Simply Too Far Away

I had this text message bonanza with my sister yesterday.

M. Spider: Knock knock.
Turtle: Who's there?
S: Bananas.
T: Bananas who?
S: I dunno. That's all I got, yo.
T: You SUPPOSE to say knock knock again and then repeat banana several times then say orange. Don't you know ANYTHING?
S: Orange ya glad I didn't say banana?
T: There you go. You're not hopeless after all. So not until feb? Forgot that Chinese New Year is later or need more money?
S: More money is defiantly in order. Life has been exceedingly strange lately...
T: Details! If not here then in an email.
S: An extensive email is defiantly due on both sides.
T: I have an excuse. I'm writing my final paper. But it's due this week and then i free!
S: You want that I should give you World of Warcraft for Chirstmas?
T: Oh, that could be very bad for my school work. I don't know!?
S: I thought I should check with you first. I really want to start playing myself... but it would be good to play with you.
T: Is it only online or can you play regular? Does it cost to play online?
S: It's only online, and it costs around 20 shiny quarters a month. A fully detailed secondary world. Fantasy goodness.
T: Is that american quarters?
S: Yes. A few more chincy Kiwi quarters than that, one imagines. But not many.
T: Problem being not sure what kind of connection i'll get over there. Broadband not as widespread as in Canada.
S: Herm. That's not encouraging... yest not impossible. You have broadband now?
T: No. I Wish. Dial up.
S: Ick. Noisy.
T: Sllllow
S: Must make poor Powerbook frustrated.
T: She copes well. Any other computer would be much worse.
S: My little guy's name is Gabriel. Who's yours?
T: No name is good enough for my baby. She exists in a place where physical names mean nothing, she just IS.
S: Gabriel has a sword of fire and stretches his wings in the digital ether. I love him so.
T: :-> got to go. Have to talk to my prof about stats. Have a lovely evening with macgabriel
S: Miss you.
T: Miss you too. Kisses and hugges

Which is when I realized that I really do miss her, at that moment quite terribly; and I started to contemplate the nature of feeling alone. That started me down a spiral isolated and fearful; and the pressure under the surface started forcing me closed: the further down I got, the harder it was to breathe. My pulse started to race. I tried to calm myself down. It got worse. I started to become very, very afraid. Sitting on the couch, my hands clamped to the cushions, I held on and worried that something might burst in my head, that I really had gone too far, and that if I wasn't dying then I might very well have cracked and completely lost my mind.

S: I just had my first panic attack. It was awful.

I have been keeping myself busy enough lately, and focused on my goals, that some of the greater dilemmas which have been more prominent this last year have been in remission. By keeping myself in the world I have been forgetting that one of my greatest fears is that I can't operate there; that I am not designed to make it work. Perhaps, in fact, I have no real place in it, I was some sort of cosmic error, and my problems with the ethical ajuncts of pursuing any sort of dream or supernal directive in a world so corrupt and inclined to depraved indifference, that those dilemmas are not ones that can be resolved, that they will never become any easier to overcome, not without betraying myself or those I care about.

S: There are creative and moral issues.

It did subside; but I was ruined for the rest of the night. I remained a tender, trembling heap, my little muscles in tremors.

S: My brain is trying to kill me.

When I come to think about it, it was not my first panic attack; but I have not had one for a long, long time. The last time was in the art gallery in Ottawa, on a cerulean day in a tall arcade of glass: so bright, so blue, and so full of people that I began to become frantic, beset on all sides by too much, voices and problems and mighty distortions wrippling.... I thought I may have lost my mind then as well.

Crack! Crackers.

The time before that was after a horrendous week at high school, which necessitated a different spiral, one that could have been labeled suicidal.

I don't want to be in this place, but I don't know how to get out of it either.

I may, after all, truly be a mad spider.