RECONNECT WITH THE MOTHERSHIP

“Look, here’s the deal. You’re not going to get an “A” in this class if you don’t participate.”

“Ok.”

“So… you need to participate....”

“Ok. I mean, like  when is the final?”

“I’m not answering that.”

“Why? You haven’t decided or...?”

“No, I know when it is but I’m not telling you because this is exactly the type of question you can ask during class for credit so you can get an ‘A.’ You’re doing fine on all the exams, homework, but you haven’t asked a single question or made a single comment all semester, I was very clear in my syllabus.”

“I can’t.”

“Why? It’s the easiest thing?”

I paused. I was facing towards him but focused on the window behind him and let my mind wander. I look down and realize I had been spinning my ring around my finger, a dead giveaway I was anxious and didn’t want to be there even though I called for the meeting. Finally I come up with an answer.

“I’ve been thinking about leaving. I think I’m going to transfer.”

“Ok. Let me ask you something. Do you think that leaving will prevent you from having to ask questions in class?”

“No.”

“Ok, so why are you leaving?”

“I don’t know.”

Another pause. This one longer, so long, that I felt I could feel the air hanging heavy. We were playing a game of, ‘who’s going to break this silence first?’ I was trying hard to rack my brain for something, anything but all I got was a feeling of emptiness. Why was it so hard to participate? Why was I actually leaving? Why did I not want to be there? But nothing. I had nothing, no reasons whatsoever. I felt like I had checked out of my own body and left it on auto-pilot in the hopes I wouldn’t crash and burn before it was time to return. My former identity had been shed, my roadmap to navigate through this time was missing. I was lost and at the same time I didn’t care.

He finally broke the silence, a small win for me and my stubbornness.

“Ok well, clearly you’re not going to say something so I will. The fact of the matter is you’re an adult, you’re free to make your decisions at-will. If you want to leave you can but don’t consider it an ‘out.’ You need to understand that it is possible for you to get through the program. You can do research here and do well with it. If you want to leave, which I think you very well might, well... you need to know you’re going to have to participate. You need to have answers to questions, all kinds of questions that involve your life. YOUR LIFE! They don’t have to be correct necessarily. You can change them as you grow up, you can change your mind if it means changing from one answer to another but being apathetic, not having an answer, I mean it’s not an option here. It's not an option anywhere to be honest. You can leave and you can make it out there but the doors are going to be bigger. You’re going to have to knock harder to be heard which means you’re really going to have to speak and speak-up for that matter. Do you understand? You can leave, that’s an option but… I mean it’s sink or swim, ok?”

“Ok.”

“That’s it? Just ‘ok’?”

“I mean, I don’t know what to say, I've got nothing.”

 He leans back in his chair, visibly exasperated. I understood. A feeling deep within screamed “DO SOMETHING” and yet I stared blankly. My subconscious fired off distress signals in the hopes my soul would know it was time to return but there was no response to the call. I mean what the hell? Surely, this was not what was meant to happen. I knew I was capable, capable of communicating, problem solving, being an interactive person but in this moment of time it became clear I was just a shell. Did someone borrow my ‘being’ in the middle of the night without leaving a note? Did some kind of traumatic event occur that I was trying to suppress? Wait, when was the last time I actually slept and what was keeping me up at night?

There it was. A spiraling vortex of questions I had no answer too. An alarm went off in the back of my mind with increasing decibels and the pile of shit I left on the back burner was bubbling over and in flames. How long had I been like this? I felt like the organized file folders of memories, likes, dislikes and things that created me had been uprooted from their respective filing cabinets and were floating around in empty space as I tried desperately to grab them. I looked down at my hands only to find that the fingerprints that genetically identified me were gone. I had no traction to grip these pieces, these memorabilia, things that once were that I no longer felt any feeling towards. Feeling. Feelings. What was I feeling? 

Nothing. Numb? Empty? No, I felt like a void where information would enter only to quickly be lost in an unknown. I start to panic internally and I seemingly enter into the realm of Wonderland but as soon as I start, I stop and freeze. The memorabilia stops flying mid-air and the shit on the back burner simmers down. The alarm in my mind begins to sound muffled and all of it, the warning signs to call me back, the ammonia salts to wake me up cease and everything gets sucked into the void. 

“Hello? Uh, checking in from Earth here?” He waves his hand in front of my face. 

I am pulled back into this moment and our eyes meet. I know I wasn’t gone for long but I was gone long enough for him to wave the white flag. 

“Yes?”

“Look, just.. how about you sleep on this, ok? If you want to leave just make sure it’s what you want to do but if you want to stay, we can talk about that too. That door is absolutely still open. But for now, do me a favor?”

“Yes?”

“During tomorrow’s class, ask me when the final exam is, ok? That’s all, just ask that question and we’ll let the rest fall into place, ok?”

“Ok.”

I grab my backpack, hesitating for a second and look back before crossing the threshold.

“Thanks.”

“Take it easy, ok?”  He looks concerned and he is for good reason. Though it wasn't obvious to me in that moment, this moment would be it. 

This was the coin toss.

The throw of the dice.

The tipping of the first domino.

The flap of a butterfly’s wings.

The fork in the road leading to two different paths in life and without knowing the impact, I had just taken my first step down one path.

But in that moment everything was clouded. My mind became a non-stop show of Mac’s spinning rainbow wheel as I remained stagnant in a state of “buffering” while my body led me out of the building. My auto-pilot directs a course back to my dorm room which is the extent of its abilities. It is not sophisticated enough to handle the complexities required to locate and reconnect my soul, so my shell simply follows the commands. “Left foot, then right foot.”

In a way, I think, subconsciously I knew something was wrong. Had I not spent hours sitting in lectures about this exact subject matter? But surely, no. No, that’s not me, those issues are for other people, I mean, obviously...obviously this is a phase and I just need to sleep.

Yeah, that’s it, it’s a phase and I need to sleep.

No, I just need to sleep.

The alarm sounds, but it’s faint, in the background and almost unnoticeable. A single neuron is left firing “summon” on the remote searching for my soul but it’s not enough. There’s smoke in the air like something is burning but I see nothing. The warning signs make a last-ditch attempt to resurface and my auto-pilot hits the “snooze” button. 

We’ll deal with it later.

We’ll deal with it tomorrow.

We’ll deal with it next week. 

We’ll make it on our own, right?

Is this how it was supposed to go?

"...Lordy don’t leave me / all by myself…"

###

Cng