14.08.2023 Removed existence

Sometimes I feel like I’m emerging from existing removed from life. When I open myself to the present, a feeling of unfamiliar reality arises, which can only exist if what preceded it was experienced as less real. It’s difficult for me to fathom life, vitality, change sometimes. When one of these moments arrives, either through circumstance or through my own activity, a part of me can’t believe I’m alive. In the sense that I can’t believe I am the subject of the experience I’m having. The argument could be made that I’m not, that it’s an illusion and that the truth is that of Impersonality. And this is a very respectable argument. But in this case I feel the urge to define the illusion of the existence of an “I” as a real illusion and to move forward with that. I am the one living my life, and as soon as I realize this I become stupefied. This may be due to the fact that in the past few years I have become more myself than I was previously. So when I experience a moment, the vessel through which it is experienced is realer to me, and therefore the moment is as well. But I still semiconsciously remember how it was before, and the experience of the contrast is what confuses me. How was I before? Better: What did it feel like being me before? I don’t fully remember. Especially not specifics. But I remember a feeling of passivity, of just going along, of not having control and of being scared of having said control. I am still scared, but now I am more likely to take action anyway. That is one change. I was scared of being more, of becoming more active inside of myself, since I didn’t know how I wanted to be, how I would be if I tried. I still don’t know fully, and I don’t think I ever will. And I’m also still scared, in some ways I should and am more scared than before, and for good reason. My personhood now is much less externally secure than before, and that insecurity can, will and does have consequences. But I exist as myself anyways. Not in spite of my circumstances, but with them, because they’re a part of me as well. Fear and insecurity are no longer things external to me, emotions that make me feel unlike myself, like there is/was something wrong with me. I used to feel less like myself when I was depressed, when I was scared. These emotions felt like they shouldn’t be happening, and therefore I tried to distance myself from them. But in the process I distanced myself even further from my feeling of “I”. I negated real and alive parts of my being by trying to be “okay”, “normal”, by trying to imitate what I thought that meant for me. And in moments where I can’t believe that I’m alive, that I’m the experiencing “I”, I’m coming out of this imitation. I strive to no longer negate parts of my “I” for the purpose of being things I’m not: normal, well-adjusted, fully mentally healthy. Being me doesn’t mean being these things, it means being me.