There are certain times in your life when you try to escape from reality. Every time this thing comes, you just want to cut yourself off just for a while, shutting down your presence. Your body is there, but you keep telling yourself that it's just another one of those bad times. You keep telling yourself "this too shall pass", and spend all the moment locomoting to a narrow space where you wait for everything to be over.
When I was little, my family used to let me spend time a lot with my cousins. Most of the time, I enjoyed it except for the fact that I was compared to them. Not as good, not as sporty, not as lively, not as everything. Sometimes I became a joke material. Growing up as a teenager, I was afraid to get too close to them. But family gathering was frequent, and there was this tradition that made us sit in groups by age and gender. There. These times. I was too scared to be there. I didn't want to be a joke material, or just the worse product of the family. So every time it happens, I started shutting down my senses. Letting things go on without me being there. Wishing that time would just go on fast forward. I tried to blend in, I even laughed with them. But that was to make myself less miserable, at least in front of everyone. I was fleeing that moment, moving into that narrow space. Waiting for the moment to begone.
A few days ago there was another family gathering. Most of the whole time in the past 4 years, I've been absent, feeling traumatized by the past. I decided to come back, knowing that I'm an adult and that things have developed a lot for me. I'm not scared anymore. I don't have to flee again. I can be myself as whole. I sat for awhile and tried to remember how things were and how the day would be if I were still that little boy. Then this theory came into my mind.
Those times where you escape to the narrow space, you're trying to defend yourself from the surroundings. In reality your eyes are widely open, but truth is you don't want to see. You don't want to hear. You don't want to feel. So you move to that narrow space, where you can lower your senses. Trying to ease the fear and anxiety. Maybe it's effective. You don't have to be out there where things might hurt more. But truth is, every time you do, every time you shut down your senses, it becomes a practice. Practice makes perfect. When you do that now and then, it becomes a habit. Eventually it gets harder for you to practice mindfulness, to feel fully alive. Even worse, it can lead you to the point where you realize that you're dead all this time. Your body is there, but you're not.
It feels better to be in the narrow space. But when you make it your second home, slowly but sure it's gonna kill you, making you learn not to live your life to the fullest. A narrow space is a space too small for a real life to be.
Remembered this wonderful quote from my once favorite game:
"Outside the dream world, life can be harsh, even cruel. But it's life". - Auron (Final Fantasy X, 2001)
