This is big. BIG big.
I think I looked into that abyss on Saturday, and then somehow managed to scoot back from the edge on my own.
I didn't self destruct.
I didn't do anything reckless.
I didn't run away.
Instead, I may have coped. I know, I'm surprised as well.
Saturday was darkness. I gathered up my boys and fled my family to the comfort of our home. I went through the motions of helping the boys video and text a goodbye message to their grandmother. I comforted as best as I can, which isn't very well. Then we each retreated to our own corners of the house to process in our own ways. For me, I faced the abyss.
I though about going and getting beer, but I'm not an alcoholic and the idea of drinking to forget turned my stomach. I thought about running away from everyone's grief. If it can't touch me it can't pull me down. An enticing thought.
So, I drafted my blog post in an effort to make myself at least recognize my actions for what they were. Then I opened up a new tab and began searching trails. I found a likely escape but needed more information, so I checked the library to see if it had a guidebook. A branch across town had it, so I decided to go get it right then and there.
I couldn't go home. The urge to keep driving off the edge of the earth was too strong. I loaded up an all time favorite album (Counting Crows, August and everything after) and headed out of town. Stereo full blast, letting the music's story of sinking down into mental illness wash over me. And somehow, I started to see beyond the abyss.
I'm not sure, but I think that cold abyss of no meaning is bottomless in one dimension, but that you can jump over it to the other side. The y-axis is infinite, but the x-axis is not, if you will. As humans, we travel linearly along that x-axis until or unless we slip off into the infinite abyss of the y-axis.
I suddenly realized, I don't know if we slip onto the y-axis when we die. I know we can do it when alive, I've nearly done so many times. But is death really the abyss? I'm not about to go all religious or new age or even very philosophical. My mind is better suited for science and reason and perhaps even math than those silly things. But matter is matter which can't be destroyed, as far as we know. It can change, it will change, but that ability to persist and to change must mean it isn't in the abyss.
Is our consciousness matter? Energy perhaps? Shit, too deep for me, but I'm just barely wise enough to realize that this line of thought -- jumping over the abyss -- gives an inkling of hope. A reason to laugh at the darkness. A reason to run back instead of run away. A reason to keep dreaming and doing and living -- all without hiding.
So I went home. I cried myself to sleep (shh, don't tell anyone). I woke up, and I laughed and lived and achieved.
This morning my Mother-In-Law passed away. Thank you, Scarlet, for being a momma to my one true love. Thank you for creating consciousness out of matter so that we can keep this train careening down that x-axis from one generation to the next. Thank you, for helping me finally overcome the abyss.
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