Saturday 10 August 2025, 11:23

 "He rehearsed memories endlessly and every repetition of its details made him happier." - Bewilderment, Richard Powers

I relate to this acute ability of rumination. The capacity to stage in my mind scenes of life in the future... the worst possible future, always living in a nightmare. I would obsess over its minutiae, making further worlds in the already existing world. 

Each time I embellish a rock, a file, a word document, I add volume to the reverie till it becomes dense and heavy, slowing time down and at that point of no return, when the rate of shrinking overcomes the expansion of that planet, I too, am pulled into its contraction --- the iris of time. 

From a minute of daydreaming, it could turn into days of playing and replaying the events of that world. And I have lost or I feel like I have lost my life. 

Many people talk about Catastrophising; how to remedy it; how to attenuate it but no one talks about how to deal with its collateral damage that is the temptation --- or perhaps for many of us who have already done it --- to catastrophise catastrophising.

I grieve grieving.

I overthink overthinking.

I  am anxious of anxiety.

Each successive feet pressing the pedals that spin this disease round and around and I lose more time, more life. 

How do I deal with the grief of lost time or of losing my life?

How do I deal with the fact that all my effort, all my energy, all my preparation or lack thereof --- which fed into the latent growing anxiety because they say that anxiety is just a lack of attending to things building up --- had nothing to prove and amounted to nothing. 

How do I deal with the present when being here would only remind me of everything of which I have lost. Right in front of me and I feel the world crashing upon me; the world of lost chances; of lost exchanges; of lost lessons. I missed this all.