how to:

being scared isn't at all like being nervous. it is opening the refrigerator door at three am, closing it. falling asleep and not realising you have woken up. wanting to disappear completely, and realise you could probably do it if you tried hard enough; making yourself stuck in your own mind. it is realising you could tell all your secrets to every soul in the world, and in the end it is still only you, sitting in that room and waiting. alone.

everything becomes insignificant. any feelings you may have felt before. you don't even remember anymore why you were sprawled on the kitchen floor that night, drunk and crying. mumbling something about capsicum-monsters and sitting in the middle of the road and a car is coming. you probably haven't eaten for days, but in your mind it is still that moment and it keeps playing like a scratched cd.

you stop regretting that time you contemplated not braking, your attention slipping to the cracking red nail polish on your fingers.

it is like being scared but not at all. you feel like an elephant in a room. big and awkward, fumbling with the curtains. you try to make conversation but everything you say comes out backwards; then they look at you and you can only manage to comment on how you burnt the pizza because you forgot you put it in the oven.

that night there is a black out, and you feel your way around the house. feet sliding on the ground until you find the first step, hands caressing corners as if they are questions and someone is yelling at you to work it all out and then throw it away. it is like all of a sudden you realise what everything is for. you can recite the names of your bones, all two hundred & six of them - clavicle, carpal, spine, ribcage; and then you know nothing at all. you run through fields and are smiling, and then you are standing there and you feel like a deer who stopped just to see the headlights close up.

and that's all you do. one moment you are and the next you are not. you are lost in the galaxy of your mind, where shooting stars loop your thoughts in circles. you are standing there and you can feel each and every single breath enter your lungs and then pushed out, your blood beating through your skin and the way your spine is contorting forward, hunching like a flower ready to kiss the earth. you are standing there and you are not. you are and you're not.