I’m feeling quite confused, for some reason. I can see everything clearly, and this for some reason is scaring me. Everything is pressing in too hard, but everything is almost nothing, so it shouldn’t feel like this at all.
I wonder what happens when we go to sleep. Do we wake up the same person? Or is it a new person, with all the memories of the person the night before? We would never know, and the old “us” would be somewhere else, so they wouldn’t be us right now, so we wouldn’t know anything had changed. I remember being me yesterday, but I don’t know I really was. Anyway, I hope I don’t wake up the same person tomorrow. I’d be grateful if someone else could take over the steering wheel, for a day or two at least. Of course, that other person would be in the same predicament as I am now, so it may as well be me, because I’ll be the new person tomorrow, or rather, someone will be here, and someone will feel it, so even if i can never know if its me, it makes no difference, does it? Not really…
Like I said, I’m feeling very confused and scared…does that ever stop?
Do people ever have strokes and not realize it? Perhaps it only causes a small change in personality, temerment, or emotions. Or maybe they forget or remember something that changes them. But it’s so small that nobody notices, and the person doesn’t realize anything’s changed until years later, when they’re in a different place than they expected because they changed paths years ago. I feel like I’ve had one of those, maybe more than one, and nobody noticed. I feel like there are parts of my mind that have become locked off, or should have remained locked but are now open.
In a way, I wish I could view life the way the Tralfamadorians do (from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five). They see their entire lives at once, and can pass from point to point in time, acting out different parts of their lives, always the same, but always satisfactorily. I feel like I’m 17 years old, 7 years old, and 70 years old, and I wish I could remember how life was when I was 7, and know what I’ll be thinking and doing when I’m 70, and gain insight into how I should live my life at 17. But of course, the past is lost forever, and the future will disappoint when it arrives, so there’s no way to brace oneself for what’s to come. Honestly, I don’t know how people can stand it…
One closing thought: No matter how good you are at hugging, you can’t truly experience your own hugs unless someone else is hugging you too. Right now, I wish I could share a hug with someone…
