The Art of Falling

I've fallen a few times and I've somehow gotten through these times, have somehow managed to stand up again. Not entirely. I can't stand straight anymore. (For many reasons actually, not just because of falling, but that's a whole different topic.)

I can't stand straight anymore, because every time that I've fallen and fought one of these fights – that are a lot more terrible than the normal everyday fights – every time I've gotten a bit more bend, a bit more broken.

Over time, through lovely people and through my passion for writing, I've been healed from some of the consequences of these bends and breaks. I'm not badly bend or badly broken. I'm just... not quiet right and not quiet whole. There are pieces of me missing and pieces that are misshaped. But I'm okay. Not as okay as some other people might be, but also not as bad as some other people are. I'm doing okay. I could do better, but one could always do better. I could also do a lot worse. So it's fine. I guess. No, it actually is.

But sometimes that feels like a lie. Is this really fine? Am I really okay? Okay enough, and what does that even mean? What is enough? Am I enough? Can I be enough even with these missing and defaced pieces of mine? Doesn't being a bit not quiet right and not quiet whole mean that I can never be enough in any way, because there will always be something that I don't have and can never have!?

When I reach this thought, when I finally stop to repress it, when I let all my fears and demons and just everything that haunts me in – I start falling again.

And I will remember. I will remember every time that I fell before. I will remember how it felt. I will remember what happened. I will remember the thoughts that I had back then. I will remember all of that pain and sadness and desperation and most of all: the emptiness and meaninglessness.

Because that is what's the worst about it. You might think that the pain will kill you and yes, it can be really really bad and it even can make you want to stop feeling and only feel emptiness. It can get that bad.

But once you actually reach the emptiness and suddenly everything just feels meaningless, you start to crave that very pain that you cursed away a second ago. Anything is better than feeling nothing. Anything is better than feeling empty. That's why we consume so much, whatever it might be. We always always always try to fill this emptiness inside of us. We are so so afraid of that emptiness.

I am at least. That's how I feel about that. I've been there. I've felt nothing, just empty and meaningless and just... like I am nothing. Like I don't matter at all, to no one. And as a matter of fact I stop to feel anything about anyone and anything. It's just... if I don't matter, why should anything matter to me? If no one sees a reason for me to be here, why would I? And why would I bother to make reasons up? That would just be lies, right? Yeah, all those sweet lies that I tell myself to keep living.

I need reasons. We all need reasons. We need explanations. We need hope and something to hold onto. We need acknowledgment and acceptance. We need love. We need someone and something. We need each other. We need something that can make it stop, so that we won't fall any further. We need a hand that helps us get up again. Or maybe even someone that catches us, when we fall.

We need company. Good company. A good friend. Someone we can be close to. Someone who knows us. Someone that makes life easier. Someone that's there.

I'm so glad that I have someone. Not just someone, but a really good someone. A someone that right now might be something like my only friend. Maybe I'm just making things up, like I kinda always have been. It's probably nothing. It can't be like it has been the other times, right? This can't happen. I don't want this to happen. I really don't want to. And maybe it isn't happening and all my fear is just stupid. Maybe. Hopefully.

But even if it isn't happening, it doesn't change what I'm feeling right now. Wherever this feeling actually comes from, even if it's just inside of me, it's still there and it is still real. I am falling.

In a way that's just normal, I guess. Everyone falls now and then. No one is as happy as they seem to be. Life just isn't like that. Even people that seem so be incredibly lucky struggle. That's just life and human nature. Nothing will ever change about that.

When this feeling of falling get's too strong though... I don't even think that I've fallen too hard before and I might never will fall too hard. I'm just a little bit bend and broken, but not too much. I'm not too damaged, just a bit damaged. Which is a whole other source for insecurities and all that shit. A different topic.

Still, I know that it can be bad. It might just be the tip of the iceberg of badness, but it's still the iceberg of badness, so yeah. And the thing about that iceberg is that it always feels so final. That's probably where the suicide stuff kicks in. It feels like the end, like you're just gonna fall endlessly through this emptiness in which nothing matters, especially not you. It's just falling falling falling.

