The Sea Inside.

I once read a book about madness and it's different forms. I was walking around the library as usual, taking an on the clock break and eating cereal when the title "She's out of her mind" caught my eye.

I have a thing for walking around the aisles until something a title looks like something i might read. Though working at the library isn't particularly my idea of a fun time, it is where i can get all my thinking done. And has been a bit of a comfort this last week.

It's so quiet there. The beginning of the semester means that we see more books being brought back then we do students. And for the time being i find solace in that.

As i was walking down the short story aisle i stumbled on a book on madness written by female authors who experienced some lapse in their emotional state at one time or another. It was pretty interesting because despite the word madness there is nothing particularly angry about it.

Whether it be anxiety or emotionally prone it is something that doesn't render you mad just..on the verge of falling apart. I cannot even begin to explain last week or understand well enough to write about. It's like i was this functioning human being who wanted nothing more than to throw in the towel and give it all up.

It was the scariest feeling i have ever felt in my whole entire life. I felt like i was going "mad". I felt like i was falling apart but the pieces were disconnecting faster than i could catch them I wish i had some better understanding of it other than "i was on the verge of going mad". But that is what it felt like at the time. Maybe it was a panic attack? I don't know but in the last couple of days i have been trying to understand it and sort of hope that i never get to that place again.

And i figured out that all kind of comes down to this: I am afraid of change. I've always been afraid of change. And yet at some pivotal point in my life where change is coming more quickly than i'd like.

I blame change for everything. For my unhappiness, for my anxiety and after last week i blame it for what i'll call my first real panic attack. It was easier growing up and being able to place all the sudden changes in my life on family and friends. "The Great Move" was a huge in my life and that was all my mom's doing...and she got the brunt of my resistance towards it.

Going to college , meeting or not meeting friends, my anxiety...i blame that shit on unnecessary changes caused by no other than other people.

However what i have come to learn is that not only am i horrible at adapting to change but i don't have the faith in myself to believe that i can completely adjust to it without failing in some way. Or falling apart as change around me happens.

It seems to be every where friends, work, school, family, pets, and even on this blog. There is

change a brewing and all i can seem to think "i'm not ready for it quite yet. Let me linger here for a while until i figure it all out"

In a few months i will be graduating school, i will be venturing out on my own and any highs and/or lows that will occur in my life rest on me. It's a time when the safety net is slowly being removed from under me, when the training wheels have too come off, and when that first push off the high bars determine how I will land.

And i guess apart thinks that without those safety precautions i am going to hurt myself. Not only will i fail but i will end up with a scratched knee, a bruised ego, and no more heart to continue...trying.

I wonder if you can go mad from just not knowing. I don't really know what i want to do after college ( just that writing is involved), i don't know where i want to live (anywhere but here), i don't know anything. And i slowly sinking in not knowing what i feel like i am suppose to know. I am sinking in the turbulent change that i know is occurring around and within.

I don't exactly feel like i did last week. But my head is still somewhere my body is miles from reaching. I feel like the pieces of my once congruent self are all floating atop a vast sea before me. And the further the individual pieces drift out to sea the harder i know it will be for them to come together so i can have the mobility to swim inland.

For now floating isn't so bad. The current isn't strong and the water is warm. But i don't know when a storm will come and completely knock all the pieces so far away from one another, that they will just become lost out there.