up, ate what I consider to be breakfast, then got dressed. I was so out of it I didn’t even shower. I pulled my boots on, rebraided my hair, then went outside. Somehow the quad ended up out of the garage, and somehow I was driving. Aimlessly I drove, at first. I took the same path I always do, came around the bend and turned my head to the right to look at the train tracks. The haunting song from my sleep was playing in my ears, and every once in awhile I would come out of myself to hear it, a piece here, a piece there. Repeat, repeat. Over and over. I had the volume loud, but for the most part heard almost nothing of it. 

Then I drove. That’s when it started. That feeling in my gut.

Then I was searching, searching desperately for whatever it was that I wanted so badly. Faster and faster, to who knows where, for who knows what. I cut back and forth over roads, then onto years-old trails that were so overgrown I almost couldn’t pass through. I don’t know what I was doing, but before I knew it, when I looked down at the counter I realized I’d ‘wandered’ over 40 miles on my little excursion.

When I came to, I was more or less lost. I took photographs. A hawk was flying above me, circling, catching the updrafts and soaring higher and higher over the treetops. And there I was, the little ant climbing the mountainside. I wanted to the top, but the further I went the more the trails branched off into obscurity, the further I was from everything that was familiar to me. I found a logging road and followed for awhile, but turned back when it became apparent that it was only making the cancerous despair grow.

 

I wasn’t concerned that I was lost, that was what was strange. There was no twinge of fear at that thought. What bothered me was that I could not find it, whatever I was searching for. It wasn’t there. I took twenty trails and it wasn’t there.

And then that tune was playing, making my skin chill. Suddenly I decided I wanted to go home. My house isn’t a home, but it is where I’m grounded. Suddenly the treeline wasn’t so enchanting, the mountains and hills didn’t hold secrets at the top, but were instead obstacles to be overcome. I wanted to go back to where I came from, because it wasn’t right. It was all wrong.

I really don’t know how I got home. Physically, my body knew the way, somehow. I passed trail after trail and knew which one to take, though there were no signs of previous passage. The ground was hard and the tires weren’t leaving tracks in most places. But I didn’t have to look at the ground. I just went. It was surreal. Insane. How did I know? How could I have possibly known?

I don’t know what is happening to me. I don’t know if I want to know. It seems like everything inside of me is slowly failing. The puzzle has never fit together, and the more I try to force the pieces into place, into an understandable whole, the more ruined the fragments become. I am diseased, and it would seem that it is progressing more and more toward the point of no return. Eventually, my mind will fail. Maybe it will get lost between here and my world of fantasy. Or maybe it will get caught in that dream permanently.

It doesn’t belong here, that is all that I am sure of. I was not intended for this place.    

The haunting little melody:

It’s the main title theme from Resident Evil. I’ve always liked it, for whatever reason. I have no idea what the anime has to do with anything, but it was interesting. It fits with the music, come to think of it.