Off Kilter

I don't know what's wrong with me.

Something is broken. I don't know what.

What's wrong?

I feel like I'm watching someone else's life go on and I'm just an observer. I feel like none of this is real. It can't be real.

The  good and the bad and everything in between. It doesn't fit. Everything is just confusing. What was I doing? Where was I going? What was I saying?

Nevermind, I'll just play this round of scramble or I'll water this plant. Did I remember the other one? Oh I need to fill this...I need to do that...I need to cover that...I need to ....what?

I am in this mode of isolation that is painful because it keeps me from the people most dear to me, yet it feels like.... like.......a huge fish on your hook, you feel it pulling - hard - but you don't know what it is that has ahold of it.

When I was young - 16 - I knew two guys. They were best friends. I don't recall their names now. One was short with dark hair and lots of acne. The other was tall and slim.

The short, dark-haired guy had a cyst on his neck. The cyst kept getting bigger so he asked the tall guy to cut it off for him.

I sat across from them. They sat on a love seat and the tall guy pulled out a knife - just an average pocket knife - and short guy leaned his head back, giving tall guy access to his cyst.

He took the knife and he cut the cyst as the short guy winced. I said nothing.... just sat there and watched.

The tall guy cut some more, making a sort of cross cut over the cyst, which was somewhere between the size of a golf ball and a marble. There was no blood.

The tall guy then laid the pocket knife down and began to squeeze the reddened flesh around the cyst. As he squeezed it, white stuff came out - it wasn't liquidy, more like ricotta cheese. Sorry, I know that probably ruined lasagna for a million people but that's all I can think of to describe it. He cut again, kept squeezing, pulling more out....and I just sat and stared.

The reason I am writing about this is because it seems to exemplify what I am feeling...what it looks like, to me, on the inside.

Feels like I'm being squeezed from the inside and all this gook is coming out, spreading, spreading, spreading...it just clogs up everything, blinds me, blindsides me. I don't want anyone to see this. I am absolutely terrified of it. What will come out? What is in there? Will it hurt?

Who am I?