How To Feel A Little Bit More Alive

By

Things are changing ever so slightly. Can you feel them? Pay close attention. You’re going to want to feel them.

Your life used to be different. It had a different texture, a different shape. Now it’s something else. Can you recognize it? Poke at it. Rub your fingers through it. Get comfortable. This is your life now. Sometimes it doesn’t feel right and sometimes it does. Hold on to the latter and fruitlessly try to forget the former.

You lie to yourself every day without knowing it. When the person who serves you coffee in the morning asks how you are, you respond on autopilot: “Good, thanks.” Gosh, if only the barista knew what you were actually feeling at 8:00 a.m. before you had your first cup of coffee. Imagine if you said, “I’m hungover and tired. I’ll maybe think about you later when I masturbate. I would ask how you are but I don’t care.” You play these games in your head often. You fantasize about giving the wrong answers and seeing people squirm. You never do though. “Good, thanks. Goodthanks. thanksGOOD.” It all reads like gibberish.

You’re a happy person. You really are. And you know what? You’re lucky. You’re lucky because you have face creams and prescriptions and you just got a new rug and you love your mom and dad and no one molested you when you were younger, so yeah, you’re good. Good, thanks.

You have a nasty habit though. Oh god, it’s the worst! You do this thing where you dwell on what you don’t have and forget what you do. It’s so embarrassing. And you tried doing yoga. And you tried reading books. And you tried volunteering with special needs children. But nothing. There seems to be a Wifi connection where your emotions used to be…

Everything around you feels fake and it probably is. You have these outlets to put plugs in all day long. So you plug yourself in and wait to feel connected to something. Except it never comes. You have all these extension cords and ample outlets but it’s adding up to zero. What should you do instead? How can you feel more plugged in?

You know that in order to feel connected to the things around you, you don’t need an outlet. So you go home and burn candles and listen to music. It’s raining outside and you’re dancing in your underwear. Your legs feel nice. Someone come over and touch them please.

Lie in bed with someone at 1:00 p.m. on a Sunday morning. It will feel like five shots of espresso and finding the perfect Internet connection. Here you are! Doing the life thing! And all of these changes are starting to feel a little bit more manageable. You don’t feel the need to grieve every single thing that’s left you.

Get out of bed and start thinking about tomorrow. Who will you see? What will you wear? Will there be Wifi? Oh, wait. Stop doing that. Stop doing it right now. Life is better without that!

Go to your grandmother’s house and ask her important questions about her life. After that, go to your ex’s house and tell them to screw off. After that, sleep with your ex. You’re getting the hang of this now…

Wish you could have ten million fights and ten million orgasms right now. You need it right now. You need to remind yourself that you’re still alive and that all of these things you’ve surrounded yourself with have just been killing you slowly!

Throw away the wires and cables. Sit on someone’s genitals and move up and down. Go to the movies. Cry to your parents about everything bad that’s ever happened to you and then GET THE HELL OVER IT. Come to terms with the fact that you’ll never care about special needs children. It’s okay. It’s worse to pretend. I got you now.

Now when you say “I’m good, thanks!” you mean it. And on the days you’re not feeling great, you keep your mouth shut or you finally act on your fantasy of being honest. Both will result in you feeling better. Now take your modern medicine and get some rest. You’ll feel a little bit more alive when you wake up.

You should follow Thought Catalog on Twitter here.