The Pacing Mind

I can't stop pacing. The relaxer has long worn off. It is dead silent except for the low hum the ceiling fan above me. Clothes lay in neat piles across my rug from laundry done a week ago. I glance over to my desk in the corner, and see the album frames and vinyls I ordered last month. The Beatles, Arcade Fire, and Stars stacked in a pile, waiting for the new Jimmy Eat World album to make a complete set of four. I had plans to hang them in a square on the wall next to my bed. Now it seems ridiculous to be focused on hanging vinyls. Decorating my room? Listening to music? What about surviving. I have to survive. The world now feels like a jail that I have no way of escaping. No matter where I go, what I do, who I speak to, or what I have, I will still be living on Earth. Why does this reality not scare other people? Do they not realize their situation? They are literally trapped in their own bodies, in this life, on this Earth. How in the world is that okay with them? How is that okay with me? It's not okay. I'm not okay. We are not okay. I keep pacing from the window to the door. Window, door. Window, door. I'm still here, dangit. I'm still here. And tomorrow I'll be here, and the next day. More high school. More and more. What is this. Why is everything so wrong. Where is the peace that I have felt for the past 16 years. Why is it all gone now? Tears stream down my now red face. My first inclination is to go downstairs, eat, call someone, or ride my bike somewhere. But I know that there is nothing in the entire world that can solve this- nothing can take this fear away. As if it was some desperate last resort, I sprint to my nightstand, open the small drawer, and pull out my bible. I flip open to 2 Corinthians and sit down on my rug. 

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4:18

I think back to my appointment that morning with the psychiatrist. "But I just don't live for the now. I live for eternity." I had said in reference to school. The doctor replied, "That's your problem, you need to live more in the now. You need to live in September 2010." At the time I had accepted his words, but now I saw how completely wrong he was. The world is telling us to live now. The world has convinced us that life is what we see, touch, taste, and feel. But what if you lock yourself in a quiet room in the middle of no where and close your eyes. What do you have then? When the tangible world does not exist, where do you turn? I realized that my life had gradually become empty room of darkness. Everything that I brought into the room aged and fell apart or simply vanished. There was nothing that I could latch onto. There was no thing or person that was permanent. All that I had come to cling to was my own mind- it seemed that that was all I could count on. But when I began to lose even that, I was going just for the sake of keeping going. But why? I was now lying on my back, watching the fan blades spin in circles. I kept thinking, wanting to draw some kind of conclusion. I realized, It's not what is around us that must keep us going, it what is within us. It the mindset and focus we maintain. I had fallen into the common trap of thinking that the room is all there is, because it is all I can see. But the life God has given us to live is one that is temporary. And living that life for Him leads straight to eternal life- a life bigger and better then we could ever imagine. I stand up and walk over to my dresser. I meet my own gaze in the mirror and fall back into the same hopeless pattern of thought. But we're still here. I say out loud. we are still here.