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Alienated. Like I had separated from my body and I was looking at it from above. Only I was not separated just from my body but from my own consciousness as well. Like I couldn’t control it, though I was aware of it. Helpless. Trapped in a loop. Everything too frenetic. Too crowded. Too meaningless. Or too complicated. Dear Reader, have you ever felt like that?
Yesterday was simply one of the strangest days of my entire life until now. Nothing particular really happened, just everyday life. But if I think about it, I can’t help but being amazed by the huge difference between the things I experienced. Pretty normal — I want to point that out again — but so different in such a short amount of time, less than 24 hours: the environments I walked in; the people I came across; the little choices I made. I’ll write down how my day was as a brief list of events.
- Early wake up to go to Dublin city centre.
- Train journey to Bray.
- Cliff walk from Bray to Greystones.
- Train journey back to the city.
- Walk in the city centre.
- Lunch at Starbucks.
- Watching a movie at the cinema.
- Waiting for the bus back home.
- Videocall with a friend from Italy.
As I said, nothing really special. And as I’m writing this I’m not even sure what my point is supposed to be, maybe I don’t have one. And I guess that’s ok because we don’t always need to have a precise point when we are writing, especially if there isn’t one in our flow of thoughts. It’s not how we are chemically constructed. Then, if you as a Reader mind reading a piece without a clear point, I advise you to stop reading this, because I’m telling you that either there won’t be one or if so it’ll very likely be pretty banal and confusing.
In less than 24 hours I’ve been to four different main spaces: my home, the city (that includes buses and trains and every indoor area), natural landscape, the place I traveled to in my imagination while watching the film. I was a different person in each space, spanning from the privacy of my life at home to my personal specific social demeanour in public spaces. But I naturally always was the same person, myself.
Only at some point during the day something clicked in my brain. I had just come back from my little trip out of the city, filled by fresh air and with the green wonders of Wicklow landscapes still in my eyes, and I started walking from Tara Street to Temple Bar, looking for a place where to have lunch. I had two necessities: satisfy my hunger after a three hours hike and not spend too much because, you know, I’m a foreign student on a budget. My feet led me on the other side of the river to Dublin 2 area and I almost unconsciously entered in Dubrai shopping centre, mixing with the crowd of tourist and locals enjoying their afternoon in the city.
Soon a strange unpleasant sensation of not being able to follow the pace of people around me dominated me. All the normal things happening became extraordinary to my eyes. Extraordinary and overwhelming. Two hours before all I could hear was the sound of the wind and the sea and then I heard people chatting in many different languages. All I could see was the green hills of the Wicklow countryside and then I was surrounded by shops and restaurants. Cows and calves were the only living creatures and then entire families were passing by, full of bags and desires to satisfy.
Everyone was there looking for whatever thing could satisfy them: a new phone, the latest best-seller, fancy clothes, food… To have, to own, to possess. To lose perception of ourselves. To be part of. To enjoy the amenities of modern life. I felt lost and helpless. I was alienated. I could see myself as the nth individual wandering in that shopping centre. Many hundreds before me that morning, many hundreds after me before closure. How could I feel so trapped after the freedom experienced only a couple hours before?
I had to get out of there to start thinking clearly again. And I couldn’t. I kept feeling lost, literally lost. I couldn’t find my way to the cinema, even though I walk it everyday to go to college. And even after the film I couldn’t immediately find my bus stop, the one from where I have been taking the bus home for a month now. I struggled to recognize places that have recently started to be familiar to me. I was an outsider tothe whole reality and it was very scary. It was only later in the evening that this feeling of alienation faded away and I kinda reconnected to the real world.
So the options are the following I guess:
- I had a panick attack;
- I’m becoming mental;
- I breathed to the nucleus.
Now, I don’t think that was a panick attack because I didn’t experience the canonical recognized symptoms of it. Then that I’m a little bit mental is not really news. So I’m going with the 3rd option. What does that mean? I’m not sure but it somehow makes sense in my mind. It’s like disconnecting from everything by being by myself in nature and then abruptly going back to civilized life — to be precise to the core of our consumerist society — let me through all the layers of reality, straight to the nucleus of it. And that scared the shit out of me.
The reason Why? Because, as everyone nowadays, I am so connected to the external world and constantly trying to fit into society that I am actually disconnected from myself and the real world. So for a very brief time yesterday afternoon I was outside of everything but had never been so much inside of it. It doesn’t really make sense, does it? Well, Reader, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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