When You Cannot Seem to Land

Nothing is wrong exactly.

You are not sad. You are not spiralling. You have been busy and productive and you could list what you did today. You just could not tell me what any of it felt like, and you have the sense of having been somewhere else the entire time.

This one is the hardest of the six to catch, because it does not hurt. It has no obvious symptom. It is simply a slow drift away from yourself that you tend to notice only when you stop, which is precisely the thing you have not been doing.

Two different versions of gone

They need slightly different handling, so it is worth knowing which one you are in.

Running too fast. The day picked up speed at some point and never came down. You have been moving between things without any gap between them. You are here, technically, but at a pace that does not allow for anything to register.

Far away. Different flavour. You are not rushing, you are absent. The body is at the desk or the table or the school gate, and you are somewhere else entirely, and have been for a while.

Far away is not a failure, incidentally. It is just distance, and distance can be closed. Most women assume it means something is wrong with them. It usually means they have been unattended for too long.

Why you cannot think your way back

Here is the thing about running fast: you cannot come back to yourself at the speed you are going. There is no arriving at pace. If you are moving, the only available first move is to slow down, and it has to happen before anything else, not after you have finished.

And here is the thing about being far away: reasoning does not work, because your reasoning is the part that has wandered off. You cannot use the missing tool to find the missing tool.

Which is why both routes back are physical.

The fastest way back is the body

Your mind travels. Your body does not. It has been here the entire time, which makes it the only reliable address you have.

So the question is not how do I feel, which is hard to answer when you are not here. The question is where can I feel myself right now? Feet on the floor. Hands. The breath. Your own weight in the seat.

If nothing stands out, take the first thing you notice. It does not need to be the right one. It needs to be true.

That is not meditation and it is not a technique. It is just using the one part of you that never left.

Then name where you actually are

Not where you have been. Where you are.

Steady. Scattered. Tired. Flat. Fine. One word does it, and the accurate word is better than the impressive one. Most of the drift happens because nobody, including you, has asked in days.

And one small thing that is okay

This part sounds sentimental and it does a specific job.

Find one small thing that is fine right now, and stay on it for a second longer than feels natural. I stopped. I am still trying. I took a breath.

Drifting has a way of making a day feel like nothing happened. Landing on one true small thing puts a peg in the ground and gives the drift something to be measured against.

You will drift again

You will. Everybody does, and a life with responsibilities in it more or less requires it. The point was never to stay landed permanently, which is not on offer.

The point is noticing sooner. First it takes a fortnight to realise you have been gone. Then a week. Eventually you catch it the same afternoon, and coming back takes about ninety seconds.

That is the whole skill. Not never leaving. Getting better at returning.