The Exit Door

Once in a while - do you know this feeling? A deep, hard-to-explain discomfort. A sense of being suffocated by everything around you. A wanting to escape, badly, without any idea what that escape would even look like.

To be clear: it's not a dark thought. I would feel deeply disappointed to leave this world early. What I'm looking for is an exit door, not an ending. The people around me, their activities, my activities, my limits, my horizon - all of it pressing in like the walls of a room getting smaller.

I'll assume I'm not alone in this.
These moments - sometimes days - I simply survive. As if the soul has taken a wound and all I can do is wait for it to heal. I wish I didn't have them. Or that I had the depth to see right through them when they arrive. But they come like weather I never quite anticipate - clouds gathering quietly, then a psychological storm.

I'm writing this inside one right now.
There is a full disharmonic orchestra playing. I'm driving someone somewhere, performing the appearance of blending in. Somewhere underneath I'm calculating income months ahead, mapping what happens to the people who depend on me if something shifts. The dozens of tasks I'm behind on. The objects I own that mean nothing to me but that I can't release because I'm too tired to have that conversation. The people around me who probably sense all of this and choose not to ask - not out of indifference, but because looking too closely might reveal something uncomfortable on their side too.

People tend to avoid what scares them.
Most of us have rooms like this inside. Most of us just never open the door.