A Hole in my Head

I wake up, as I have so many mornings in the past, not knowing where I am, or who I am. I wake up lost. I look out the window, and try to remember, what was I doing yesterday? What did I decide my goals were? What is supposed to be important to me today? Why am I here?

I have the distinct impression that I knew the answers to these questions, probably just yesterday, but once again, this morning, they are gone, and I am alone.

There is a hole in my head. I go to look for answers where I know I put them, and I know they were there just yesterday; but when I look, there is nothing, just a hole - no information, no hint of what was there before - just emptiness, filling time and space.

I have actually come a long way. For years upon years, I did not remember that I had known the answers yesterday - I did not realize that I kept forgetting and relearning the same lessons over and over. Today, I remember enough to realize the daily disappearance, and once again, I am alone in a world without meaning.

Relationships feel distant. It feels like they mean nothing to me, as if I would not recognize a dear friend or lover if they walked into my bedroom - I would just smile politely, as I do with a stranger, and wonder what they wanted.

I know yesterday I had passions - things seemed terribly important, there were things to do, things that had to be stopped, or be fixed, or be pursued. Today, I can't remember what they were - some chores come to mind, but that sense of vital energy that makes life worth living - I can't quite remember what it felt like.

I can remember that I have loved. I can even remember the expression on my face as I wrap my arms around someone I care about. But I can't remember the feeling that would have led to that expression, nor what would have motivated me to care.

Long, long ago, I learned a hard lesson - my deep, craving need for love was inappropriate for the world I lived in - it was out of place, it had no means of fulfillment, like a porpoise on land, desiring water. There was no water in this life, nothing to bathe and sooth the dry parched surface of my soul. And when I couldn't have what I so deeply wanted, I disciplined myself to stop looking, to block out the longing, to not ask why. The discipline had to be constant, continuous, because the craving was continuous.

Occassionally, with increasing frequency, I do find deep connection in my life - moments when I know without a doubt that I love someone, moments when I feel I am fully open and giving, and I have found my purpose in life, moments when I am in the flow and I experience what it is like to be one with the universe. Those moments are often so poinent that I have to choke off some of the feeling - I fear I will lose myself and somehow not come back. I fear I would unleash all the refused grief of hardened years, all the denied longings of the unknown being within, and I would cry blood. Like a starving person from the desert, who has to readjust to taking in food again, I fear the abundance would kill me if I truly let it in.

And so my brain protects me, as it has for so long, faithfully erasing those dangerous memories of love from yesterday, so I can start again, fresh, clean, and alone, without reason to want more.

Ever so slowly, love is winning out. Each morning, I trust my suspicions a bit more, suspicions that I do have purpose, that I am loved, that the world is indeed my home. Suspicions that there is fulfillment to my longings, that my passions do have lovers waiting for them, that my feelings have a reason for being here other than torment. Ever so slowly, each day, I start to find my grounding, and memories return, and I once again walk among the living. The hole in my head is slowly closing and filling in.

If I do not remember you, my friend, it is not because I do not love you - it is because there is still a hole in my head, and each day, I must retrieve from it the things that make life worth living.