Nihilism.

I couldn’t think of a better word or descriptor for how I’ve been feeling lately.

When time stops and, for a couple of seconds, there is no shame, anxiety, or discomfort. I don’t even have to think about breathing or blinking. It’s like my soul detaches from my mortal circumstances, and there’s only peace, knowing, and existing just to exist.

When I’m in that haze, I feel like a sedated rabbit. It feels like my fight-or-flight response has been muffled, and instead of being blinded by survival instincts, my sense of reason seems sharpened. Being able to access logic in an artistic mind is a godly duo unlike anything I’ve experienced before. Intellect and creation allow me to have theories and observe them without emotion getting in the way.

I don’t know why it happens sometimes. Nothing in particular triggers that switch. I recognize my insatiable longing for that moment when I’m stuck in-between—a type of derealization that’s both comforting and numbing, where I have the illusion of having control, or lack thereof.

Sometimes I feel like my body is an avatar capable of bending this reality to my will. Other times, I feel like living is chaos and it doesn’t matter what happens because human existence is just a speck in both our timeline and the universe. I’m fine with either because both things are empowering to me.

I always thought being my own God was only achievable in fantasy fiction, but when you allow that shift in perspective, no task seems insurmountable.

Maybe this detached feeling is a side effect of the world we live in. We seek connection but are the most disconnected we’ve ever been. We wake up always on the brink of destruction, and it’s disheartening to plug into a news source because things no longer have to have credibility. And when there is truth, it’s like lounging in a field of death, accepting the worst of our kind.

Mayhaps I’m a foot away from enlightenment—or madness.

Regardless, it’s isolating because I feel like I have answers, but no one was asking.

For the past four or five years, I’ve been doing a deep dive into psychology, spirituality, religious practices, and whether humans are inherently good or evil. The worst part is living on a dying planet and knowing what needs to be done, but feeling powerless on the larger scale.

I just want to know if this is my Virgo rising manifesting—is this how air signs feel all the time?! So unbothered but so apathetic.

I also wonder at times if this is my mind protecting itself from the harsh realities of life. Will this become a trauma gap in the future, even though this is perceivably the happiest I’ve ever been?

Surely dealing with a pandemic, being surrounded by death, relationship troubles big and small, and centering my wants and needs around MYSELF are all likely to cause a paradigm shift.

Am I building a city inside my boundaries? Am I capable of flourishing, growing flowers in a swamp?

Maybe I don’t need to know the answer yet.

Through it all, life is relentlessly worth it.

I make a plan and then it happens—making me think life is much simpler than we make it. We literally only stop ourselves from doing what we want to do.

Our perception of free will isn’t fucked by God; it’s fucked by society.

We’ve built boxes to put ourselves into—laws, politics, religion, appearance, wealth, trends. We let our environment persuade us to alter ourselves to fit a script.

All of this sounds a little hokey, but why do we fight wars? Why do we hate our bodies—the vessels of our consciousness that literally tether us to the living world? Why do we destroy our home when it’s irreplaceable? Why do we let people erase our boundaries and abuse us?

Maybe the answer isn’t figuring out whether this feeling is dissociation, enlightenment, medication, trauma, or some strange existential awakening.

Maybe it’s deciding what to do with the perspective it gives me.

We can’t manipulate the bigger picture, but we can live life less seriously. We can question the scripts we’ve been handed. We can decide what matters to us. We can decide what kind of morality we want to live by.

Maybe I’m not a foot away from enlightenment or madness.

Maybe I’m just finally learning what it feels like to have some distance from the things that used to control me.

And honestly?

That feels a little like freedom.