Tangled Threads

Auto-Pilot

auto-pilot- something i use when my life seems out of control, when my head starts to spin, when some things just hurt to much.

its something that should not be able to be accessed by a human, its far to dangerous you see. its affects are almost immediate and all it takes is a flip of a switch.

i discovered this switch one afternoon...

" no one in the house likes it when you joke around...no one. sometimes Amber, you deserve to be hit."

i swiftly turned back around in my seat to face the windshield. my hands started to shake and my body turned cold at my brothers words. yes, i had known for a while that my family wasnt to fond of me, but aside from my assumption that none of them liked me, they had never said it to my face.

and it hurt.

i began steeling myself. numbing from the outside in to cover the tears in my eyes before they even had a chance to become glassy. a normal thing for me.

this isnt my first rodeo, esecially not today, but for some reason the ability to numb myself was becoming useless against the pain. i needed something more.

as we turned the corner my brother glanced over at my face and then back at the road. oblivious to my inner turmoil, he sped up the car. 

focus.

focus.

focus amber.

 numb the pain.

 i can do it.

all of a sudden my brain shut off. i pulled my breath in and then shoved it out in a calming yet silent breath. my eyes fogged for a second, and the  pounding in my head increased and then went silent in a matter of seconds. 

i was sitting in the back of my head. the walls were cold to the touch and the air was still. i was swimming in nothing. an oblovion of empty space with no start and no finish. 

i glanced to the left and caught the view of the outside through a window, and thats when i realized i had folded in on myself. i could feel the wet droplets fall down my face as a sense of loneliness engulfed me, but as my body moved side to side to observe the interior of the car, i realized that my face was dry. 

my self had detached from my body. i had numbed but this felt... different. i felt empty yet comfortble cold yet warm and my eyes blinked at a rhythm timed with every few puffs of perfectly syncronized breaths and pumps of heart. 

it had become a science. 

my head swayed with the perfect amount of liveliness and my fingers tapped to the beat of the song playing. my lips were moving but i heard no sound and felt no air escape.

my body was moving without its self, its soul, without my feelings affecting it.

as realization  hit me of my situation i felt my body begin to shake. the tears kept leaving me but none reached my cheeks. as the pain coursed through my chest i felt unconnected with the sorrow and my bodys face only tightened in placid appearance.

after finding my auto-pilot i was left like that for months. the room i was treading air in had never changed, and my body worked like it was on a clock. eventually it became a comfortable silence. 

i would find my soul with no way of measuring time but passing what seemed like hours listening to the words of others filter through the abyss, but then be swallowed whole by the empty sound around me. i would  watch my lips move with no sound escaping them. the emptimess bounced off the non-existent walls to create an everlasting feeling that you could never comprehend.