Travel, You Idiot (Fear, Part One)

In a Covid-distorted world, I was trying to think about holidays for the coming months. I concluded nothing other than to leave it for now and see how the year – and the rush for breaks away from home – pans out.

Whatever I end up doing, as an accompaniment to taking a holiday is the fact I’ve never liked travel.

Nowadays that dislike is amplified. This is the same as most – perhaps all – aspects of my personality, of how I am. It seems brain damage amplifies the extremities rather than fundamentally changes them. The extremities, good or bad.

So, now I dislike travel more than ever.

I have some uncertainty about it, in that I know my dislike is founded in some deep-seated reason which I’m not clear about.

I sometimes think I’m always disappointed by travel because wherever I go, I come along too.

But what I am more certain about is the belief that if I give in to disliking travel, I’m losing out. So I fight it, as best I can.

xxxxxx

What else do I know? I know that there’s a gulf between my damaged mind and the minds of others. Even boundless love can’t bridge that gulf. Sympathy is one thing and empathy another, but I can’t expect anyone else to share my feelings, nor understand them.

Why would I want that gulf bridged anyway? Why would I want to in any way impose my damaged mess of a brain on anyone else?

So I have to live with that gulf. People will, perfectly reasonably, default to a world-view from their side it. And so I have to accept that both how I am and the consequences are fundamentally unresolvable. That’s my isolated reality. All I can do is accept the irrationality I impose on others, and crave tolerance.

Travel, You Idiot (Fear, Part One)

Travel. Fear. Irrational. Or not. Yeah, right. Wishful thinking. Now, train my emotions.

Traffic. Trapped. Jams. Can’t get out. Trapped for … what? Ever? You idiot. You stupid idiot.

Trapped for how long? It’s only time. That’s finite anyway. It always ends. I know, I know, I’m well placed to be aware of that. Ha ha bloody ha.

The rise of panic. Quick to rise. Unbidden? Of course it is unbidden. No-one would want it. No-one would wish it on themselves.

Ugly, unpleasant, distorting.

Objectivity banished. It’s easily banished. Totally forgotten. Gone. There is nothing there to appeal to, nothing to summon. Brutal emotion. Brutal fear. Clumsy, stupid, total emotion.

Emotion? It’s a reaction. A condition. A feeling. Don’t forget confusion. The ability to think clearly has gone.

And it’s physical. Distracted. Heart rate up. Slightly sick.

Distracted, and frozen too. What to do? What to think? How to think? How to … anything. Barely thinking anything other than how to escape – by any means.

It’s not that two and two no longer make four.

It’s that two and two make __________ Not even nothing. Not even nothing with a full-stop at the end of it. A formless void, for went of a better word. And I’m just an idiot left thrashing about in a void.