Writer's Block Magazine

I’m standing at the bottom of a hill and, for the first time in my life, it feels insurmountable. Standing there, I feel like vomiting, and I’m shaking, and my body feels heavy. For the first time, I feel my fingers go numb, as I try to move them, as I count the seconds that I’m breathing in and out and in again. My nails are digging into my palms. My heart is pounding. Not the way it pounds after sprinting to catch the bus, not the way it pounds before the end of an exam, when I still have 2 questions left to answer and the seconds are running out. It’s pounding quietly and it’s pounding forcefully and it’s pounding in between every breath. It’s making me feel dizzy. With every beat. With every moment my blood stops pumping. And with every pause, my head gets fuller. It gets louder, it gets busier – no, it gets too crowded. And then it’s suffocating. Suffocating like choking on water, suffocating like having my head held down on the pavement, suffocating like being pushed off a ledge, wanting to hold on to something, holding on to nothing. And then it gets dark – pitch black – for a second. Dark like when I stand up too fast. Except this time, it doesn’t go away fast. This time, it feels long. This time, it feels hopeless. It feels like that same darkness is getting inside my ears and my mouth and there’s nothing I can hear and there’s nothing I can say that will make me feel like myself again. This time, it feels like being alone.

This here is the interesting part, maybe even the beautiful part, of this great big unknown that we get to call “life” and play around in. What is real and what the human mind perceives as real are two completely different things. That is because perception functions within a behavioural “economy of action” – in order to promote energetic efficiency, perception evaluates the demands of the context we are in against our own physical state (Proffitt, 2006). There are many studies, many articles, and journals talking about this phenomenon, but I have recently come across one article in particular that made me smile and be a bit gentler to myself. According to Schnall et al. (2008) – all academic researchers in psychology, in the field of perception and cognition – the visual perception of a geographical slant is influenced by psychosocial resources, so much so that just being next to a friend makes us estimate a hill to be less steep than if we were to be there on our own. It sounds insane, and it sounds about right, somehow. It follows, then, that, objectively, scientifically, there are things that we can’t do alone. Things that make us freeze and doubt. Scary things that look even scarier when there’s no one else there with us.

So, I’m hoping that every time you stand in front of a hill, it is with someone beside you. I’m hoping there’s someone there to hold your hand. I’m hoping there’s someone there to breathe with you. Because it’s not easy. This little life we’re living – it’s not easy living it at all. Sometimes, breathing on your own is not easy. And just as well, seeing that empty space is not easy sometimes. Like it’s not easy asking for help, or admitting that you need a friend. Like waking up alone is not easy. Like coming home to a quiet place is not easy. Sometimes, not having someone to call with good news is not easy, either. Doing the dishes is not easy, taking a walk is not easy. Sometimes, it’s just not easy. No matter what you do, no matter how simple or how daunting, no matter how incredibly stupid it feels, sometimes it’s just not easy. It really is all any of us want and then hell when we get there. And it’s okay to want someone next to you, to witness your pain and your joy and the little things in between. Someone you can go back to. Someone who chooses you again, and again, and again. Time and time again. Even when you can’t seem to choose yourself. Someone who chooses you because you also choose them. Someone who loves you both because and despite. Someone who proves to you that you’re not, actually, alone.

So let’s try this thing one more time, okay?

I’m standing at the bottom of a hill and, for the first time in my life, it feels insurmountable.

You look at me.

I’m a little braver than before.

Written by Clara Pistol

References

Proffitt, D. R. (2006). Embodied Perception and the Economy of Action. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(2), 110–122. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2006.00008.x.

Schnall, S., Harber, K. D., Stefanucci, J. K., & Proffitt, D. R. (2008). Social support and the perception of geographical slant. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 44(5), 1246–1255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2008.04.011.