[fiction]A Question of Perspective

Disclaimer: This text was written to reflect a state of mind with no other audience than myself in mind. Only later did I get the impulse to publish this. I would therefore like to emphasize, that this is not intended as a guide, a recommendation for behaviour, or anything like that.

Instead, the text is intended to evoke a specific frame of mind in the reader, which I found hard to communicate (even to myself) when I was not in this state of mind. But I have since heard, that some people were identifying strongly with this, so, this is to them then.

I’m falling when I wake. Soon after, I hit the ground. As I look up, far above me, I see the sky, though only a small window of it shines down to me without being blocked by the sides of the abyss I find myself in.
The walls are not of earth or rock, but of tons of pages and various items that seem to have been ordered at some point, but now just form a mountainous plateau around me. I must have fallen down a crevasse. Looking around, it is clear to see that if I can impose some order on these walls, I should be able to climb out and walk the surface. So, I set to work. This paper goes here, that is trash, I can burn it to make more space, this is doesn’t need doing, it can wait… After a long day, there are the beginnings of a stairway upwards. I go to sleep.
Upon awakening on the next day, I look at the mountain of work, I still have to deal with. I can’t find a place to start, so I don’t.
On the third day I just choose a starting point, almost at random, fearing the decay of my previous work, which has already set in. I can see the staircase leaning away from the wall a bit and I need to spend a few hours to fix it. Then, I look for a new thing I can sort, but the walls are just made of stuff, and everything I can see is tangled up in a mess of other things. As it starts getting darker, my frustration turns to anger. Why is there so much stuff in the first place, I should just burn it all and be done with it. Thankfully, I realize that I would burn up with it, just in time, before I can start the flames. Defeated, I go to sleep.
The next morning, I start early, trying to avoid the mistakes of the previous days, trying to not think too much, so I don’t lose myself in the monumental task.
This proves to be a mistake.
As I pick up the first object, a chair that is too small, it catches on something. A small stuff-slide almost buries me completely. The rest of the day, I try to get back to where I started, four days ago, but I don’t quite get there.

This continues for a while. Weeks, maybe months, it is hard to tell. Whenever I try to impose structure on the walls, they collapse. Whenever I impose structure on myself, the ideas escape me. Even written down, they are soon swallowed by the walls – I can still find fragments, but the connections are lost during the night, when the landscape seems to come alive and shift ever so slightly. I can not keep track of time, any counting system gets lost, and keeping track of it in my head would require mental energy that I need to invest in getting out of here.

I am not completely alone, though. Early on I saw someone up on the cliffs, for the first time. I couldn’t quite make them out with the sun above them, but they seemed confused by something. Calling up, I asked them for help. But they didn’t seem to understand and left.
At first, I thought this was due to echoes, language barriers, or something like that. But one day, a person I was asking for help asked back: “What do you need help with? I would be happy to help, but all I see is you sitting amongst maybe… 6 objects and 20 papers, shifting them from one place to the other, day by day. If you don’t want to deal with them, just walk away. Everyone else does, too. Or, have you tried just sorting them by priority? Keeping them organized should be pretty simple, then, and you can do one at a time.”
I could then see myself from their perspective in a moment of empathic vision, and it looked incredibly silly. Then, with a feeling of vertigo, as I kept looking, the floor seemed to drop out and the objects multiplied. Connections to previously unseen problems cascaded down around me, every step required for each problem adding another layer, until I was back at the bottom of the abyss, looking up to a silhouetted figure, looking at me quizzically. After struggling for words for a while, I could only look back helplessly. They left soon after.

I can still remember their perspective. I can see how they see me struggle with seeming trivialities. But the moment I try to act on this vision, reality catches up to me.
Everything is connected. And that makes sorting through it impossible.
The only way out is to go at random. Scramble up, fall back down, try to mine through the walls, hoping they don’t collapse around me. Some days the walls shift a little, enabling easier movement up one path. However, the next day it may shift the other way.
This way, I have sometimes escaped the abyss. Even for longer stretches of time. But there is no structure there, just balancing on an ever-shifting plateau. And if I get distracted, make a mistake, get sick, or just at random…

I’m falling when I wake.