Slipping

I feel myself slipping again.

Becoming unmoored.

Untethered to life around me.

I feel like I'm sinking slowly to the bottom of a swimming pool, releasing all my air to sink further. Down there everything is calm and still, and a buffer from the noise above. I can only hear the murky silence of water.

It's quiet, but unnerving. I can't get my mind to focus on anything. It's blurring at the edges. I grasp and I grasp, but my brain is full of smoke and nothing substantial.

Just drifting.

I sometimes attribute it to not using my brain as much as I used to. Specifically, reading. I don't do it as much anymore because I don't have a train commute, or as much time to devote to it. I finally picked up a book a few months ago, and the static in my brain smoothed down. I thought, "I am home." And I never wanted to lay the book back down.

But the books are now also contributing to my sinking, my daze. I emerge from a lunch break spent in story, and I can't fully return to my life. I can't enter and leave the stories the way I used to.