The sense of panic

Hello

You pop up for a chat as if it is any ordinary night. It is any ordinary night but it has changed and it is different. I am unsettled by the way the angles have shifted. It is my sight that has changed, not the world, but this evening I view it differently. It is all mismatched, there is no grey, the shading has disappeared as if the world has been scanned and put through photoshop and now it is all stark edges, odd angles. It has become a trap that I must struggle out of. It is full of damage, lurking, the slow poison of a life metered out one day at a time.

Nothing will change. I will keep bouncing between bliss and panic, and the panic is too much to bare.

This is a chemical imbalance in your brain, I tell myself. This will pass, but there are other voices nipping at my consciousness. You will never change. You will always come back around to this. You are useless in the scheme of things. You will hurt your friends. You will hurt your lover. You must hurt yourself.

Hello.

And then there is you. I imagine that your voice is smiling, a little bounce in the word. A cheerful tone that has not a single care. I am at once irritated by this and calmed. you are a constant. You are there somewhere, talking to me or not and either way is a comfort to me.

Oh Hi. I say and it sounds like nothing has changed. It sounds like I am in the world and content with it. You are breezing into a typhoon. I feel barbed and dangerous and perhaps there should be a warning light blinking, pointing out the jagged places.

I am having a rough night.

That is too bad. But you know it will be better in the morning.

Yes. But it is not the morning yet.

We talk until morning. We do this because I want nothing better than to up and storm out into the night. I want to hang off the bank of the river, tipping towards water, weighing up the possibilities. I think of pockets full of stones, I think of the plummet. I think of the possible damage of usually benign objects. I think of this and then you are there, distracting me with questions about William Faulkner, Delillo, Steinbeck. You drag me back to the places of joy that I have settled into briefly. You remind me of my passion for art. We talk about painting. We talk about our need for new voices, we talk about the joy that comes with each new thing completed and how we can never linger in that special and perfect place for long before we are caught up in the undertow which drags us towards a new project.

You are me, I tell you, you are my brother, my twin.

There is, of course the age difference.

You were taken away at birth and kept in suspended animation for so many years. You are the gift to the next generation, but you are of my blood.

It only seems this way because you hear my voice as if it was your own voice. It is the Internet. This is how things translate on the Internet.

I am calmer now, I tell you. I think perhaps I can sleep.

Good night, my friend.

My friend.

I am overwhelmed by a sudden rush and there is no word for this. This is not a wave to a friend, this is a tidal wave of emotion. This is like sex but also more than sex or not exactly sex but, from the way my body responds to it, it might be sex if I squint or place my hand between my legs. I have no way to express what I am feeling and I tell you this.

You say, Things will be fine in the morning.

It is morning now and things are a little better. The sense of panic has settled into a mild wash of grey. Day is coming. Day will be a better place. I know that now.

Goodnight my friend, I tell you, and thank you.