The Sea of Thought

I am drowning in a sea of continuous thought. I can see the thoughts in real time. My hands and body are doing normal tasks meticulously like someone who is fully there but my mind has completely checked out and it's in a distant place.

One thought. Then it breaks. Then it's many thoughts, none of them related, all of them urgent, all of them pulling in directions I cannot name. I pause on one and it breaks into six thoughts. I pause on one of the six and it breaks again. My mind doesn't stop. I move from the beginning to the end without ever getting to the middle. I try to read to distract it but my eyes are moving fast and the words even faster.

My husband is telling me something and I have already been there and back before he finishes his sentence. My mind is racing, there is no beginning and there is no end. The chain is not leading anywhere but there is more.

I feel like a machine, mindlessly completing tasks. I don't know where I am but I am somewhere very deep. Somewhere in that depth, the thoughts are louder and the room has gone quiet in a way that isn't quiet at all.

I am speaking out loud, but the words don't match anything I am thinking. My husband quietly asks, "You look like you are deep in thought. What are you thinking about?" I pause and open my mouth to explain but find nothing. I have nothing to say because the question arrived and I processed it before he completed it. I come up with an answer. Then I think about the answer and it just doesn't sit right. Then I think about how it doesn't sit right and why. I sit there blank. I cannot break down what is happening inside me. And I start to think how frustrating that might be for him.

Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. Calm down. I keep repeating this multiple times, almost begging my mind to listen.

This makes things worse, because the ship within me is literally sinking. I feel like screaming and crying simultaneously so that my mind can shut down. I quietly wish my mind was a computer so I can just press the shut down button.

I keep looking for one thing to at least ground me. Something that will not split into fifty things when I think of it, but I can't find something solid and everywhere I look is just a sea of thought.

My husband suggests we go outside. Outside seems so large. Something about how large it is does what I have been trying to do for the last two hours. I finally stop thinking. I see the sky, feel the air, and the shade of green of the grass. It has just been cut and the lawn mower lines are still crisp. It's breathtaking. And suddenly I am not me, I am part of the landscape that is.