Existential emptiness.
Those few moments when you can’t feel anything.
Nothing at all
Not the air on your skin or the beating of your heat or the thoughts in your head or the taste in your mouth or the rushing in your ears.
It pokes its head around the curtain of the universe and blows a wind into your brain that makes everything slow and still and stop and it hurts so badly that you know nothing will ever compare, not childbirth or a broken heart or a knife wound or a badly removed bullet.
You’re light headed and dizzy but yet not, and it is killing you and your soul and you would give anything for it to be over, but you know that you just have to wait until it’s over.
And sometimes you’ll snap rubber bands against your wrists until they bleed red and blue, because feeling pain is still feeling something, and anyways, it doesn’t hurt as much as this. And maybe you can chase it out with pain.
And sometimes you’ll break down in tears because you haven’t yet discovered that you can fight fire with fire, and you’re so weak, so very very weak against your own self.
And sometimes you’ll run across freezing ice or burning bricks and sing with the joy of it, because suddenly you’ve slammed back down to earth and you can feel your pulse again and hear the words your mouth is making and the wind feels so so good. And you’re looking at your wrists, pale white from your heritage crossed with little red lines that are quickly fading, and you know that you put them there, but you’re not sure why, and exactly how.
And you are so glad that you were alone when it hit, because if you were around others they wouldn’t have understood, because it is impossible to recognize unless you have experienced it.
And you know that one day, it will come back.