Numb

I wake up and see and sense the world around me... but it's all numb, it's all beyond the scope of my realising it, it's behind a layer of dizziness which sets the world on edge... am I really awake?

Eyes drifting in and out of focus, mind benumbed with a lack of direction, instances of involvement are detached and impersonal. How to get a grasp of this, this reality or whatever it is before me – it seems to move in layers outside my own. Alert, no, I am not, I see, but at the same time can't. People talk next to me? - what is that? Is it English? What are they saying..? Why are they saying it? Can they not see the same world as me? Did I lose the key card to this world years ago? I must have... unless... I never had one.

This is constantly the sense I have, or rather lack of it. I perceive, but I am not awake enough to actually engage with it – a detached scope leads to a detached you. A plant, for instance, cannot grow or flourish without a root system to draw fresh breath, to nourish it and to encourage the plant to branch out and grow into the world its in. The unattached feeling is like a leaf in the wind – going along with the forces around, but not with any say as to the course the leaf is on – a courtesan to the whims of nature and not of will to steer it onto its own route. So, to some extent the lack of being connected leads simply to a path where this disconnection is to lose the driver of your vehicle and to become a passenger. You can look out the window at the world, but you cannot control its direction. How do you get back to move into the drivers seat again?

It's also for instances of actual contact with things and others where expression is made. Where you sit there talking or listening to another and you observe you actually doing that than rather participating fully in articulating and making as arbitrary as 'points'. It's like half your brain is asleep whilst the other only does the bare necessities the simple bear necessities. The words come to the surface when thinking on expressing yourself – but conviction of them is left aside – there is a disconnection between words and meaning. The flourish and potency of the words are sterilised, and what comes out is a diluted form of expression, and a muted form of existence.

Looking off from the page my eyes frolic across the room and rest on everything and nothing – focus is a distant memory, now reality is a foggy mess. Mind perceives but does not engage, it lingers on nothing for long and when it does it slumps into disillusionment. A longing resides in the back of the will, a longing for something, anything, pursuit, struggle, conflict... anything to re-engage with the blurred lines of reality and the numbing of this existence. Even finding words for this page my head is only partially in it, the rest is slumped at the back of a cafe slurping on coffee seed nectar thinking about what else I could be getting on with and how I'd probably prefer to lay down on a couch and switch off in front of the snooker final.

I know I'm asleep, because I have had times when I have been awake – and this is not one of them. In my life, I can only recall twice when I felt fully integrated, fully immersed with reality – once I was walking along an Edinburgh street, and for a full cool minute, I felt connected. It was a great introduction to a figurative landscape which took form. My mind didn't feel like it lagged behind in the back somewhere, it felt in the present and not present reflection – where you act like a perceiver and put you and your life on the stand as if in judgement for all it does and gets wrong. Another time I was just looking out at the ocean, and instead of the swell causing a relaxed and rhythmic day-dream, it took on new meaning – the waves glittered like beaded with pearls as the mid-afternoon sun cascaded down on it. Time slowed down and the people larking about became imbued with the sea and sand and wind and the entire event worked in synergy and no longer contrasted. The wind became me and I became the sea, the wind and and sand. Sensation rippled through me all the way to the follicles on the back of my hands and the world's weight and presence were felt underfoot. Though, like before, the sensation soon left, and only mere seconds after, I was back in the slog of my decrepit form along with my insecurities and cynicism.

So I know what it is to be awake, and yet I drift from room to room forgetting why I walked into them to begin with. There is no glue to me and the rest of the world and society, and like millions of others, I walk alone in the background of reality.