Layers

Yesterday, I spent some time outside just before a storm. It felt like dusk, even though it was actually mid-afternoon. It’s a eerie feeling, to know it’s day but feel like it’s evening. I have a lot of nightmares about the sky suddenly going dark in the middle of the day – apocalyptic sorts of dreams.

We don’t get a lot of humidity in Colorado. Humidity is a reminder that there’s something that surrounds us, something that holds us down, something that works over and beyond any human intervention. It reminds me that there are so many layers that exist around us, of air and atmosphere that we normally don’t notice or think about.

There are things that surround us that we can’t control.

Since yesterday’s storm I keep thinking about layers.

I have a chronic health issue that causes fatigue, and unfortunately it’s triggered by heat. This morning was sunny and warm, and walking around tired me out.

The strange experience about fatigue versus just being tired is that it’s hard to pull out of a fatigue. My senses don’t come back all at once, like they do when I wake up in the morning. Instead, they come back gradually.

It’s a strange experience – I start thinking, consciously, but I can’t move or open my eyes. Hearing comes back, then movement – then, after willing myself to fully wake up, eventually I can open my eyes.

It’s a lot like waking up through layers, much like they depict in Inception, where the characters have to move through different levels in order to fully regain consciousness.

What finally woke me up this afternoon was the hail hitting my windows in loud little cracks. The sound startled my brain a bit, which seemed to allow my eyelids to open, and I was quite relieved.

It’s an unsettling experience to trapped in between the layers of full awakeness and whatever this waking-sleep state is that I often find myself in.

I suppose the best I can do is accept those moments of uncontrollableness. Accept that we’re not always in one place or another, accept that we live within atmospheres and systems that are completely beyond our capacity to manipulate.