How to Survive a Black Hole

an antithetical supernova

Sometimes, if I am left alone enough, the accrual of my thoughts will tarnish any semblance of true reality. Everything will be turned into a pool of blackness — which I swim in. I shift on my back to float and gaze at the black atmosphere. Only dots of light that imitate what you may call stars.

They are not stars, however. But, I’m never quite sure.

There are instances where this pooling becomes so large and my aloneness becomes so vast, I forget there can be any replenishment of ordinary thought. Everything is tinged with this dark and dire black. I’m trying not to isolate it as such an excruciating thing. I believe it may be connected to some of the best things about me. Yet here I am, cloaked by this theoretical nothingness, which I find myself persistently drowning in if I’m not careful.

But, what is the use of being careful when you are involving yourself with the inevitable?

Now — I’m trying to do something different. I’m usually so sickeningly frightened of losing myself to this abyss, I whip my entire mind-body around in a severe panic in hopes of saving myself from dissolving. To keep what is left of me alive. 

However, after so many experiences of trying to kick off these tiny anchors that somehow harness themselves to the bottom of my feet, beckoning me to surrender…. I’ve come to a tired conclusion….what if I just gave in? What if there is something trying to meet me at the bottom?

I no longer contain the energy or will to writhe out of this inevitability. If the floor of this bottomless ether calls to me, I will listen. Fearfully, I will give into this fate. I will unclench this energy and leave my body in a stupor. Letting the blackness do its work to take me away. 

—

Sinking, I find a peculiar sense of relief in the fact I am no longer frantic. I reached a state of pure paranoia but after riding out the attack of feeling, I felt my body return to itself. As I continue my drop into these lowly undiscovered chambers, I remind myself any retaliation that emerges from my brain will only result in damage. I have already raised the white flag. I am already in too deep.  

I look around me and notice the thick black that surrounds me. Black that swallows your eyes and all of your perception. Blinking seems futile because nothing changes. So I settle and I focus. On the darkness that shrouds before me and the plummet of my descent. There is no more fighting. No more resisting. Only a paradoxical relaxation into this unflinching unknown. 

I still feel that fear, that hasn’t changed. But what I do with it — will. I will reroute my instincts. I will transform my desires. I will embody solace so that as I fall, I fall in the blanket of my trust. I heal the turmoil of my mind by giving into this nothingness. The anxiety, the questioning, the reckoning, does not have to eat me alive. I don’t have to be the source of my pain anymore. I have come here into this state of undoing to tether myself back into the source. I am given violent thoughts to which I expunge from my body and vibrate into this holy origin. I will become the medicine my mind needs. I will embody each attribute of healing. They tell me the mind heals the body. The mind makes the body clean. Well, I believe the body can reach back for the mind. The body can heal where the mind is very sick.

So, I reach — inside my mind. I go deep within its trenches. I lodge my hand through my brain and past my throat and locate where the torture lies. The souls of unbecoming. Their cries, unintelligible and morose. Rampant in their misery, yet hollow in their physicality. Creatures not made of stone but rather, ghostlike apparitions. My hand rushes right through them. Each visage a performance of pure decay. Sorrow. Madness. Drama. They will do anything but be touched. I try to grab these wretched voices to eliminate them from intoxicating my afflicted brain, but it is useless. They are non-physical. They are simply the projections of a tormented mind. In resignation, I remove my hand from this cavity and trace it back through my crown, returning it to float by my side. 

And I choose to let myself drift.

To let these instruments of misery perform their elaborate symphony for me. If they wish to sing, then so be it. I will hover in this blackness and listen. To every note, every inflection, and every piercing scream. I will be their stillest audience. The one they have been dying for.

I feel all of their ravens.

They rush out of my body and through the multitude of pores on my skin.

And in seconds —

I am ablaze. 

I am covered in fire. Fire that drenches my surface and unlocks my interior. Like a healing agent, this heat incinerates every apparition. Leaving my organs clean. I am no longer floating, I am catastrophic.

A galactic inferno bursting with kaleidoscopic illumination. Flames that burn blue, violet, and fluorescent pink. 

I have become this unending explosion.

I have turned the blackness inside out by succumbing to it.

Where there was nothingness before, now there is an outpouring.

I have been given the universal stage. The fracture of a new system and divide. I become wild enough to reach the inhibitions that severed the countless rooms of my mind. All leading to this unobstructed moment.

The birth of a new star.