Like, What is Even Time?

I went to a presentation by the Department of Transformation last Saturday. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, whether it was a band, a lecture, or an art exhibit, but I just went. I didn’t know if I would know anyone there, but it was time to leave the apartment. 

I have been depressed. Like super duper depressed. On top of the usual chemical imbalances and the dark, cold skies, I’ve been isolated partly due to my car being stolen. To be honest, I have been watching an extreme amount of TV and movies. Yes, I could reach out and ask to hang out, but it wouldn’t be depression if I could just do that easily. January also brings more escalated people I talk to at work, so I end my days with little to no love for my fellow man after being treated like a punching bag. The last thing I want is to be on the phone chasing a connection.

Anyway, I decided to overcome my loneliness by going to this event and seeing what’s up. It made me think a lot about my relationship with language, how I deal with time and my perception of it. The artist, P!, presented a multi-media presentation that included some karaoke. 

One of the slides showed the communication lineage that some of our brains share, from reading to speaking to singing to dancing. I loved the idea of reading being related to dancing as my eyes flit across the page of a book or even arguing with someone, which is a form of singing.

Part of the discussion was on how we experience time. Of course, sometimes, time feels slower than other times. We can sometimes slow time down to the present moment with meditation or deeply being present for a task. 

This got me thinking, and it made me tremendously sad about when I had cancer and was going through chemo. My brain was full of fog, and my body felt like it was trying to jump off my soul. I wanted to escape so badly, but all the regular escape methods, like reading, drawing, TV, movies, music, social media, or even talking to someone, would not get me out of the present moment. I was stuck. The past didn’t bring any escape, nor the future; I was just in the very present.  I could not dance with books or sing to others because I couldn’t be anything but present inside my body. 

Even at my most disciplined meditation, I could not transcend this amount of present living. The moment would sway back and forth as I started tuning into the past and the present. I could feel nanoseconds here and there of the present moment, and when the body wasn’t searing in pain, it was not an unpleasant experience. I know that when I am in the moment, I have less depression and anxiety than when I dwell on all my mistakes and fear the unknown future.

Nowadays, I am back to being able to escape into books, screens, and people, but I do reminisce on those three months when I was unable to escape the present moment, and it became a nightmare. This horror has brought a harsh relationship between my brain and my body, and I can’t stand the two being connected. I must escape through my brain so it doesn’t notice my body. 

I’ve worked hard on easing the anxiety that drove me after cancer. I left it untreated for a long time before seeking professional help. I have found that my anxiety comes from my fears of the future. What hasn’t happened yet. 

The good news is that the reason I didn’t suffer from anxiety before cancer was that I had little to no stock in the future. I didn’t think I was going to live that long for a long time, so I didn’t worry about it. For some reason, despite all the other times I had brushes with death, cancer gave me the fear of dying that I hadn’t had before. I went from not caring to caring about too much. I was worried about everything. Time went from being almost nonexistent in my life to being too important. It wasn’t if I lived, but when I die that haunted me. 

Thanks to therapy and medication, I was able to alleviate a lot of that anxiety about time going fast toward the unknown and death. I became more comfortable with the present moment. I was able to bear my mind and body connecting again. It didn’t totally take my anxiety away; I got self-conscious and didn’t sing karaoke with everyone at the event, but I’ll take that over being dominated by fear.

Now I’m back to where I am most comfortable, with crippling depression. But I have decades of experience with it, so I know how to take care of myself, so I don’t let the depression keep me from enjoying life. I can go back to dancing with books and singing with people.