‘Real’.

Sometimes I have these days where I feel a bit disconnected from the world around me. I don’t know if disconnected is the right word to use, because it’s not really what I mean exactly.

They’re days where I feel a little fuzzy. Not the fluffy kind – but the grey-snow-on-the-tv kind of way. Scrambled. Unsteady. Not entirely solid, in a way. Incomplete.

They’re autopilot days, where you feel yourself moving through the dreg of the day as if you were an NPC in a fantasy game, just wandering about aimlessly because that’s all you’re programmed to do. Not really in the capacity of focusing your thoughts and efforts on a single action or being productive in any meaningful way. All you do for a while is just exist. Because that’s all there is to do.

These days feel a little bit ghostlike – like I’m not entirely present in the ‘real’ world – standing on the outside looking in. A mere entity existing on the borders – passing over to a different realm but not yet completely understanding of the implications. Separate from the world, even though I’m still in it.

And while all of these descriptions don’t really reflect how it actually feels, and though they somehow read as being a ‘negative’ feeling – that’s not what I mean to say at all. Days like these don’t really have a value on the good or bad scale for me either. They’re just ‘there’. Like I am.

However – lately I’ve been trying to figure out the how and why behind the days like these. Trying to discover what causes them, what effect they have on me as a person and, most importantly, how to ‘step back’ into a ‘normal’ day. I’ve not yet found the secret, and I can’t say I really have a grip on the causes – but as for fixing it? That I did.

Turns out that the solution is very simple.

Pressing two fingertips to the inside of my wrist, placing them over the artery dutifully pumping blood through my veins – brings me right back to myself. There’s something very grounding to the steady throb and the heat emitted from that particular spot on the skin for me. It pulls me back into myself, makes me more aware of the body I’m in and helps in focusing myself back into ‘the real world’. It helps me feel ‘solid’ again.

I’ve never been a fan of meditation, or awareness or all of the other floaty concepts designed to make our inner beings connect to our outward persona’s. But this? This somehow works for me. When I feel like I’m losing touch with the world – getting in touch with the driving force of mine…helps. All I need is the confirmation that my heart is still going strong, and I suddenly feel myself rush back to normal. Weird. But true.