It is no surprise that I pause and think about walking backwards the way I came: a boy, on a beach in Barbados, fitting his feet into footprints left by tourists who have returned to the places that are not, for them, an escape. If my hands aren’t cold and clammy these days, I am not defined. Why am I in a permanent state of ‘fight or flight’? Habit. This response sounds certain, but I am figuring it out as I write, being my own medium.
Despite always having had everything I’ve needed for survival, my daily routine is steeped in a habit of anxiety. I wear it to ward off “peace of mind” which would certainly set me up by lowering my expectation of pitfalls. It is what takes me through the hours leading back to the unquestionable darkness, filled with dreams I seldom remember.
Me walking down the road
In its automatic fashion, I will sometimes step hard and feel it in my lower back because I did not notice the sidewalk was uneven. Usually driving faster than the vehicle I am in, I pass people, doing the same, eyes glazed over, calculating the future by imagining the worst outcomes, checking the risks of being publicly exposed for never truly overcoming their makeup—soft parts on the inside of seemingly tough skin—fear, founded in one childhood trauma or another, all together, or in the right combination, anchoring the roots of its neural canopy, everyday deeper into the grey.
To hold off on this fear feels almost sad, a loss of sorts, leaving me with an absence and time I must then learn to use in productive ways, doing, instead of thinking, which is inevitably a harsh self-scrutiny. My anxieties, like anybody’s, are not easily dismissed, however, for in familiarity there is comfort. We must face change because it is required, as our desires are unreliable.
Fear of Homelessness
Homelessness. This is my immediate fear. At a bus stop at night, a shirtless man, whose smell made my eyes water, asked me for the chocolate bar I was eating. I hesitated. He snatched it from me. Since then, I have had a recurring dream about being approached by people with mental health issues who are living on the streets. They single me out in crowds and talk to me in a language only I can understand. Clearly, I am becoming one of them.
Death through Madness
Thinking this through, though, I seem (so far) too resilient for mental illness, at least the kind that would take me out of myself, separating me from my ego’s judgements. There would be no escaping the discomfort of the perception of my relative state, were I to end up on the streets.
Death through madness seems like the best solution. But how do you do it? How do you achieve what is possible for only those selected?
Physical Aspects of Homelessness
I’m unsure why homelessness scares me. Perhaps the physical aspects, since, deciding to be shameless on many occasions, I don’t foresee humiliation being a problem for too long. It would become the new normal, eventually only embodying its original meaning if you saw someone you knew in your previous life and they saw you back.
It’d be the not bathing, having a dirty bottom…I couldn’t abide a dirty bottom. Eating food from garbage cans as well…although it is unlikely to be like I imagine. Have you ever smelled the soup that spills from a garbage truck? I’d have to figure out my own system, fast! Returning to junk food, worse…meat! Because that’s what’ll be available…half-eaten burgers, wrapped though, separate from the bin juice in their brand-named packaging. Hunger is a thing…you go three hours without food and your murderous tendencies start to ‘hangryfy’.
Realistically
An unlikelihood, though, given the shame that being homeless would bring my family, less for my failure in being strong enough to willingly continue offering myself up for wage slavery than for the suggestion of lack of empathy, required for entering Heaven. It would be a kind deed many people aspire to publicly announce, out of their fear of dying. And then I like to think I have friends that wouldn’t allow this to happen…but you never know.
You would think shame is worth paying to get rid of, yet here it is, weighing heavily as it thrives in my inaction. This, in turn, stems from my aversion to selling my life to be the middle man, passing printed paper denominations and pence to those owning the land and the food growing on it. How much of my soul am I willing to keep when dignity is in the balance?
Fear of Fear
Recently, fear of the effects of being afraid is the new fear. Apart from the obvious cold and sweaty hands and feet, I’ll inhale deeply almost as a reflex, as if my body wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Meditation is always on my daily to-do list. Maybe I should take it off and put on ‘procrastination’ instead.
I do have increasing moments of being present though, from a habit of listening to guided meditation on YouTube before bed. There has constantly been an instinctive certainty that being outside, in natural spaces, will cure me. Plan B is, so far, only that word and letter, the title of what has not been written because planning everything has worn me down until there are no tracts left to secure and guide. It could also be because, in Latin America it shouldn’t be difficult to get a job as an experienced English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher.
How will I make money if I am not teaching? Imagined pathways of people linking people and so, hopefully, at least an improved impression of humans as I proceed.
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