tell me about it

Now and then when I’m alone by myself I get the feeling that life is just - what’s the word - unreal.  It feels as if all this is a passing phase, like I’m an eternal soul stuck inside a transient body.  As if I understand the meaning of time - as if I’ve felt seconds go by like years, time falling quickly like raindrops silver on the skin - and that this mortal body measures time so much slower.  That I’m uncomfortable with how slow time passes while I remain in this body, because I’ve experienced eternity.

As if I can’t wait to go off and die, because then I’ll be returned to my infinite self, rather than trapped on Earth as a human being.  That life is (for now) a mild inconvenience.  That nothing I do really matters, because when life is over and done with, nothing will have changed in the long run.

It’s strange because for that brief moment I’ll suddenly feel very detached from life and the world and from living.  That life is so mundane it’s really beneath my notice, but because I’m stuck here for the time being I have no choice but to live by the rules and wait patiently for my time to be up.

It’s such a strange feeling, and not morbid at all, if that’s what you’re thinking.  It’s just a curiously detached feeling.  Does anyone else feel like this?  Is it only me?

But other times I get so caught up in the joie de vivre of living, in the very mundanity of it, and rejoice in the pleasures of this mortal coil.   I just don’t know where that other feeling comes from - I only feel it once in a long while, but often enough to perplex me.