Off the map
Most of my days are spent thinking about, investigating, researching, and journaling the various aspects of my ongoing atopic experiences and the underlying circumstances. I once thought the experiences themselves were the hardest part. They're not — though that's not to say they're getting any easier either.
No, not hardly.
And I’m now finding the silence that follows a vision or encounter to often be more difficult than the experience itself.
How do you tell the people around you about something you can barely find words for, let alone fully explain, when it keeps happening?
I really don’t know.
For nearly nine months now, I’ve been struggling with that very question. I’m not seeking attention, but I do need a way to release the pressure that builds from being unable to speak about my experiences.
How do you say, “I’ve seen some very strange things,” without slipping into rationalizing, defending, and defining something that you haven’t found the definitions to describe accurately?
How do you say, “Oh, I’m just an average guy with an average life, until I randomly and uncontrollably slip into a liminality that defies conventional wisdom and explanation.” That’s one hell of an icebreaker line for a networking party, but I won’t be using it anytime soon.
Even among people who better understand it or have had similar experiences, I find it hard to fully share. And that’s because, even among the experienced, there can be biases and misunderstandings. Everyone expects my experiences to align with their own. Some want my encounters to fit their own cosmologies. Others want my encounters to match their own. Even my own enthusiasm often works against me; I get ahead of myself and impose too much on those kind enough to listen and share in kind.
There’s no guidebook or roadmap for this juggling of realities, which is really a single reality, but I’ll deal with that another day. Today I’m just trying to remain functional at work while turning the deeper questions over and over in my mind: What is her true nature? What will it mean? What will be the implications? That last question gives me chills and fills me with trepidation.
But I don’t know what I don’t know.
I’m just writing my own guidebook as I go.
Not ideal—though it could be far, far worse.