New Reality

This blog is very different to my other blogs. Something massive just hit me in this last week of September, 2024. I’m not sure exactly when as I’ve completely lost track of space and time. I’m in a daze. I have lost all my strong, negative emotions, and even the thoughts of such things. I literally feel like my mind is completely empty at the moment. This is very strange and a first for me.

I feel like I am in the middle of a resetting in preparation for a new reality. Stage one of which is a total wipe down, an emptying of everything out. The next stage, lets the dust settle to avoid further trauma or fear, which may lead to resistance. The final stage loads a new version of me into this avatar. As I write this, I feel like I am in stage two. This is very weird.

I’m talking about one of those life-altering shifts that feels like a shovel to the face, leaving me stunned, confused, and standing in unfamiliar territory. I feel like I woke up in a new world, in a new reality, perhaps a parallel universe. Somewhere I don’t recognize at all. If you’d told me a few days ago that I’d be sitting here, reflecting on the sudden absence of all those negative thoughts and emotions, those feelings that have shaped most of my life, I would have laughed at you. I would have told you that you don’t know me at all. Yet here I am, trying to make sense of a new reality that, to be honest, feels both strange and exhilarating at the same time. I really do feel like I am consciously aware that I am suddenly in a parallel universe.

My Past And My Make Up

For sixty years—almost an entire human lifetime—I’ve lived in a world where strong, negative emotions and confusion have been constant companions. Rulers and architects of my existence even. There were moments of awesome joy in the mix too, don’t get me wrong, but for the most part, the darkness, the emotional weight, and the scars from those experiences mostly overshadowed the good times. I’m not going to sugarcoat it—life was hard. Hard in ways that left deep wounds, wounds that shaped how I saw everything: people, relationships, work, the world etc.

Looking back, I think I’ve probably been living in a state of PTSD, or maybe even CPTSD, for decades. In my mind and heart, in my soul, my life has been a battlefield, a dark place where I’ve had to fight my demons, as well as the world I perceived. I’ve had to do this to survive, mentally and emotionally. This makes you exist in a hyper accelerated state. This state over stimulates whatever emotions you feel, good or bad. Anybody that knows me will tell you that I’m a very passionate individual, but I would say I’m more an emotional one. Even by my Latino roots standards I’m still overly emotional and always hyper stimulated.

What Exactly Is Happening

In this last week of September of 2024, everything feels different. It’s like all that noise, all that pain and suffering, has suddenly disappeared. I feel like I just started on a new course of sedatives, or anti-depressants, which I haven’t, but it feels like it. It feels like the volume has been turned down. way down. I don’t know exactly how it happened or why. I’m not even sure of what happened, but it feels like I’ve stepped into a new life, a new world, a new avatar. This new space feels like a new reality, a new parallel universe. I’m not sure. All I know is that I don’t recognize myself, or the world I’m occupying. Sometimes I don’t even recognize some of the streets I’ve been driving on. Let me tell you, it’s weird. It’s unsettling, because I don’t know this space. I’ve never lived here before.

You know that feeling when you’ve been in a loud, chaotic room for hours, and then you step outside into complete silence? I remember when I was a young man going to night clubs. The noise was deafening. Then, eventually, I’d get home and go to bed. The contrast between the noise in the club and the silence of my bedroom in the middle of the night was deafening too. That’s where I’m at. The silence is almost deafening because I’m so used to the noise in my mind.

My brain is still wired for the chaos, the survival mode, the emotional rollercoasters, but now that all of that is gone, I’m left standing here thinking, “What now?” I feel like how you would imagine someone that has spent the past fifty or sixty years in a bad prison and is now suddenly standing outside the prison on his first day out in the world, with nothing to do, nowhere to go, no family or friends, no rules, no routine etc. Just an empty, isolated, clean slate. A new reality.

Feeling Numb

I feel like I’m in a state of stunned limbo. It’s as if the universe has wiped everything clean, giving me that same clean slate. Now I have this new, empty mental space to explore, or enjoy. But I’m not in a rush to fill it with new thoughts I might think might fit. I’ve spent a lifetime being shaped by all the wrong things, carrying heavy emotional baggage. Now I’m enjoying this emptiness in my thoughts and feelings that I’m experiencing for the first time in my sixty years of life.

I’m okay with feeling like this. I’m giving myself permission to just sit with this, to not force anything into place before I’ve fully processed where I’m at. And yes, it’s unsettling because all I’ve ever known has been mostly the negative emotions. That’s been the landscape of my world. Now that it’s gone, how can I build something new when I’ve never had the chance to live in peace before? I don’t know this new type of architecture so I can’t build anything new yet. And I am so cool with that. For now, I feel like just sitting with it in this new reality.

I’m trying to allow life to show me what this new space can be, instead of me rushing in to drive it. There’s a quiet excitement in that too, because it feels like I’m at the beginning of something completely unknown. A new chapter is being written, and I don’t have a clue what the plot is. And you know what? That’s okay.

A Mass Awakening

There are millions of people who are feeling something similar right now. Perhaps many, many times more than that. Whatever this shift is, it’s not just happening to me. I’ve spoken to a few people that have been experiencing the same thing. They even describe it in the same way, with the same words. I can sense there’s a growing number of us waking up to this strange new reality. Maybe it’s the times we’re living in, maybe it’s a cosmic shift—hell, I don’t know. But I do know this: if you’re feeling the same, if you’re also standing in this strange new place, not knowing what to do, you’re not alone. A lot of us are figuring this out too.

Since all this started to happen I’ve come to realize that this process of adapting to a new reality doesn’t happen overnight. It’s been only a few days for me, and already I can tell that this is going to take time. I haven’t even been able to write anything. The creativity that used to flow through me feels like is in hibernation, and I’m okay with that. I know that whatever I create next, whether it’s books or ideas or just new ways of living, will come from a place of peace, not from the old emotional chaos that used to drive me.

I think that is a key part of this experience. It’s not about rushing to fill the emptiness with something new, just for the sake of filling it. It’s about letting the new space breathe, letting life unfold naturally and trusting that when the time is right, the creativity, the ideas, the new paths will come.

Standing Strong

I’ve always been someone who needed to make sense of things, but I’ve also always been the kind of man that just surrendered to the chaos around me, which always made someone else the master of my life. I just didn’t want to fight any battles; I didn’t want the conflicts. But now, I’m learning to let go of that weakness. I’m allowing myself to just “be” for a while, to watch and wait and see what emerges from this stillness. At least for a little while.

Man, this is so new to me. It’s making my head spin. A couple of days ago I found myself sitting at the beach, watching the waves gently roll in. The sun was shining, and for the first time in what felt like forever, I felt at peace and not at all accelerated, as I always have. The waves kept coming, one after another, with a steady rhythm, and I thought to myself, “maybe that’s what I need to do—just let things flow, like those tiny little waves we get here in this enclosed bay“. There’s no need to force anything. Life will fill the space when it’s ready, and I will allow it in when I’m ready.

So, if you’re feeling like everything is shifting around you, like the ground beneath your feet has moved and left you standing in an unfamiliar place, take heart. This might just be the beginning of something new, something better. It’s okay to feel scared. It’s okay to not have all the answers. Just let yourself sit with it. Let the waves come in and out, and trust that in time, life will show you what this new space is meant to be. You never know, you might absolutely love this new reality.

We’re all in this together, and we’re all finding our way.

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You can heal your life.  You have nothing to lose, and remember,

Thoughts Have Power.

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All rights reserved.  © 2024 Tony Jarrah