Even if you know that it will get better, which it eventually will, you can't see that and you most definitely can't feel it. There is nothing and you are nothing. There can't be anything. How can there be something after nothing? How can there possibly be something made out of nothing? That just doesn't make any sense. No. No, this nothingness makes a lot more sense. Everything else is just a lie, some trick that other people live by. But you can't, not anymore. You've seen the truth and now it's too late.

That's what falling is. You just fall and fall and fall and everything loses it's meaning and nothing will ever have any meaning again, because it's gone, it's lost and it can never be found again.

Well, guess what? Your fall can come to an end. You can actually reach the ground or grab onto something in the nothingness. It might look like there is nothing, but there sure as hell always will be something.

That's just... I just believe in that. How else would you explain coming back into something after you've fallen through nothingness? Yeah, maybe it's all just lies and tricks and illusions that we play on ourselves. Who knows? Maybe the nothingness is actually the truth.

But I simply refuse to see it that way. I have to believe that there is something, always. How ever small it might be, it is there and from this something can grow more and more and more. Just think about a seed. A seed is so small, so very very tiny. And from some of these tiny seeds a tree can grow. From just one tiny seed there can grow a tree and this tree will have more seeds to grow more trees and soon enough there will be a whole forest. A whole forest started from one tiny seed.

If a seed can do that, just imagine what one tiny human can do – one tiny idea, one tiny feeling, one tiny word, one tiny whatever. And then think about the nothingness and how that might be all there is – just nothing. How can there be nothing when you are there? Whatever you might think of yourself, you are there. You are here. You are something.

And for someone you are someone. For someone you might even be the someone. For someone you might be everything. And what you do might be something, might be everything for someone. I'm sure it is. I'm sure that can be said about myself, without wanting to sound cocky.

It's just... this tiny seed, it doesn't know what it's doing. It doesn't know how special it is, so special that it can create a whole forest. And it doesn't know that it already has created that whole forest. It doesn't know. It's just a seed. It's just a tiny tiny seed even though it has created a whole forest.

You have created a whole forest too. I have. I might not know about it, but I have. And it doesn't even have to be a big forest or anything. But it's something. We all are something to someone, because everything we do and say and are affects others. The tiniest things can change everything for someone, for something. We just don't know about that most of the time. We can't know most of the time. How would we? We don't know the strangers whos lifes might have been changed by just us smiling at them. We don't know the random person that remembers something we said or had seen something we did and is inspired by that, tells their friends or decides to do something based on that.

We don't even know what our friends or our family might tell other people about us and what those people might do because of these words about us. We will never know that. But it's a thing. People talk, everyone sure knows that. And people also see and think, yes they actually do, and they are affected by literally everything. I know I am. I might not really know what affected what, might only feel and realize consequences, effects, but not the affect. But it came from somewhere, something, someone.

Because it can't come from nothing, right? There always has to be something.

*

If you think about it that way, the nothingness becomes a lie. How can there be nothing if there always has to be something? Something can't come from nothing. So there always is something. That makes sense, right? The nothingness can't make sense than.

You might feel like nothing and this feeling is very very real. But the nothingness isn't. It's a creation, a creation of your mind. It took control over you and it wants you to believe that it's real. It wants you to only see the nothingness. It wants you to forget everything else. And sometimes it succeeds. Sometimes it sucks everything up and you start to fall and it seems like it will never end, because the nothingness took everything.

But that's exactly what it wants you to believe. It's like a demon that waits until you're so tired of the pain and the desperation and everything else in life and then it strikes when you're at your weakest. You can't defend yourself, you might not even want to and then it drags you down and you fall fall fall.

Eventually you will find something, you will understand that the nothingness is like a shadow that clouds everything, lets everything seem dark and hollow and empty, while right beneath this lair of darkness everything is still there. Nothing is gone. The nothingness didn't took anything. It just made you believe it did and you believed it, because it made you feel like there is nothing left. Well, nothing was ever gone or lost in the first place.

When you realize that, you can stop falling, you can hold onto whatever you might be able to find behind that lair of darkness. There is something, there always will be. I promise. I promise that myself.

The world and life might be dark and scary and unfair in so many ways, but I believe in that something, even if it stands against an army of nothingness. I still believe and I will win. I won't let the nothingness consume me. I won't.