Moments You Are Confused

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It is a feeling in your chest, or in your stomach, or in your head, or sometimes even in your heart. It’s the feeling of feeling nothing but feeling everything and wanting “that” but desiring “this” and thinking you’re following your instincts but your brain is telling you otherwise.

The sign over there says that the restaurant is ten miles away when you could have sworn it was around the corner and your dog is sick and you don’t know why and your brother seems to be laughing a suspicious amount and everything around you seems contagious and it’s a lot to contain in one body and it’s filling every finger and every toe and your shoulders seem stiff and everything is about to burst but resists.

It kind of feels like those times when you’re waiting at the bus stop, and you know the bus was supposed to come eight minutes ago, but the sign says it’s coming in twenty minutes, and another in thirty-two. So you sit and wait for the bus but when it finally comes, it comes from an unexpected direction. Then you realize you’ve been waiting for the wrong bus the whole time. The one you were supposed to get on in fact came eight minutes ago, although it was a number that was unfamiliar to you.

It is that decision that is so important that it acts as a control panel that dominates anything and everything and when you don’t even know it, the soup you ordered is the kind you hate because suddenly your choices are no longer honest or effective and the soup burns your tongue but so did your usual one, right?

Then there’s the clock that won’t seem to stop and it keeps going and you have tried to run to catch up but the hands seem to get further and further away. And you’ve tried a bike and you’ve tried a car and you’ve tried a helicopter but it just seems to make you question that two plus two truly equals four. The hours are sometimes on your side, though they seem to hold their breath for only 60 short minutes and then tiptoe away without any warning. The minutes seem to be living 50% of the time in the future, and the other 50% in the past; though they never make it to the present, where the doors always seem to be locked. You don’t like to talk about the seconds. They pass by in silence, though later on they seem so loud.

It’s going back to that diner that was once so familiar but the walls are now purple and the waitress is blonde and the owner passed away four months ago. It’s the frozen look of shock. It’s the different taste of Smith’s pancakes. It’s the tears that roll down your face.

It’s when that girl who was always smiling suddenly stopped. She no longer seems lively. But her eyes still tilt in a loving way. It’s not knowing what happened to her. She used to be your friend.

Sometimes it comes in the form of a breeze: the tease of a short absence of wind on an early autumn day; the fleeting hope that the sun might warm the top of your head for one more stroll. Then the leaves continue to fall and the shiver that once again runs through your body seems worse. Did you notice that raindrop?

A light bulb in your room just flickered and went out. You remember changing the light bulbs recently. Why did only one go out? Was that purse always that shade of red? Everything seems a tinge darker. Weird shadows are casted on the wall. What does confusion mean again?