So my room is a mess. It’s been a mess for at least these past 2 or 3 years, and before that it was a mess too, just for shorter periods of time. What I’ve discovered is that a younger me was a complete and utter hoarder of anything that could be the least bit sentimental or “useful” in the future. That and I was too lazy to look through my stuff and actually throw it out, preferring to just box and shelve it. It’s almost the end of summe and I know if the past 4 years of high school where busy for me than university will be no different, probably worse. So it’s time to clean.
It’s day 3 of the clean-a-thon, and I’ve already got 4 garbage bags and 3 recycling bags full of, well, crap. Not even crap I can give away to charity, just crap. I’ve been up to my ass in nostalgia for 2 days. From elementary school to high school I kept a lot of… Stuff. I can literally track my mental growth and how I was sorta messed up in middle school, and the weird crap I did in early high school, and the strangeness of my grade school years.
But I found a piece of paper discussing my writing skills and things I wanted to experience, I don’t remember where I put it now, but something sticks out. I talked about how I have to have a dream about falling, I needed it, it was an obsession, I needed to experiences that feeling. I guess not knowing at the time I kind of got my wish a year or so later when that is all I dream about. I would have the same dream for what felt like hours of rising into the air and slowly going back down to earth. Most times I would never touch the ground, and when I did it would hurt like nothing else. Even worse was the anticipation of hitting the ground, fearing the pain I would be in, and then touching down without feeling a thing.
The dreams where unsettling, but almost comforting in their length and absolute weirdness. They weren’t quite flying dreams, and they weren’t quite “plummeting to my death” nightmares, it was a very slow feeling.
Lately for whatever reason I’ve been thinking about that falling feeling more and more. Maybe this coincides with the adventures I’ve been having lately. It is hard to not think about falling when you’re climbing cliffs and cranes and going to theme parks all within a short period of time. But it is a weird feeling to fall, there’s an anticipation there to hit the ground. There’s a forward action as well, to fall you need to either be launched upwards, or trip, or jump, or climb something very tall…
It really isn’t the fall that unsettles me, it’s the fact that falling ends when landing, and landing usually hurts. In those dreams I would fall for hours, maybe never landing, and it was such a scary feeling to never hit the ground again, but somewhat thrilling. Lately I’ve been very ungrounded, my life went through a change almost 2 months ago, and I suddenly I wasn’t grounded anymore. I was jumping, and then falling, and I don’t think I’ve hit the ground yet. This unstable feeling is supremely exhilarating, I’m controlling it just enough to stay sane, and letting everything else just go.
When I was younger, and hell, even now I ridiculously loved swing sets. My friend and I would go and talk and swing for hours, and it was pure entertainment for us. I’m not obsessed with control, but something about the perpetual motion of falling and catching yourself was completely addictive. And it was at my control, I could stop, or jump, or break the pattern. I usually jumped in the end, but it always took so long to build up to it, to get the courage to jump. I usually imagined my broken body in a lump at the end, but now I just go for it regardless. It breaks the cycle of falling and catching yourself, because now you’re literally slingshotting yourself into the open air and allowing yourself to hit the ground. It’s great, it’s that tiny bit of adrenaline that I so crazily feed off.
I don’t exactly know where I’m going with this, but I’ve just been thinking lately about the negative and positive connotations of falling. On the one hand you’re playing a losing battle against gravity, it’s going to end in hitting the ground. On the other it’s freedom and velocity that you just can’t control! Which can be a great thing.
Lastly, I would rather not fall of anything. If I’m going to fall it’s because I control the when and the where. I think it’s important to note!
And one more thing, lately I’ve been having terrifying dreams where I can’t scream. I open my mouth and nothing comes out. Means something? Who knows!