gio.writes

There was a good run-up a ways back from the edge. I lowered myself, eyes out to the long blue void. A breath glided from above my head, down through my spine, and pooled at my feet. I was ready. Running as hard as I could right up to the edge, I found euphoria was already upon me as the ocean appeared what seemed miles below. The whole world went quiet but for the screaming wind in my ears.

Falling, and falling, and falling.

What I thought would be seconds had become years of floating in a space somewhere long forgotten. And in that exact moment before impact, I was somewhere inside my own world, lost within a swirling blackhole at the center of everything. 

Like always, that very teetering edge of death is the place where I felt most alive. 

All was blue. The lines between ocean and sky had become blurred. The water was… different. Somehow- breathing. Time was a forgotten idea, and there existed nothing but an eternal present. My body had evaporated, dispersing into the water, flowing in a million different directions. The tides of the oceans had never felt stronger, nor more rhythmic in all my life. The ocean had enveloped me and I’d allowed it.

All that was left of me were a pair of eyes to observe the world in its perfect form. If I had a mouth, I'd be smiling.

Then, in an instant, it all flew back to me at high speeds. My flesh, skin, organs, and bones all at once. My lungs dove for air and the very atmosphere had never tasted sweeter. My eye’s saw everything in different shades and colors, my ears heard new frequencies, my skin was static and transparent.

Is this what I was looking for? 

An escape from all that I know? 

An escape from reality? From my body?

My bounds of comfort?

Yes, yes I was.

And this fleeting feeling was now my chase. To be so bewilderingly lost within my own mind, unable to tell my dreams from reality. Everything about that felt right. Everything. This dissociation was different from those of the past. It held my hand and guided me, glimpsing me what was real in this world, allowing me to wander freely. In the past, someone within me only ever led myself shackled, into the valley of false reality, where a dark hand spoon-fed me sweet paranoia. This area outside of myself was someplace the schizophrenia could never find me.

This was the pure bliss of a moment that’s much higher above my own perception. It felt like I had found the beauty in life. The true beauty you’re promised to find in stories of old men, movies, shows and books. The one you search for, but never find. 

But this was it, this was that mysterious beauty.