Nothing Real Exists

1992

That Other Me is a series that explores the immediacy and intimacy of various mental health episodes I’ve experienced throughout my life.

I don’t know if the wall is real.

I see it.

If I walk over, I could touch it.

I could feel it.

Feel the plaster under my fingertips.

Feel the texture against my skin.

Feel its presence.

But none of this proves that the wall’s real.

Because it might just be what I’m imagining.

Just as I’m imagining it’s there, I could imagine that it interacts with me – and the world around me – exactly as I expect it should.

Which means I’d have to be imagining this entire physical reality. That ceiling. That floor. That glass ashtray. It makes sense if one thing isn’t real, then everything isn’t real, and this whole reality and the way it functions is just a construct of my mind.

So what does that leave me?

Am I real?

I can see my hands. Feel my body. Hear my breath. But I couldn’t possibly be real in an imagined world. I would have to be imagined, too.

The only thing that’s real is my consciousness – and this self-awareness that I exist. That’s here. But whirlpooling deeper and faster into this speculation.

If I’m just this consciousness, what is it exactly?

It has a presence here. It observes. Functions … however it’s meant to function, although it’s faulty now. It’s questioning when it should be accepting. Everybody else is accepting. But I’m not.

If I’m not real, if that wall’s not real, if everything physical around me isn’t real, then these are just unreal boundaries. What lies behind them?

I imagine I could shed myself and then there would be nothing but consciousness, only it would be minus the self-awareness because surely self-awareness needs definition to understand its existence.

The thought terrifies me. The self-awareness defines me. Lacking that, what do I become? Does my consciousness continue to exist? Or does it become everything beyond my imagination?

If I’m not me, then I must be nothing.

Or I’m something beyond that which I can’t comprehend.

No. That can’t be. I could lose myself spiralling into that thinking.

This has to be real, which means all this questioning of reality is further evidence of my mind unravelling as it searches for meaning beyond the simplest truth.

I’m losing my grasp.

This is the evidence, the way a scratchy throat can be a sign of a coming cold. I could he slipping right out of this world and never know when I left it. My body will still be here. But my mind will be gone.

And that, ironically, will be like I’ve turned myself inside out.

And taken everything with me.

But me.