Vertigo

"Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”

Movie titles and book names such as "Melancholia" and "Tristesse" have always fascinated me. I'm not the depressive type. Actually, far from that. But I'm the kind that appreciates the beauty in Lana Del Rey's lyrics rather than thinks it's music to slits your wrists to. 

My latest fascination has been the Milan Kundera passage above and the concept of vertigo in general. It won't stop haunting me and luring me to the depths of my thoughts, beckoning me to let go and free fall. My mind plays these tricks on me, it always has. My mind, pardon the language, has always managed to fuck me up. 

I used to think that being the dreamer was the best thing about me. My best quality, if you will. But being the dreamer, at least lately, has only fucked me up. 

As I lit a cigarette today for the first time in ages and felt the familiar rush inside of me as I watched it burn, I felt so simultaneously beautiful and fragile. I can always count on it to make me feel this way. Melancholia and Tristesse do indeed arise every time I do it. And I guess, for the first time, I can clearly see that the Dreamer has never been my main companion. It has always been the other two.

*

There and back again :)

Sometimes it's hard to remember where to look when you're trying to figure out what really matters. We are always so busy multitasking because, in theory, you're supposed to live a full life - get busy with highly-demanding job, worry about where you're investing your money, think about kids, think about what you're buying next, worry about your plans for the evening. They say the busier you are, the happier and more fulfilled you'll feel at the end of the day. We check our phones every five seconds and we love being needed by others - friends, family, coworkers. It's like a constant noise in the background; a gigantic house with endless rooms full of clutter. 

I want to write again to start making some sense out of this. Not just to fill my mind with more incessant thoughts about the meaning of life, but to actually deconstruct it. Silence the noise, remove the clutter. I'm running into a lot of indicators regarding what the source of my restlessness might be - the speech about Mindfullness, the Headspace app, the conversations with the person I love the most about my phone addiction and lack of focus. I was always so busy dreaming and daydreaming about my future and what my life would be like when I was young and now that I'm everything I always dreamed of, I'm having a hard time taking a moment to appreciate the present. It pains me to know that I used to spend hours imagining this and now I spend hours living it with my mind elsewhere.

I am a daydreamer and have always been. I used to be worried about living too much in my mind and not enough in the real, exterior world. Now it's the opposite - life is getting in the way of my thoughts and I feel helpless trying to absorb it. 

At the moment words are slipping from my mind; writing is not as fluid and natural to me as it was before, but I hope to change that with this new start. I still get emails from online writing forums I used to actively participate in - people asking me to continue my stories and stuff. I'm so proud of those emails and yet I never do what they ask. I need to stop taking pride in only stories of my past and start making up some new ones.

This is not the last you'll hear from me; I most certainly am glad to be back.

*